282 Rey. Dr. Watt on the different Kinds of Cuneiform Writing 
the whole, the degree of agreement between the contents of the histories here 
compared is really surprising, when we consider how independently of each other 
they were written; and so close a congruity between them could, I apprehend, 
have arisen solely from the truth in the main of both, as far as they refer to the 
same subjects. In the third place, the Behistun tablets evince the superiority of 
Herodotus even to Xenophon, in correctness of historic information. 
To show the bearing of this record upon the two latter heads, as well as to 
give some idea of the style it is composed in, I subjoin an extract from the begin- 
ning of Major Rawlinson’s free translation of it into English, inserting within 
brackets, after each proper name, a closer representation of its sound from his 
transcript of the cuneiform text into Roman letters, with (even where I think a 
change might be made for the better) no other, alteration than that of substituting 
italics, as I have all along done, for such of the latter characters as have none to 
correspond with them in the original groups : 
“Tam Darius [Dar(a)yawush], the great king, the king of kings, the king 
of the (dependent) provinces, the son of Hystaspes [ Vashtaspa], the grandson of 
Arsames [Arshama], the Achemenian [Hak’hamanishiya]. Says Darius the 
king : my father was Hystaspes; of Hystaspes the father was Arsames; of Ar- 
sames the father was Ariyaramnes [ Ariyaram(a)na]; of Ariyaramnes the father 
was Teispes [Chishpaish]; of Teispes the father was [Hak’hamanish]. Says 
Darius the king: on that account we have been called Achemenians ; from 
antiquity we have been unsubdued (or, we have descended); from antiquity those 
with it in the Grecian one; but, from the circumstance of the Greek historian’s uniting the 
Sagartians, the Sarangeans, the Thumaneans, the Utians, and the Mycans, with the inhabitants of 
islands in the Red Sea, as forming one set of payers of a joint tribute (lib. ili. cap. 93), it would 
appear that the tribes just enumerated lived in the neighbourhood of those islanders, and conse- 
quently within the limits of Arabia. Nor is it any objection to this location of the specified 
parties, that Herodotus elsewhere (lib. i. cap. 125) ranks Sagartians among the Persian tribes ; 
for the Sagartians here referred to must be quite different, as they paid tribute, from which, he 
tells us (lib. iii. cap. 97), every branch of the nation that inhabited Persia was exempt. The 
agreement thus made out between the two nations is, I allow, very far from being complete in 
this particular instance, in consequence of Darius’s representing the whole of a country as subject 
to him, of which only a part had really submitted to his authority. This instance, however, of 
boasting, does not cast any strong imputation on his veracity; as such exaggerations, with respect 
to extent of territory, have been resorted to by sovereigns in all ages of the world, without the 
practice being considered or intended as an absolute violation of truth. 
