0 
7Ttli year, and as this is mentioned in his first book he was 
beginning a history, extending to nine books, at an age when 
ill the course of nature he had not many years to lire. The 
difficulty has been renioyed by the discoyery and interpretation 
of a long inscription in the cuneiform character on the rocks of 
Behistun, in Media, the Mens Eagistanus of ancient geo¬ 
graphy.'^ It is of great length, in the usual three languages, 
and caryed on the face of the rock at such a height that it was 
with the greatest difficulty it could be copied by Sir H. Eawlin- 
son. Figures are caryed on it wdiicli are supposed to represent 
the defeated conspirators, and the inscription, in which Darius 
Hystaspis is the speaker, declares that he had triumphed oyer 
the rebellion by which he had been assailed during the first 
four years of his reign. This then appears to be. the rebellion 
of the Medes from Darius of wffiich Herodotus speaks, and all 
difficulty is remoyed. Diodorus (6. 13) mentions the inscrip¬ 
tion, and speaks of it as being in Syrian (i.e. Assyrian, or 
cuneiform letters), and made by Semiramis, adding an interpre¬ 
tation, which bears no resemblance to the reality. This ex¬ 
ample may show how little reliance is to be placed on the 
interpretation by the later Greeks of cuneiform inscriptions; for 
example, that on the monument of Sardanapalus, at Tarsus. 
Ill the Peloponnesian war the Athenians could read the Per¬ 
sian dispatches. (Thucyd. iy. 50). 
I haye confined myself to the Persian form of the cuneiform 
character. Professor Max Muller has well summed up the 
history which I haye detailed,! and borne unequiyocal testi¬ 
mony to the soundness of the results obtained. It must in 
candour be ackno\yledged that he speaks more doubtfully of 
the interpretation of the inscriptions of Babylon and Nineyeh. 
It was of the utmost importance for the further progress of 
discoyery? that the reading of the Persian monuments had 
been fixed. They are accompanied by inscriptions in the other 
two characters ; and as the three are eyidently the same in 
purport, the ascertained meaning of the one seryed inquirers 
as a key to the other two. It was in this way that Hincks, 
* Sir H. Eawlinson in Journal of Eoyal As. Society, vol. x., p. 1. 
t Lectures on tlie Science of Language, second series, p. 4, 5 , 
