RAWLINSON, Sir HENRY C'RESWICKE ( 1810 %). An English soldier, diplomat, and Assyri ologist. lie was horn at Chadlington, Oxford shire, and after education at Wrington and Ealing, entered the military service of the East India Company in 1827, benefiting on the long Cape voyage to India by the company and counsels of the diplomat and Orientalist Sir John Malcolm. His facility in learning Hindu stani and Persian made him interpreter at eigh teen, and a year later he became paymaster of his regiment. In 1833. with other English offi cers, he was appointed to assist in the reorgani zation of the Persian Army. While stationed at Kermanshah in 1835. he began to study the Old Persian cuneiform inscriptions. The results of his research were submitted to the Royal Asiatic Society of London in 1837 ; in the same year his account of his travels through Susiana was printed in the Journal of the Royal Geographical Society, and the following year an account of a journey through Persian Kurdistan appeared. During the course of the Afghan troubles he left Persia to take up an appointment as political agent at Kandahar in 1840. and served through out the campaign with distinction. He was ap pointed political agent in Turkish Arabia in 1843, consul at Bagdad in 1844, and in 1851 was pro moted Consul-General. His official positions facil itated his archaeological researches, and in 1846 his successful decipherment of the Persian cunei form inscriptions, especially that of Darius Hystaspis at Behistun, marked an epoch in the knowledge of Persia's history and ancient lan guages, and also prepared the way for the de cipherment of the other cuneiform alphabets.
Later successful work was accomplished in ex cavations in Babylonia for the trustees of the British :Museum. He returned to England in 1855. In 185S he was elected member of Par liament for Reigate, but the same year resigned on being appointed member of the Council of India. In 1859 be went to Teheran as Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipoten tiary to the Court of Persia. From 1865 to 1868 he again sat in Parliament as member for Frome. In 1871 he was elected president of the Royal Geographical Society. In 1875 his England and Russia in the East, created a considerable stir, owing to its revelations of the interior workings of Asiatic politics. Rawlinson received the honor of knighthood in 1891, and was a member of the Council of India until his death. His I'vr shin Cuneiform Inscriptions at Bchistun (1841i 49), contained in the Journal of the Royal Asi atic Society, created an epoch in philology, and his Cuneiform Inscriptiong of Western Asia, in collaboration with Pinches (5 vols., 1861-91), is almost equally important. He contributed largely to Farrier's Caravan Journeys ( 1856), and many of his discoveries are incorporated in Herodolue (1858) by his brother, Canon George Raylinson (q.v.). Consult G. Rawlinson, Memoir or Major General Sir Henry Crestvicke Rawlinson (London, 1898).