86 NOTICES OF THE MEETINGS [May 30, 
the Cuneiform groupes, the result being, as these were actually the 
true names recorded, that twelve correct phonetic values were thus 
determined on the first essay at decipherment. 
The alphabet was subsequently completed by a dissection of 
fresh materials, such as the genealogy of Darius preserved at Behis- 
tun, an enumeration of the Satrapies of the Persian Empire, several 
well ascertained titles, and more particularly a series of grammatical 
inflexions and terminations which were elaborated by a careful 
analysis and identified with their Sanscrit correspondents. Simulta- 
neously with the progress thus effected in alphabetical decipherment, 
a general knowledge was obtained of the Persian language, a supply 
of materials, not less valuable for philology than for history, being 
furnished by the great inscription of Behistun recording the auto- 
biography of Darius Hystaspes, which notwithstandmg its imac- 
cessible position on the face of a precipice at an elevation of four or 
five hundred feet from the plain, Colonel Rawlinson succeeded in 
copying. 
The next step was to render the knowledge thus obtained in the 
simplest branch cf Cuneiform science available for the examination 
of the more difficult. It had been fortunately the custom of the 
Achemenian kings to append to them vernacular records transla- 
tions in the Scythian and Babylonian Languages, and it was certain 
therefore, as the Persian tongue was now thoroughly understood, 
that if their trilingual records were sufficiently extensive, the 
Babylonian language could be deciphered and rendered generally 
intelligible through the Persian key. ‘To this task accordingly 
Colonel Rawlinson had devoted himself; but owing to the extreme 
difficulty and complexity of the Babylonian system of writing, 
(ideographic and phonetic signs being intermingled, and the phonetic 
signs bearing often several distinct syllabic values), and more 
especially owing to a defectiveness of materials, for a small portion 
only of the Babylonian translation at Behistun was recoverable, his 
progress had been necessarily slow and for a long period anything 
but satisfactory. Recently however by the aid of an extensive and 
profound examination of the independent inscriptions of Assyria and 
Babylonia, more certain results had been obtained, and there could 
now be little question, but that a continued application of patient 
labour and critical skill, was alone required to render the Assyrian 
inscriptions at least as well understood as the Persian. 
The third portion of the lecture referred to the results in regard to 
general knowledge at which we had already arrived through the 
interpretation of Cuneiform records. These results, although they 
contained nothing of any salient interest, were equally varied and 
extensive. We had obtained a general outline of the history of 
Western Asia from a period at least as early as the emigration of 
Abraham from Chaldza, down to the age of Alexander the Great; 
and of many portions of that great historical interval we had the 
most minute and circumstantial notices, the Assyrian kings having 
