In the year 1472, a short time before Columbus discovered America, a
certain Venetian, by the name of Josaphat Barbaro, traveling through
Persia, crossed the hills near Shiraz and saw something which puzzled
him. The hills of Shiraz were covered with old temples which had been
cut into the rock of the mountainside. The ancient worshippers had
disappeared centuries before and the temples were in a state of great
decay. But clearly visible upon their walls, Barbara noticed long
legends written in a curious script which looked like a series of
scratches made by a sharp nail.
When he returned he mentioned his discovery to his fellow-townsmen, but
just then the Turks were threatening Europe with an invasion and people
were too busy to bother about a new and unknown alphabet, somewhere in
the heart of western Asia. The Persian inscriptions therefore were
promptly forgotten.
Two and a half centuries later, a noble young Roman by the name of
Pietro della Valle visited the same hillsides of Shiraz which Barbaro
had passed two hundred years before. He, too, was puzzled by the strange
inscriptions on the ruins and being a painstaking young fellow, he
copied them carefully and sent his report together with some remarks
about the trip to a friend of his, Doctor Schipano, who practiced
medicine in Naples and who besides took an interest in matters
of learning.
Schipano copied the funny little figures and brought them to the
attention of other scientific men. Unfortunately Europe was again
occupied with other matters.
The terrible wars between the Protestants and Catholics had broken out
and people were busily killing those who disagreed with them upon
certain points of a religious nature.
Another century was to pass before the study of the wedge-shaped
inscriptions could be taken up seriously.
The eighteenth century--a delightful age for people of an active and
curious mind--loved scientific puzzles. Therefore when King Frederick V
of Denmark asked for men of learning to join an expedition which he was
going to send to western Asia, he found no end of volunteers. His
expedition, which left Copenhagen in 1761, lasted six years. During this
period all of the members died except one, by the name of Karsten
Niebuhr, who had begun life as a German peasant and could stand greater
hardships than the professors who had spent their days amidst the stuffy
books of their libraries.
This Niebuhr, who was a surveyor by profession, was a young man who
deserves our admiration.
He continued his voyage all alone until he reached the ruins of
Persepolis where he spent a month copying every inscription that was to
be found upon the walls of the ruined palaces and temples.
After his return to Denmark he published his discoveries for the benefit
of the scientific world and seriously tried to read some meaning into
his own texts.
He was not successful.
But this does not astonish us when we understand the difficulties which
he was obliged to solve.
When Champollion tackled the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics he was able
to make his studies from little pictures.
The writing of Persepolis did not show any pictures at all.
They consisted of v-shaped figures that were repeated endlessly and
suggested nothing at all to the European eye.
Nowadays, when the puzzle has been solved we know that the original
script of the Sumerians had been a picture-language, quite as much as
that of the Egyptians.
But whereas the Egyptians at a very early date had discovered the
papyrus plant and had been able to paint their images upon a smooth
surface, the inhabitants of Mesopotamia had been forced to carve their
words into the hard rock of a mountain side or into a soft brick
of clay.
[Illustration: THE ROCKS OF BEHISTUN.]
Driven by necessity they had gradually simplified the original pictures
until they devised a system of more than five hundred different
letter-combinations which were necessary for their needs.
Let me give you a few examples. In the beginning, a star, when drawn
with a nail into a brick looked as follows. [Illustration: Star]
But after a time the star shape was discarded as being too cumbersome
and the figure was given this shape. [Illustration: Asterisk]
After a while the meaning of "heaven" was added to that of "star," and
the picture was simplified in this way [Illustration: Odd Cross] which
made it still more of a puzzle.
In the same way an ox changed from [Illustration: Ox Head] into
[Illustration: Pattern]
A fish changed from [Illustration: Fish] into [Illustration: Fish
Scales] The sun, which was originally a plain circle, became
[Illustration: Diamond] and if we were using the Sumerian script today
we would make an [Illustration: Bike] look like this [Illustration:
Pattern].
You will understand how difficult it was to guess at the meaning of
these figures but the patient labors of a German schoolmaster by the
name of Grotefend was at last rewarded and thirty years after the first
publication of Niebuhr's texts and three centuries after the first
discovery of the wedge-formed pictures, four letters had been
deciphered.
These four letters were the D, the A, the R and the Sh.
They formed the name of Darheush the King, whom we call Darius.
Then occurred one of those events which were only possible in those
happy days before the telegraph-wire and the mail-steamer had turned the
entire world into one large city.
While patient European professors were burning the midnight candles in
their attempt to solve the new Asiatic mystery, young Henry Rawlinson
was serving his time as a cadet of the British East Indian Company.
He used his spare hours to learn Persian and when the Shah of Persia
asked the English government for the loan of a few officers to train his
native army, Rawlinson was ordered to go to Teheran. He travelled all
over Persia and one day he happened to visit the village of Behistun.
The Persians called it Bagistana which means the "dwellingplace of
the Gods."
Centuries before the main road from Mesopotamia to Iran (the early home
of the Persians) had run through this village and the Persian King
Darius had used the steep walls of the high cliffs to tell all the world
what a great man he was.
High above the roadside he had engraved an account of his glorious
deeds.
The inscription had been made in the Persian language, in Babylonian and
in the dialect of the city of Susa. To make the story plain to those who
could not read at all, a fine piece of sculpture had been added showing
the King of Persia placing his triumphant foot upon the body of Gaumata,
the usurper who had tried to steal the throne away from the legitimate
rulers. For good measure a dozen followers of Gaumata had been added.
They stood in the background. Their hands were tied and they were to be
executed in a few moments.
The picture and the three texts were several hundred feet above the road
but Rawlinson scaled the walls of the rock at great danger to life and
limb and copied the entire text.
His discovery was of the greatest importance. The Rock of Behistun
became as famous as the Stone of Rosetta and Rawlinson shared the honors
of deciphering the old nail-writing with Grotefend.
Although they had never seen each other or heard each other's names, the
German schoolmaster and the British officer worked together for a common
purpose as all good scientific men should do.
Their copies of the old text were reprinted in every land and by the
middle of the nineteenth century, the cuneiform language (so called
because the letters were wedge-shaped and "cuneus" is the Latin name for
wedge) had given up its secrets. Another human mystery had been solved.
[Illustration: A TOWER OF BABEL.]
But about the people who had invented this clever way of writing, we
have never been able to learn very much.
They were a white race and they were called the Sumerians.
They lived in a land which we call Shomer and which they themselves
called Kengi, which means the "country of the reeds" and which shows us
that they had dwelt among the marshy parts of the Mesopotamian valley.
Originally the Sumerians had been mountaineers, but the fertile fields
had tempted them away from the hills. But while they had left their
ancient homes amidst the peaks of western Asia they had not given up
their old habits and one of these is of particular interest to us.
Living amidst the peaks of western Asia, they had worshipped their Gods
upon altars erected on the tops of rocks. In their new home, among the
flat plains, there were no such rocks and it was impossible to construct
their shrines in the old fashion. The Sumerians did not like this.
All Asiatic people have a deep respect for tradition and the Sumerian
tradition demanded that an altar be plainly visible for miles around.
To overcome this difficulty and keep their peace with the Gods of their
Fathers, the Sumerians had built a number of low towers (resembling
little hills) on the top of which they had lighted their sacred fires in
honor of the old divinities.
When the Jews visited the town of Bab-Illi (which we call Babylon) many
centuries after the last of the Sumerians had died, they had been much
impressed by the strange-looking towers which stood high amidst the
green fields of Mesopotamia. The Tower of Babel of which we hear so much
in the Old Testament was nothing but the ruin of an artificial peak,
built hundreds of years before by a band of devout Sumerians. It was a
curious contraption.
The Sumerians had not known how to construct stairs.
They had surrounded their tower with a sloping gallery which slowly
carried people from the bottom to the top.
A few years ago it was found necessary to build a new railroad station
in the heart of New York City in such a way that thousands of travelers
could be brought from the lower to the higher levels at the same moment.
It was not thought safe to use a staircase for in case of a rush or a
panic people might have tumbled and that would have meant a terrible
catastrophe.
To solve their problem the engineers borrowed an idea from the
Sumerians.
And the Grand Central Station is provided with the same ascending
galleries which had first been introduced into the plains of
Mesopotamia, three thousand years ago.