THE other event referred to, which was to open to scholars another field
of research, in interest and importance equal to the Egyptian
discoveries, was the work of Grotefend, early in the century, in the
decipherment of cuneiform inscriptions.
In many parts of Persia, there are to be found engraved upon the native
rocks, or upon ruined temples, inscriptions in peculiar characters.
These characters are called cuneiform, because they are made up from
combinations of a single sign resembling the head of an arrow or a thin
wedge. This sign was formed in three ways, either horizontal, [—];
vertical, [|]; or angular, [<]. From these primary signs, a great
variety of combinations appear, either in groups or forming single
characters.
In the latter part of the eighteenth century, fragments of these
inscriptions, and copies of others, had found their way to Europe and
into the hands of scholars. Although some of the most powerful
intellects of Europe had attempted their interpretation, but little, if
any progress had been made until the beginning of the past century.
In the year 1802, Grotefend, then a young student in the University of
Bonn, announced to his colleagues his success in the decipherment of a
trilingual inscription copied by Niebuhr from the ruins of a royal
palace at Persepolis. It will be remembered that this young scholar had
no Rosetta Stone, with an inscription in a known language to indicate
either subject or language; simply the strange combinations of these
singular signs.
The inscriptions were in three different systems of assortment of the
elemental signs, evidently representing three different languages, and
as they were placed side by side, it was also evident that they were
three versions of the same decree, or record of the same event. One of
the versions, which always came first, was simpler than the others. This
consisted of about forty signs, while the others were more complicated
and numerous. Again, in this version the groups of signs, which
evidently formed words, were separated, each from the other, by a
slanting wedge which did not appear in the others.
Grotefend also observed that each inscription usually began with a
certain group of words. One of these words, on different inscriptions,
varied, while the other words of this group remained the same. By a
happy guess, he conceived these groups to be royal names and titles, the
words which varied on the different inscriptions to be names of
different kings, while the words which always continued the same in
these groups were their titles. Upon this basis he began his work.
It was known to scholars that certain Achæmenian princes—Darius and his
successors—had erected some of the monuments from which copies of the
inscriptions were taken. Turning then to the older Persian language, of
the time of Darius, for the spelling of the name of this king, he gave
alphabetic values to certain of these signs which he supposed might
spell the name of Darius. Also, to the words which he supposed
represented the titles of this king. These alphabetic values were based
upon the spelling of the name and titles in the ancient Zend. In this
way he obtained supposed values of six letters in the cuneiform. He then
turned to another royal name which might be Xerxes. The name of Darius,
in old Persian, or the Zend, is spelled: D-A-R-H-E-A-U-SCH.
Again, the name of Xerxes, in Persian, is KH-SCH-H-E-R-E. Now, if the
third sign in the spelling of the name of Darius was the same as the
fifth sign in the spelling of the name Xerxes, in the Zend, this must
have the phonetic value of _R_. The comparison proved the correctness of
his conception. And again, further confirmation appeared in another
royal name, Artaxerxes, where the latter part of the name was the same
as the second royal name, and the sign for the second character again
corresponded with the letter _R_.
Thus he compared letter by letter, and sign by sign, until he had found
agreement in signs and sound for the names of these kings and their
titles.
Grotefend never succeeded much beyond this discovery, which was confined
chiefly to the Persian inscription. The language of the others was
unknown, and the characters peculiar and more numerous. They each
evidently represented more ancient forms of writing, with complications
not found in the simpler Persian version. Other scholars have however,
carried forward the work begun by Grotefend, some of these reaching the
same results independently, as in the case of Sir Henry Rawlinson, who
applied the same processes to the other trilingual inscriptions, quite
ignorant of Grotefend’s methods, and with further success. Still, to
Grotefend is due the honor of first discovering the clew to the
cuneiform system, and he it was who first laid a basis for future
labors, which, wherever adopted, has reached the most satisfactory
results.
As rightly conjectured, the other texts of the trilingual inscriptions
are copies of the same decrees, addressed to other peoples of the realm,
speaking different languages and possessing different systems of
writing. As a Persian ruler of to-day publishes an edict in Persian,
Arabic and perhaps a Turanian dialect, so that it may be understood by
all his subjects, so the ancient Persian kings put theirs into the
languages and systems of writing peculiar to the principal races or
people inhabiting the country.
It was not, however, until the discovery and translation of the
inscriptions at Nineveh, that the full story of these Persian
inscriptions was distinctly revealed. It was then found that the two
other texts were addressed, the one to a Semitic people of Persia, the
other to a Turanian people, descendants of the primitive inhabitants of
the country. The close relations of these two systems of writing to the
two similar systems found in Assyria and Babylonia, were in evidence of
the kinship of these separate races.
Through the systematic arrangement of the vocabularies of the Semitic
and Accadian people, found in the Ninevite remains, the secret of the
Persian trilingual inscriptions came to light, revealing the extensive
use of the cuneiform writing among the various people of western Asia.
A significant fact in the early history of the decipherments of
hieroglyphic and cuneiform characters, are the coincidences in these
narratives. Thus the keys to both interpretations came through the sound
and spelling of the royal names. Again, the clew given by the Coptic to
the sounds of the old Egyptian, was also afforded by the ancient Zend,
the sacred language of the Parsees.
Notwithstanding the fact that alphabetic signs were the key to each of
these systems of writing, we are not to find that either the
hieroglyphic or cuneiform systems were founded on the alphabet. We are
to find that alphabetism and a pure alphabet are not identical. We are
also to find that before the simplicities of an alphabet are reached;
the art of writing in all systems is a series of bewildering
complications.
Subjoined are illustrations of cuneiform vowels and consonants as
written:
[Illustration: Cuneiform Vowels and Consonants]
------------------------------------------------------------------------