RAWLINSON, SIR HENRY CRESWICKE (18Io 1895), English soldier and orientalist, was born at Chadlington, Oxfordshire, on April II, 1810. In 1827 he went to India as cadet under the East India Company; and after six years as a subaltern he was sent to Persia in company with other English officers to reorganize the Shah's troops. He became interested in the hitherto undeciphered cuneiform character. In two years he transcribed as much as he was able of the great cuneiform inscription at Behistun (q.v.) ; but the friction between the Per sian court and the British government ended in the departure of the British officers. He became political agent at Kandahar in 1840. Then, at his own desire, he was sent as political agent to Turkish Arabia; thus he was enabled to settle in Baghdad, where he de voted much time to his cuneiform studies. He was now able to make a complete transcript of the Behistun inscription, which he deciphered and interpreted.
During two years' leave in England (1849-51) he prepared a memoir on the Behistun inscription. He disposed of his valuable collection of Babylonian, Sabaean and Sassanian antiquities to the trustees of the British Museum, who made him a grant to enable him to carry on the Assyrian and Babylonian excavations initiated by Layard. In 1851 he returned to Baghdad. In 1855 he resigned his post in the East India Company and he received the K.C.B. and crown directorship of the East India Company
The remaining forty years of his life were mainly spent in London. In 1858 he was appointed a member of the first India Council, but resigned in 1859 on being sent to Persia as envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary. The latter post he held only for a year. Rawlinson rejoined the Council of India in 1868, and continued to serve upon it until his death. He was a strong advocate of the forward policy in Afghanistan. He died in London on March 5, 1895.
His published works include four volumes of cuneiform inscriptions, published under his direction between 1870 and 1884 by the trustees of the British Museum ; The Persian Cuneiform Inscription at Behistun, 1846-51, and Outline of the History of Assyria, 1852, both reprinted from the Asiatic Society's journals; A Commentary on the Cuneiform Inscriptions of Babylon and Assyria, 185o; Notes on the Early History of Babylonia, 1854; England and Russia in the East, 1875. He contributed to the Encyclopcedia Britannica (9th edition) the articles on Baghdad, the Euphrates and Kurdistan, and several other articles dealing with the East ; and assisted in editing a translation of Herodotus by his brother, Canon George Rawlinson (1812-1902).
See G. Rawlinson, Memoir of Henry Creswicke Rawlinson (1898).