CUNEIFORM 



615 



pletely covered some of them could have any 

 meaning. It was Garcia de Sylva Figueroa, ani- 

 has^adiir of IMiilip III. of Spam, who, on a visit 

 tn IVrsejMilis in MilS, first became ixwseHHed with 

 tin- linn conviction that these signs must be in- 

 MTiptions in some lost writing and, perhaps, 

 language, iiiul hail a line of them copied. Amongst 

 suh>ei|iiciit traveller)* whose attention was attracted 

 to tin- suliject, Chardin, after his return to Europe 

 in li>74, published three complete groups of cunei- 

 forms, copied by himself at Persepohs, together 

 with a comparatively long and minute account of 

 the mysterious character. He likewise declared it 

 to IK? 'writing and no hieroglyphs: the rest, 

 however, will always be unknown.' Michaux, a 

 French botanist, sent, in 1782, a boundary stone, 

 found at Bagdad, to Paris, covered with inscrip- 

 tions. Ever since, the materials for the investiga- 

 tiuii of a subject the high importance of which oy 

 that time was fully recognised have been rapidly 

 accumulating. Sir H. Jones, Ker Porter, Robert 

 Stewart, Sir \V. Ouseley, Bellino, Dr Schultz up 

 to Rich and Botta, Flandin, Rouet, Layard, 

 Oppert, Smith, Rassam, Budge, and, above all, 

 Rawlinson, each in his turn brought back more or 

 less valuable materials from his eastern travels ; 

 and, naturally enough, those explorers were among 

 the foremost to engage in the study of the records 

 they had brought to light. 



Now that we are able to explain so much of these 

 inscriptions, it is highly interesting and instructive 

 to notice the opinions first entertained of them by 

 the wise and learned in Europe. In the Transac- 

 tions of the Royal Society of June 1693, thev first 

 appeared from a copy made by Flowers, and they 

 are held to be ' the ancient writing of the Gaures 

 or Gebres.' Thomas Hyde, the eminent Orientalist, 

 declared them, in his learned work on the religion of 

 the ancient Persians (1700), to be nothing more or 

 less than idle fancies of the architect, who en- 

 deavoured to show bow many different characters a 

 certain peculiar stroke in different combinations 

 could furnish. \Vitte, in Rostock, saw in them the 

 destructive work of generations upon generations of 

 worms. Generally, they were pronounced to be talis- 

 manic signs, mysterious formuhe of priests, astro- 

 logical symbols, charms which, if properly read and 

 used, would open immense vaults full or gold and 

 pearls an opinion widely diffused among the native 

 savants. The next step was to see in them a species 

 of revealed digital language, such as the Almighty 

 had first used to Adam. Lichtenstein read in some 

 of them certain passages from the Koran, written 

 in Kufic, the ancient Arabic character ; in others, 

 a record of Tamerlane ; and was only surprised 

 that others should not have found this, the easiest 

 and clearest reading, long before him. K;vmpfer 

 was not quite sure whether they were Chinese or 

 Hebrew characters. That they were Runes, 

 Oghams, Samaritan, or Greek characters, were 

 some of the soberest explanations. 



It was Karsten Niebuhr who first showed the 

 way, to the more sensible portion of the learned, 

 out of this labyrinth of absurdities. Without 

 attempting to read the character itself, he first of 

 all established three distinct cuneiform alphal>et& 

 instead of one, the letters of which seemed to 

 outnumber those of all other languages together. 

 The threefold inscriptions found at Persepolis he 

 rightly took to be transcripts of the same text in 

 three alphabets, in a hitherto unknown language. 

 Tychsen of Rostock (1798), and Milliter of Copen- 

 hagen (1800), affirmed and further developed this 

 conjecture. The latter went so far as to divide the 

 characters and inscriptions into alphabetical, syl- 

 labic, and monogrammatical, and to assume two 

 different languages Zend for inscriptions of a 

 religious, Pehlevi for those of a political character. 



The real and final discovery, however, i* due to 

 Grotefetid of Hanover, and date* from 1802. On 

 the 7th of Si-ptt-mbi-r of that year he laid the firt 

 cuneiform alphabet, with ito equivalent**, before 

 the Academy of Gttttingen strangely enough, in 

 the very name sitting in which Heyne gave an 

 account of the first reading of hieroglyphs. The 

 process by which Grotcfend arrived at tfiat wonder- 

 ful result is so supremely interesting, that we can- 

 not omit to sketch it briefly. He fixed upon a 

 Persepolitan inscription of what was called the 

 first class, and counted in it thirty promiscuously 

 recurring groups or combinations' of cuneiform*. 

 These groups he concluded to be letters, and not 

 words, as a syllabary of thirtv words could not be 

 thought of in any language. Then, again, a certain 

 oblique wedge, evidently a sign of division, which 

 stood after, three, four, live, up to eight or nine such 

 groups or letters, must show the beginning or end, 

 not of a phrase, but of a word. Tvchsen and 

 Miinter had already pointed out a certain combina- 

 tion of seven characters as signifying the royal 

 title. Grotefend adopted this opinion. The word 

 occurred here and there in the text, and after the 

 first words of most of the inscriptions, twice ; the 

 second time with an appendage, which he concluded 

 to be the termination of the genitive plural, and he 

 translated these two words, without regard to their 

 phonetic value, ' King of Kings." He then, in com- 

 paring the words preceding the royal titles in two 

 tablets, found them repeated in what he assumed 

 to be a filial relation ; thus : There were three dis- 

 tinct groups, words, or names, which we will call X, 

 D, and H, and this is how they occurred : ( 1 ) X, 

 King of Kings, son of D, King of Kings; (2) D, 

 King of Kings, son of H ; but the ( 3 ) H was not 

 followed by the word King. H, therefore, must 

 have been "the founder of the dynasty. Now the 

 names themselves had to be found. Grotefend, un- 

 like his predecessors, had recourse not to philology, 

 but to archaeology and history. The inscriptions in 

 question were by that time proved to belong to 

 the AchcTiuenian dynasty, founded by Hysttospes = 

 group H. He was followed by Darius, ' King of 

 Kings, son of Hystaspes,' or Darius Hystaspes = 

 group D ; he, again, by Xerxes, King of Kings, son 

 of Darius, King of Kings = group X and the 

 problem was solved. It could not have been Cyrus 

 and Cambyses, as the groups did not begin with 

 the same signs ( C ) ; nor Cyrus and Artaxerxes, the 

 first l>eing too short for the group, the second too 

 long it could only be Darius, Xerxes, Hystaspes 

 of course in the orthography of their, not of our 

 time ; and wherever in these names the same letters 

 recurred, they were expressed by the same combina- 

 tions of signs. A further proof of the correctness 

 of the reading was furnished by a vase in Venice, 

 bearing a cuneiform and ahieroglyphieal inscription, 

 which were l>oth read at the same time independ- 

 ently : ' Xerxes.' Innumerable difficulties, however, 

 remained, and remain up to this moment. Grote- 

 fend had, alter all, only read and not altogether 

 correctly three names, which did not contain more 

 than twelve letters the rest being mere conjecture 

 and there were many more in this alphabet . The 

 other two alphabets, with an infinite variety of 

 letters, had hardly leen properly approached yet. 

 Moreover, the discovery of Grotefenu was in itself 

 so startling, so extraordinary ami Itold, that no one 

 ventured to follow it up for the next twenty years, 

 when H. Martin found t he grammatical flexions of 

 the plural and genitive case. We cannot now 

 si)ecify his further discoveries, or those of Rask, 

 Burnouf, Lassen, Westergaard, Beer, Jacouet, and 

 others who followed ; we will only say tnat they 

 mostly secured for themselves fame and name by 

 rectifying or fixing one or two letters. The last 

 and greatest of investigators of t bis. first alphabet 



