76 THE DECIPHERERS OF THE PERSE POLITAN CHARACTERS 



The inquiry was commenced by Professor O. G. Tychsen, of 

 Rostock, in 1798, and continued by Professor Munter, of Co- 

 penhagen, in 1802. They ascertained that the Persepolitan 

 inscriptions were alphabetical, that the words were divided by 

 the elementary arrow-head placed obliquely, and that the in- 

 scriptions were to be read from left to right; they also pointed 

 out the probability that a frequently recurring group of cha- 

 racters, which has since proved the key to the whole system of 

 writing, as well as to the language, would be found to answer 

 to the word king, but without deciding in what language. 

 Nearly coeval with the researches of Munter, were those of 

 Grotefend, Professor in the Gymnasium of Frankfort on the 

 Maine, by whom the investigation was carried to a much 

 farther extent. By a process purely tentative, he deciphered 

 the names of Xerxes and Darius Hystaspes, and by applying 

 the approximate alphabet so obtained, he found that the group 

 which Tychsen and Munter conceived to represent the word 

 king, might be read into the word for that dignity in the Zendic 

 or ancient Median language ; an affiliation of which was pecu- 

 liar to ancient Persia, properly so called, and to the Persian 

 nation, mistress of Asia, subsequently to the reign of Cyrus. 

 By pursuing the same system, he produced entire readings 

 and translations of several of the inscriptions at Persepolis. 



The previous studies of Professor Grotefend, however, had 

 not included that of the ancient languages of the East, and he 

 was acquainted with the Zendic language only through the im- 

 perfect works of Anquetil du Perron. It hence followed that 

 many of the words and phrases into which he had read the 

 Persepolitan inscriptions, presented forms and grammatical 

 combinations which were not to be found either in the Zendic 

 or in any other ancient dialect ; and that the meanings he ascri- 

 bed to some of them were equally foreign to those of the really 

 corresponding words of that language ; while he often attri- 

 buted also a different value to the same characters, when oc- 

 curring in different parts of an inscription. On these accounts 

 his explanations, when first divulged, did not gain the assent 

 of philologists in general, and were scarce 1 "/ known to the 

 literary world ; although two eminent orientaWsts, M. de Sacy, 

 of Paris, and M. von Hammer, of Vienna, appear to have 

 provisionally concurred in them. A republication of them, 

 with additions, in 1815, was equally unsuccessful; and from 

 a passage in Dr. Young's account of his own discoveries in 

 Hieroglyph ical Literature, it may be gathered, that, deeply 

 interested as he was in all such inquiries, he was ignorant, 

 at so late a period as the year 1823, of the advance which 

 M. Grotefend had made in deciphering the cuneiform charac- 



