CUNEIFORM, cuneatic, wedge-shaped, arrow-headed (Fr. tae-ci-dou, Ger. keilrormig), are terms Iola certain form of writing, of which the component parts may be said to resemble eitrfer a wedge, the barb of an arrow, or a nail. It was used for monumental records, and was either hewn or carved in rocks and sculptures, or impressed on tiles and bricks. The first date that can be assigned to it is about 2000 13.C., and it seems to have died out shortly before or after the reign of Alexander the great. It appears to have been employed first in Assyria and Media, and to have thence spread over the whole of that vast portion of Asia which formed the Persian monarchy under the Aclimmenidoe. For nearly 2,000 years after its extinction its very existence was forgot ten. Although the immense ruins found all over that ancient kingdom, and principally those of splendid palaces and tombs, which, at a distance of about 12 m. from Shiraz, designate the site of ancient Persepolis, had at all times attracted the attention of east ern travelers, still no one seems to have dreamed that those strange wedges which completely covered some of them could have any meaning. It was Garcia de Sylva FigtOroa, ambassador of Philip III. of Spain, who, on a visit to Persepolis in 1618, first became possessed with the firm conviction that these signS must be inscriptions in some lost writing and, perhaps, language, and had a line of them copied. Amongst subsequent travelers whose attention was attracted to the subject, Chardin, after his return to Europe in 1674, published three complete groups of cuneiforms, copied by himself at Persepolis, together with a comparatively long and minute account of the mysterious character. He likewise declared it to be. "Writing and no hieroglyphs: the rest, however, will always be unknown." Michaux, a French botanist, sent, in 1782, an entire altar, found at Bagdad, to Paris, covered with inscriptions, and bearing a large wedge—evidently an object of worship—on its top. Ever since, the materials for the investigation of a subject, the.high importance of which by that time was fully recog nized, have been rapidly accumulating. Sir IL Jones, Ker Porter, Robert Stewart, sir W. Ouseley, Bellino, Dr. Schultz—up to Rich and Botta, Flandin, Rouet, Layard,
Oppert, and, above all, Rawlinson, each in his turn brought back more or less valuable materials from his eastern travels; and, naturally enough, those explorers are among the foremost to engage in the study of the records they had brought to light.
Shrouded in comparative mystery though certain portions of these characters and the language they represent still be, it is highly interesting and instructive to notice the opinions first entertained of them by the wise and learned in Europe. In the transac tions of the royal society of June, 1693, they first appeared from a copy made by Plowers. and they are held to be "the ancient writing of the Gaures or Gebres, or a kind of telesmcs"—an expression no less unintelligible than the subject it tries to explain. Thomas Hyde, the eminent orientalist, declared them, in his learned work ou the relig ion of the ancient Persians, which appeared in ]700, to be nothing more or less than idle fancies of the architect, who endeavored to show how many different characters a certain peculiar stroke in different combinations could furnish, and reproved the authors of all those "so-called Persepolitan inscriptionS" very strongly for having mis led. so many wise men, and taken up so much of his own precious time. Witte, in Rostock, saw in them the destructive work of generations upon generations of worms. Generally, they were pronounced to be talismanic signs, mysterious formulre of priests, astrological symbols, charms, which, if properly read and used, would open immense vaults full of gold and pearls—an opinion widely diffused among the native savants. The next step was to see in them a species of revealed digital language; such as the Almighty had first used to Adam. Lichtenstein read in some of them certain passages from the Koran, written in Cufic, the ancient Arabic character; in others, a record of Tamerlane; and was only surprised that others should not have found this, the easiest and clearest reading, long before him. Ktempfer was not quite sure whether they were Chinese or Hebrew characters. That they were Runes, Oghams, Samaritan, Greek characters. were some of the soberest explanations.