202 



MISS A. M. HODGKIN ON 



acquired by the British after tlie wars with Napoleon, more 

 valuable than any miUtary trophy as it has unlocked to the 

 modern world the language of the hieroglyphics of the Egyptian 

 monuments. 



Second in date, and probably equal in importance, stands Sir 

 Henry Eawlinson'5 discovery and deciphering of the Behistun 

 Inscription on the great rock in Kurdistan, where he was 

 stationed in 1835, as a young officer of the East India Company. 

 The account of the discovery, as given in his Biography, is full 

 of thrilling interest, describing how he climbed the bare precipi- 

 tous rock three or four times a day for many days iogeth(»r.''" 

 The inscription was a proclamation of Darius the Great in thre*? 

 languages, ancient Persian, Assyrian and Babylonian, all in the 

 wedge-shaped cuneiform script. One portion was said to be 

 unapproachable, even by the practised native cragsmen. But 

 at length a wild Kurdish boy from a distance, " hanging on 

 with his toes and fingers to the slight inequalities on the bare 

 face of the precipice," succeeded in fixing for himself a swing- 

 ing seat, from which perilous position he took a paper cast of 

 the inscription. This Behistun inscription has been called " The 

 Eosetta Stone of Cuneiform Discovery," and is the key which 

 was to unlock the treasures of the Eoyal Library of Nineveh, 

 discovered ten years later by Sir Henry Layard, and countless 

 other specimens of the peculiar wedge-formed writing in com- 

 mon use centuries before Abraham, from Elam on the East to 

 the Mediterranean on the west, and from the Caspian Sea on 

 the north to Arabia on the south. 



This is the language of the famous Tel-el-Amarna tablets 

 discovered fifty years later by a seeming accident. A peasant 

 woman, passing near some mounds in the south of Egypt, 

 chanced to turn up a tile with her foot. The brick had writing 

 on it, and thus " at last, in 18S7, came a discovery vrhich 

 revolutionised our conceptions of ancient Oriental history, and 

 made the assumption of ancient Oriental illiteracy henceforth 

 an impossibility."! 



^Meanwhile, in 1869, another key was discovered, this time 

 bv a Missionary of the Church Missionary Society, Dr. Klein. 

 This was the Moabite Stone, inscribed in letters of the Phoenician 

 alphabet, giving us the precise mode of writing employed by 

 the earlier prophets of the Old Testament. Further illustration of 

 this style of writing was obtained by the discovery of the Siloam 

 Inscription in 1880. A native boy. wading with others in the pool 

 of Siloam, accidentally slipped, and fell into deeper water. He 

 saw some strange letters on the side of the rocky channel, and 



* " Memoir of Sir Henry C. Rawlinson," pp. 59, 155. 



t" Monument Facts and Higher Critical Fancies," p. 36. Prof Sayce. 



