GROTEFEND, GEORG FRIEDRICH German epigraphist, was born at MUnden in Hanover on June 9, 7 5. He studied at Gottingen, and became corrector of the Frankfurt gymnasium, and then director of the gymnasium at Hanover. He published some important works on the Umbrian and Oscan dialects, on the coins of Bactria and other subjects. But it was in the East rather than in the West that Grotefend did his greatest work. The cuneiform inscriptions of Persia had for some time been attracting attention in Europe; exact copies of them had been published by the elder Niebuhr, who lost his eyesight over the work; and Grotefend's friend, Tychsen of Rostock, believed that he had ascertained the characters in the column, now known to be Persian, to be alphabetic. At this point Grotefend took the matter up. His first discovery was communi cated to the Royal Society of Gottingen in 1800, and reviewed by Tychsen two years afterwards. In 1815 he gave an account of it in Heeren's great work on ancient history, and in 1837 pub lished his Neue Beitrage zur Erlauterung der persepolitanischen Keilscliri f t. Three years later appeared his Neue Beitrdge zur Erlauterung der babylonischen Keilschrift. His discovery may be summed up as follows : that the Persian inscriptions contain three different forms of cuneiform writing, so that the decipher ment of the one would give the key to the decipherment of the others; (2) that the characters of the Persian column are alpha betic and not syllabic ; (3) that they must be read from left to right; (4) that the alphabet consists of 4o letters, including signs for long and short vowels; and (5) that the Persepolitan inscrip tions are written in Zend (which, however, is not the case), and must be ascribed to the age of the Achaemenian princes. The process whereby Grotefend arrived at these conclusions illustrates his persevering genius (see CUNEIFORM). He died Dec. 15,