476 ADDRESS DELIVERED AT A MEETING OF 



translations. They are found on rocks, slabs, and pillars, at Per- 

 sepolis, at Behistun, at Van, at Murghab, and at Hamadan. These 

 trilingual inscriptions are all, without exception, records of the 

 Achsemenian dynasty ; the earliest which has been discovered (the 

 inscription at Murghab, or Pasargadse) relating to Cyrus the Great, 

 and the latest to Artaxerxes Ochus. 



Of the three kinds of writing found in these inscriptions, the 

 first, or Persian, is the simplest, containing the fewest and least com- 

 plicated characters. It is also distinguished from the other two by 

 the divisions between the words, which are separated by an oblique 

 wedge ; and this circumstance, of course, greatly facilitates the 

 task of the decipherer. The second Persepolitan writing appears 

 to have been co-eval with the first, and to have been employed only 

 in conjunction with it, in the trilingual monuments of the Achse- 

 menian princes ; it is accordingly ascribed by the concurrent voice 

 of philologers to the Medes, the people next in importance to the na- 

 tive Persians under the Achsemenian dynasty. The number of cha- 

 racters in this writing is far greater than in the Persian, its alpha- 

 bet (or syllabary) containing about 100 letters. The third Perse- 

 politan writing belongs to one of a group of languages (distinguished 

 by Major Eawlinson into the Babylonian, the Assyrian, and the 

 Elymcean] written in a similar character. It is ascribed, with every 

 probability, to the Babylonians, legends in a like character being 

 found on cylinders and bricks excavated from the foundations of 

 the primaeval cities of Shinar. It is unquestionably the most ancient 

 of the three kinds of cuneiform writing, and was probably the type 

 upon which the other two were constructed. The characters are 

 more numerous and more complicated than those of the first and 

 second kinds. 



The process of resolving and interpreting an inscription in an 

 unknown and extinct language, and written in an unknown cha- 

 racter, appears to include three distinct and principal steps. The 

 first of these is that of deciphering (properly so called), or deter- 

 mining the phonetic powers of the letters. The next step is the 

 determination of the nature of the inflections, and the grammatical 

 structure of the language itself, and the discovery of its congeners 

 or representatives amongst the living languages. The third and last 

 step consists in tracing from these sources the meaning of its roots, 

 ^and thus translating the inscription. 



The first of these steps wasJong since taken, with respect to the 



