ORIENTAL ARCH/EOLOGY 



tions. Tradition ascribed it, as we learn from Ctesias, 

 through Diodorus, to the fabled Assyrian queen 

 Semiramis. Tradition was quite at fault in this ; but 

 it is only recently that knowledge has availed to set it 

 right. The inscription, as is now known, was really 

 written about the year 515 B.C., at the instance of 

 Darius I., King of Persia, some of whose deeds it re- 

 counts in the three chief languages of his widely scat- 

 tered subjects. 



The man who at actual risk of life and limb copied 

 this wonderful inscription, and through interpreting it 

 became the veritable " father of Assyriology," was the 

 English general Sir Henry Rawlinson. His feat was 

 another British triumph over the same rivals who had 

 competed for the Rosetta Stone ; for some French ex- 

 plorers had been sent by their government, some years 

 earlier, expressly to copy this strange record, and had 

 reported that it was impossible to reach the inscrip- 

 tion. But British courage did not find it so, and in 

 1835 Rawlinson scaled the dangerous height and 

 made a paper cast of about half the inscription. Dip- 

 lomatic duties called him away from the task for some 

 years, but in 1848 he returned to it and completed the 

 copy of all parts of the inscription that have escaped 

 the ravages of time. And now the material was in 

 hand for a new science, which General Rawlinson him- 

 self soon, assisted by a host of others, proceeded to 

 elaborate. 



The key to the value of this unique inscription lies 

 in the fact that its third language is ancient Persian. 

 It appears that the ancient Persians had adopted the 

 cuneiform character from their western neighbors, the 



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