It was Karsten Niebuhr who first showed the way, to the more sensible portion of the ,learned, out of this labyrinth of absurdities. Without attempting to read the character itself, he first of all established three distinct cuneiform alphabets instead of one, the let ters of which seemed to outnumber those of all other languages together. The three fold inscriptions found at Persepolis lie thus took to be transcripts of the same text in three alphabets, in a hitherto unknown language. Tychsen of Rostock (1738), and Mnnter of Copenhagen (1800), affirmed and further developed this conjecture. The latter went so far as to divide the characters and inscriptions into alphabetical, syllabic, and monogrammatical, and to assume two different languages—Zend .(or inscriptions of a religious, Pehlvi for those of a political character. The real and final discovery, however, is due to Grotefend of Hanover, and dates from 1802. On the 7th of Sept. of that year, he laid the first cuneiform alphabet, with its equivalents, before the academy of Gattingen—strangely enough, in the very same sitting in which Heyne gave an account of the first reading of hieroglyphs. The process by which Grotefend arrived at that wonderful result is so supremely interesting, that we cannot omit to sketch it briefly. He fixed upon a Persepolitan inscription of what was called the first class, and counted in it thirty promiscuously recurring groups or combinations of cuneiforms. These groups he concluded to be letters, and not words, as a syllabarium of thirty words could not be thought of in any language. Then, again, a certain oblique wedge, evidently a sign of division, which stood after three, four, five, up to eight or nine such groups or letters, must show the beginning or end, not of a phrase, but of a word. Tyclisen and Mlinter had already pointed out a certain combination of seven characters as signifying the royal title. Grotefend adopted this opinion. The word occurred here and there in the text, and after the first words of most of the inscriptions, twice; the second time with an appendage, which he concluded to be the termination of the genitive plural, and he translated these two words without regard to their phonetic value, " king of kings." He then, in comparing the words preceding the royal titles in two tablets, found them repeated in what he assumed to be a filial relation; thus: There were three distinct groups, words, or names, which we will call X, D, and H, and this is how they occurred: 1, X, king of kings, son of D., king of kings; 2, D, king of kings, sou of II; but the 3, H, was not followed by the word king. H, therefore, must have been the founder of the dynasty. Now the names themselves had to be found. Grote fend, unlike his predecessors, had no recourse to philology, but to archwology and his tory. The inscriptions in question were by that time proved to belong to the Achte menian dynasty, founded by Hystaspes = group H. He was followed by Darius, "king of kings, son of Hystaspes," or Darius Hystaspis =group D; he, again, by Xerxes, king of kings, son of Darius, king of kings = group X—and the problem was solved. It could not have been Cyrus and Cambyses, as the groups did not begin with the same signs (C); nor Cyrus and Artaxerxes, the first being too short for the group, the second too long—it could only be Darius, Xerxes. Hystaspes--of course, in the orthography of their, not of our time; and wherever in these names the same letters recurred, they were expressed by the same combinations of signs. A further proof of the correctness of the reading was furnished by a vase in Venice, bearing a cuneiform and a hieroglyphical inscription, which were both read at the same time independently; " Xerxes." Innu merable difficulties, however, remained, and remain, up to this moment. Grotefend had, after all, only read—and not altogether correctly—three names, which did not con tain more than 12 letters—the rest being mero conjecture—and there were many more in this alphabet. The two other alphabets, with an infinite variety of letters, had hardly been properly approached yet. Moreover, the discovery of Grotefend was in itself so startling, so extraordinary and bold, that no one ventured to follow it up for the next 20 years, when H. Martin found the grammatical flexions of the plural and genitive case. We cannot now specify his further discoveries, or those of Rask, Burnouf, Lassen, Westergaard, Beer. Jacquet, and others who followed; we will only say, that they mostly secured for themselves fame and name by rectifying or fixing one or two letters. The last and greatest of investigators of this first alphabet is Rawlinson, who not only first copied, but also read, the gigantic Behistun inscription—containing more than 1000 lines —of which More anon.
We now proceed to give what may be called the results of the investigations of the cuneiform character in general, up to this present moment; but we must warn the reader beforehand, that though much has been done, more remains to be done, and that a few years may change the whole aspect of cuneiform studies.
Cuneiform writing, as we said before, was used for monumental records only a cursive writing—from right to left—being used for records of minor importance. The inscriptions are mostly found in three parallel columns or tablets, and are then transla tions of each other in different alphabets and languages, called respectively Persian, Median, and Assyrian; the Achzemenian kings being obliged to make their decrees intelligible to the three principal nations under their sway, as in our days the shah of Persia.would use the Persian, Turkish, and Arabic languages, in order that he 'night be understood in Bagdad and Teheran.
The first of the three, the Persian—first in far as it always holds the place of honor—consists of 39 to 44 letters, and is the most recent of the three, the most ancient being the Assyrian. It is distinguished by the oblique stroke which divides its words. Its letters are composed of not more than five strokes or wedges placed side by side horizontally or perpendicularly, or both, never—with one exception—crossing each other. The language is pronounced by all investigators (save Gobineau), to be as near Sanscrit as possible, although not so refined, and to be the mother-language of modern PefSiall. It is only twice found by itself; all the other inscriptions are trilingual. The
time of its use is confined to the years 570-370 B.C. The oldest instance of its employ ment is an inscription of Cyrus the great at Pasargadve; the most recent that of Artax erxes Ochus at Persepolis. The most important is that of Darius' Ilystaspis, in the great inscription of Behistun, which contains, besides. genealogical records, a descrip Lion of the extent of his power, the leading incidents of his reign, prayers to Ormuzd and the angels, and reference to the building of the palaces—the last two subjects gen erally forming the only contents of the other Persian inscriptions. The inscription of Artaxerxes Ochus is important, in so far as it traces his origin to the Aclimmenidm, through Arsames, grandfather of Darius. Most of these inscriptions occur at Perse polis, Behistun, Naksh-i-Rustam, and Hamadan.
The second kind is called the Median, because it takes the second place in the trilingual inscriptions, under the conquering Persians, but over the conquered Assyrians, and as the Medes stood somewhat in that relation to these two nations, that name was selected. Another name, " Scythic," has been proposed, or, by way of compromise. "idedo-Scythic," and the language—supposed to have been spoken by those innumer able Tartaro-Finnic tribes which occupied the center of Asia—has been pronounced to be a Turanian dialect. But the process of constructing out of such slender elements as Samojed and Ostiak words, a so-called " Scythic," is somewhat similar to the attempt of reconstructing Sanserit from some detached and very doubtful French and English words. These inscriptions never occur by themselves (one instance again excepted), and being translations of the Persian records, about ninety names have been ascertained, and an alphabet of about 100 characters—combinations of a syllabic nature—has been established. The principal investigators of this character are Westergaard, De Saulcy, Ilincks, Norris, and Oppert. Gobineau holds the language to be Huzvaresh, a mix ture of Iranian and Semitic.
The third and most important is the Assyrian portion of the cuneiforms. The tri lingual records gave the first clue to the deciphering of this character; but many origi nal, more than a thousand years older, documents have since been found in Babylon, Nineveh, and other places near the Euphrates and Tigris. and even in Egypt. About 400 different signs have been distinguished on slabs, cylinders, barrels, prisms, of a pho netic, syllabic, and ideographic nature. Proper names are preceded by monograms, which give the same help to their readings as cartouches in hieroglyphics. Of those 400 si,gns, however, hardly one tenth are known for certain. Proper names were found varied to about five times, and the characters themselves are both homophonous (same sound expressed by various signs) and polyphonous (same sign with various sounds). Five and more dialects have been distinguished in the language, which is decidedly Semitic (Gobineau takes it to be simply Arabic); and these dialects are supposed to have belonged either to different tribes or subsequent periods. It is this alphabet about which the greatest uncertainty and confusion prevail, for endless subdivisions, and even certain assumed grammatical forms, do not constitute a certainty. There is, however, a hope of its eventually being fully deciphered. A few years ago, the Asiatic society submitted a cylinder of Tiglath-Pileser to four prominent investigators of the subject, and they independently read it nearly alike, with exception of the proper names, where they widely differed. As a proof of the enormous importance of this character for history, grammar, law, mythology, archmology, and antiquities generally, we will name some of the records of which Rawlinson, a few years ago, proposed the publica tion (now in progress): Chaldean legends (2,000-1500 n.c.); bricks from Kilehsergat, of the early kings of Assur (1273-1100), in a character approaching the cursive; annals of Tiglath-Pileser I. (1120 n.c.); annals of Sardanapalus, of Shamas, father to the bibli cal Pul, of the biblical Pul and Semiramis, his wife, of Sargon. Sennacherib, Assur bani-Pal, son of Esarhaddon; cylinder of Nebuchadnezzar; cylinders containing the notice of Belshazzar, etc.; besides syllabaries, vocabularies, mathematical and astronomi cal tablets, calendars and registers, and more than 1000 mythological tablets. Nay, if the Birs-Nimrud really stands on the foundations of the old tower of Babel, we might in the bricks excavated at these very foundations read the language spoken at the time " when the whole earth was of one speech." As to the origin of the character, we will briefly state, in conclusion, that nothing certain is known, or is likely to be known for some time. It is not unlikely, however, that it was hieroglyphic, although neither the fishes nor the bees, which these letters are supposed to have been originally, seem to have more in their favor than the worms, which were said to be their unconscious authors. The following is the opinion of Raw linson on this point: "That the employment of the cuneiform character originated in Assyria, while the system of writing to which it was adapted was borrowed from Egypt, will hardly admit of question. Whether the cuneiform letters in their primitive shapes, were intended like the hieroglyphs to represent actual objects, and were afterwards degraded to their present forms; or whether the point of departure was from the liter atic, or perhaps the Demotic character, the first change from a picture to a sign having thus taken place before Assyria formed her alphabet, I will not undertake to decide; but the whole structure of the Assyrian graphic system evidently betrays an Egyptian orign. The alphabet is partly ideographic and partly phonetic, and the phonetic signs are in some cases syllabic, and in others literal. Where a sign represents a syllable, I conjecture that the syllable in question may have been the specific name of the object which the sign was supposed to depict; whilst in cases where a single alphabetical power appertains to the sign, It would seem as if that power had been the dominant sound in the name of the object." In order to give the reader some idea of the appearance of the cuneiform character, we subjoin the name of Darius (Dariyavas, Tariyavaus), written in the Persian, Scythia, and Assyrian alphabets: Persian.
Saythie.