100 The Cuneatic Characters of Babylon, Assyria, and Persia. 



they are the fruits of recent discovery. He therefore went to 

 work entirely unaided, except by his own indomitable perseve- 

 rance and ingenuity. 



Having determined in his own mind the probable date of 

 the inscription, he next came to the conclusion that, if he could 

 pitch upon a group of characters likely to represent a proper 

 name, he should obtain some clue, or some ground for guessing 

 at the probable meaning and value of several important charac- 

 ters. With this view he endeavoured to find a group of letters 

 likely to represent the name of Cyrus, or of any of his immediate 

 successors. Here, however, he was met by what appeared for 

 a time an insurmountable difficulty, for although such names as 

 those of Cambyses and Cyrus are of very unequal length, the 

 number of characters in any group, which by their frequent 

 repetition appeared likely to represent proper names, were all 

 of nearly equal length. At last, however, the persevering 

 student fixed upon a group to which he gave the following 

 value, experimentally, D. A. It. E. Y. SCH. Thus read, they 

 gave the name of Darius, as pronounced in the ancient Persian. 

 By sheer good fortune, he had hit upon the actual name of 

 Darius in this purely hypothetical experiment, and his first step 

 was, therefore, like that of so many great discoveries, scarcely 

 more than a bold and happy guess. Being however led on by 

 certain courses of experiments too long and intricate to detail, 

 the fortunate student became gradually convinced that he had 

 thus hit the bulFs-eye by a random shot. With this conviction 

 he sought diligently for another name, and eventually fixed 

 upon a second group of characters which he thought ought to 

 represent the name of Xerxes, or rather, as pronounced in the 

 ancient Persian, KH. SCH. H. E. It. SCH. E. He was again 

 successful, aud he afterwards deciphered, in a similar arbitrary 

 fashion, the name Hystaspes and others. 



He had, however, up to this point, adopted no method of 

 testing the truth of these assumptions, but at last hit upon an 

 infallible method, which may be explained as follows ; taking 

 the characters from a set of Persian cuneatic alphabet, arranged 

 according to a recent interpretation, which happens to lie upon 

 my table, and which, though imperfect, will answer the present 

 purpose, as shown in the accompanying diagram. 



It was evident that the first and second letters in the first 

 name ought not to occur at all in the second. They did not. 

 The third letter in the first name ought to be the fifth in the 

 second name ; and it was so. The fourth letter would not occur 

 in the second name, but the fifth letter of the first name ought 

 to be the fourth and the last of the second name ; it proved to 

 be so. The sixth of the first name would be absent in the second, 

 but the final SCH of D A R Y E U SCH should necessarily 



