CUNEIFORM WRITING, the name applied to the wedge-shaped characters of the inscriptions on old Babylonian and Persian monuments; sometimes also de scribed as "arrow-headed" or "nail headed" characters. They appear to have been originally of the nature of hiero glyphs, and to have been invented by the primitive Akkadian inhabitants of Chal dea, from whom they were borrowed with considerable modification by the conquer ing Babylonians and Assyrians, who were Semites by race and spoke an entirely different language. Cuneiform inscrip tions were chiseled upon stone and iron, but they were impressed upon soft clay with a pointed stylus having three un equal facets, the smallest to make the fine wedge of the cuneiform signs, the middle to make the thicker wedges, and the largest to make the outer and thick wedges of the characters. The first date that can be assigned to the use of cunei form writing is about 3800 B. C., and its use was continued until after the birth of Christ. The earliest inscription at pres ent known is that inscribed upon the porphyry whorl in the time of Sargon of Agade; the latest is a tablet perserved at Munich, which may have been written about A. D. 83.
The ruins found all over ancient Persep olis attracted the attention of Eastern travelers, yet no one believed that those strange wedges which completely covered some of them could have any meaning. It was Garcia de Sylva Figueroa, am bassador of Philip III. of Spain, who, on a visit to Persepolis in 1618, first thought that these signs must be inscrip tions in some lost writing. Among sub sequent travelers whose attention was at tracted to the subject, was Chardin, who after his return to Europe in 1674, pub lished three complete groups of cunei forms, copied by himself at Persepolis. He likewise declared it to be "writing and no hieroglyphs; the rest, however, will always be unknown." Michaux, a French botanist, sent to Paris, in 1782, a boundary stone covered with inscriptions, which he found at Bagdad.
Niebuhr, without attempting to read the character itself, first established three distinct cuneiform alphabets in stead of one, the letters of which seemed to outnumber those of all other languages 15—Vol. III—Cyc
together. The real and final discovery is due to Grotefend of Hanover, and dates from 1802. On Sept. 7 of that year he laid the first cuneiform alphabet, with its equivalents, before the Academy of Got tingen. Then H. Martin found the gram matical flexions of the plural and geni tive case. The last and greatest of in vestigators of this first alphabet was Rawlinson, who not only first copied, but also read, the gigantic Behistun inscrip tion, containing more than 100 lines.
Inscriptions in the Persian cuneiform character are mostly found in three par allel columns, and are then translations of each other in different alphabets and languages called respectively Persian, Cambridge. He engaged in finance in the city of London and became a member of Cunliffe Brothers. He became director of the Bank of England in 1895, Deputy Governor, 1911, and was Governor 1913 1918. He was Lieutenant of the city of London, director of the North Eastern Railway Co., and patron of the living of Headley, Surrey. In 1915 he received the 1st Class, Order of St. Anne (Russia) ; in 1916, the Grand Cross, Order of the Crown of Italy; Grand Cross, Order of Redeemer, Greece; Grand Cordon Rising Sun, Japan. He was also made Com mander of the Legion of Honor, France, and Commander of the Order of Leopold, Belgium.
Median, and Babylonian; the Achaeme nian kings being obliged to make their decrees intelligible to the three principal nations under their sway. The Persian consists of 39 to 44 letters, and is the most recent, the most ancient being the Babylonian.
The cuneiform signs were originally pictures of objects and were first drawn in outline upon some vegetable substance, called in the native documents likhusi. Early in the history of Babylonia. clay was adopted as the substance upon which to write. On papyrus and leather it is quite easy to draw in outline a picture of any object; but it became more difficult to do this when clay was used, because the outlines of the object represented had to be pressed into it. The necessary result of this was that the shapes of the objects became altered, and reduced to their simplest form.