616 



CUNEIFORM 



is Rawlinson, who not only first copied, but also 

 read, the gigantic Behistun inscription containing 

 more than 1000 lines of which more anon. 



Inscriptions in the 'Persian cuneiform character 

 are mostly found in three parallel columns, and are 

 then translations of each other in different alpha- 

 bets and languages, called respectively Persian, 

 Median, and Babylonian ; the Achaemenian kings 

 being obliged to make their decrees intelligible to 

 the three principal nations under their sway, as in 

 our days the Shah of Persia would use the Persian, 

 Turkish, and Arabic languages, in order that he 

 might be understood in Bagdad and Teheran. 



The first of the three, the Persian, consists of 

 thirty-nine to forty-four letters, and is the most 

 recent, the most ancient being the Babylonian. 

 It is distinguished by the oblique stroke which 

 divides its words. Its letters are composed of 

 not more than five strokes or wedges placed 

 side by side horizontally or perpendicularly, or 

 both, but never with one exception crossing each 

 other. The language is pronounced by all investi- 

 gators to be as near Zend (q.v. ) as possible, and 

 to be the mother-language of modern Persian. 

 It is only twice found by itself ; all the other 

 inscriptions are trilingual. The time of its use is 

 confined to the years 570-370 B.C. The oldest 

 instance of its employment is an inscription of 

 Cyrus the Great at Pasargadae ; the most recent, 

 that of Artaxerxes Ochus at Persepolis. The most 

 important is that of Darius Hystaspes, in the great 

 inscription of Behistun (q.v.), which contains, besides 

 genealogical records, a description of the extent of 

 his power, the leading incidents of his reign, prayers 

 to Ormuzd and the angels, and reference to the 

 building of the palaces. Most of these inscriptions 

 occur at Persepolis, Behistun, Naksh-i-Rustam, 

 and Hamadan. 



The second kind is called the Median, because it 

 takes the second place in the trilingual inscriptions, 

 under the conquering Persians, but over the con- 

 quered Assyrians, and as the Medes stood somewhat 

 in that relation to these two nations, that name 

 was selected. Another name, 'Scythic, : has been 

 proposed, or, by way of compromise, ' Medo- 

 Scythic,' and the language supposed to have been 

 spoken by those innumerable Tartaro-Finnic tribes 

 which occupied the centre of Asia has been pro- 

 nounced to be a Turanian dialect. But the process 

 of constructing out of such slender elements as 

 Samojed and Ostiak words, a so-called ' Scythic,' is 

 somewhat similar to the attempt of reconstructing 

 Sanskrit from some detached and very doubtful 

 French and English words. These inscriptions 

 never occur by themselves (one instance again 

 excepted), and being translations of the Persian 

 records, about ninety names have been ascertained, 

 and an alphabet of about one hundred characters 

 combinations of a syllabic nature has been estab- 

 lished. The principal investigators of this charac- 

 ter are Westergaard, De Saulcy, Hincks, Norris, 

 and Oppert. Gobineau holds the language to be 

 Huzvaresh, a mixture of Iranian and Semitic. 



The third and most important is the Babylonian 

 portion of the cuneiforms. The trilingual records 

 gave the first clue to the deciphering of this char- 

 acter ; but many original documents, more than three 

 thousand years older, have since been found in 

 Babylon, Nineveh, and other places near the 

 Euphrates and Tigris, and even in Egypt. On one 

 occasion, the Asiatic Society submitted a cylinder 

 of Tiglath-pileser to four prominent investigators 

 of the subject, and they independently read it 

 nearly alike, with the exception of the proper 

 names, where they widely differed. As a proof of 

 the enormous importance of this character for 

 history, grammar, law, mythology, archaeology, 

 and antiquities generally, we name some of the 



records which Rawlinson began to publish (now 

 in progress) : Babylonian Legends, such as the 

 Fight between Marduk and Tiamat, the Descent 

 of Ishtar into Hades (2000-1500 B.C.); Bricks 

 from Kilehshergat of the early Kings of Assyria 

 (1350-1100 B.C.), in a character much complicated ; 

 Annals of Tiglath-pileser I. (1120 B.C.); Annals 

 of Assur-nasir-pal, of Shalmaneser I. and II., 

 Sargon, Sennacherib, Assur-bani-pal, son of Esar- 

 haddon ; Inscriptions of Nebuchadnezzar I. and 

 II. ; Cylinders containing the name of Belshazzar, 

 &c. ; besides syllabaries, vocabularies, mathemati- 

 cal and astronomical tablets, calendars, and a 

 selection from the mythological tablets. 



In order to give the reader some idea of the 

 appearance of the cuneiform character, we subjoin 

 the name of Darius, written in the Persian, Scythic, 

 and Babylonian characters. 



ft fir ET T<r 



Persian. 



E-TT -TTK ^ 



Scythic. 



fT<T - 



Babylonian. 



The cuneiform signs were originally pictures of 

 objects. It appears that they were first drawn in 

 outline upon some vegetable substance, called in 

 the native documents likhusi. Whether the supply 

 of this material failed it is impossible to say, but 

 it is quite certain that at a very early period in 

 the history of Babylonia, clay was adopted as a 

 substance for writing upon. On substances like 

 papyrus and leather it is quite easy to draw in out- 

 line a picture of any object ; but it became more 

 difficult to do this when :ay was used, because the 

 outlines of the object represented had to be pressed 

 into it. The necessary result of this was that the 

 shapes of the objects became altered. Thus a circle 

 ( 1 ) represented the sun, but when inscribed upon 

 clay it became 2; and a star (3) became 4: in 

 process of time, as scribes became busier, these 

 signs were represented by 5 and 6 respectively. 



OO 



5 



6 



The use of clay as a writing material completely 

 modified the shape of nearly every character in the 

 cuneiform syllabary. The signs inscribed upon 

 stones of the early empire are most complex, 

 and in many of them it is difficult to see what 

 object they are intended to represent. As time 

 went on, these complex signs became simplified, 

 and wedge after wedge was discarded, until the 

 character was reduced to its simplest form. 

 Lenormant, Hyde Clark, and others adopting 

 their theory, have tried to prove that the Baby- 

 lonian and Chinese signs are related. In the time 

 of Esarhaddon and Assur-bani-pal, it became the 

 fashion to write inscriptions in the ancient complex 

 character, and special syllabaries of such signs 

 were drawn up. Fragments of these are now in 

 the British Museum. The cuneiform syllabary 

 contains about two thousand signs of a phonetic, 

 syllabic, and ideographic nature. Each sign origin- 

 ally represented an object, but no attention was 

 paid to its ideographic signification when its 



