202 



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 un- 

 known and extinct language, and written in an unknown character, 

 appears to include three distinct and principal steps. The first of 

 these is that of deciphering (properly so called), or determining 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 trans- 

 lating the inscription. 



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

 first Persepolitan writing. In the year 1 802, Professor Grotefend, of 

 Gottingen, examined two short trilingual inscriptions, which had 

 been copied at Persepolis by the traveller Niebuhr, and succeeded in 

 identifying the names of Cyrus, Darius, Xerxes, and Hystaspes, in 

 all the three characters. The analysis of these names, in the case 

 of the Persian, enabled him to determine the values of eleven out 

 of the sixteen letters of which they were composed, or nearly one- 

 third of the entire alphabet. 



The next step was made by Professor Kask, of Copenhagen, 

 in 1826. He recognised the title Achcemenide in the inscription 

 of Niebuhr, and thus determined the values of two important let- 

 ters, m and n, which occur in it. But the most valuable contribu- 

 tion made by Rask to this branch of palaeography, consisted in 

 his discovery of the resemblance of the extinct language to the 

 Sanscrit in some of its inflections, a discovery which has been 

 justly regarded as the key to its interpretation. Ten years later the 

 inquiry received a fresh impulse by the simultaneous publication of 

 two works, one by M. Burnouf, of Paris, and the other by the dis- 

 tinguished orientalist. Professor Lassen, of Bonn. By the analysis 

 of a trilingual inscription, containing the names of the provinces of 

 the Persian empire, the values of many new characters were ascer- 

 tained, and the known alphabet was enlarged to twenty-six letters. 



