THROUGHOUT the whole history of cuneiform writing, with the Babylonians
and Assyrians it continued a syllabic system. There was no development
with them of alphabetic characters.
The first evidences we have as yet of such development through this
cuneiform was at the time when the Medes, an Aryan people related to the
Persians, received from the primitive or earlier inhabitants of Media
their system of writing.
These Proto-Medic tribes were a Turanian people of Ural-Altaic stock
speaking an agglutinative language. Their system of writing was the
cuneiform, and had been a development from the Semitic Babylonian
script.
In the adaptations of this to the requirements of an agglutinative
speech a process of simplifying had occurred quite similar to that which
the Japanese present upon the transmission to them of the graphic system
of the Chinese.
The Semitic Babylonian system which was originally adopted from the
cuneiform of a Turanian people, had developed a complicated and cumbrous
method of writing, including over five hundred signs. This had arisen in
the attempts to adapt a syllabary and characters expressing an
agglutinative speech to the uses of a Semitic language.
It was from this that the Persian cuneiform was derived, and in the
further simplicity which appeared in the transmission of this to an
Aryan people, and its applications to an Aryan speech, that we find a
development towards alphabetism.
With the adoption of the Proto-Medic cuneiform by the Medes and
Persians, many of the syllabic signs, instead of representing syllables
came on the acrologic principle to be used as alphabetic characters.
As certain of these signs retained a syllabic character, the Persian
cuneiform was never a pure alphabet, though far on the way to this as
early as the period of the Achæmenian kings.
Dr. Taylor says of this:
“The idea of alphabetism may not improbably have been suggested to
the Persians by their acquaintance with the Phœnician alphabet,
which as early as the eighth century B. C. was used in the valley of
the Euphrates concurrently with cuneiform writing.”
At the date of the Persepolitan and Behistun inscriptions, and during
the two previous centuries, the Aramean alphabet, daughter of the
Phœnician, had been a commercial script of the Semitic people of
northern Mesopotamia and Syria.
At the time of Darius it was used at the courts of the Assyrian kings in
official records, and later on at Babylon.
Again, upon the decline of the Assyrian and Babylonian empires, and with
these the decadence of the cuneiform, this was superseded by the Aramean
alphabet. Of this, however, later on.
Whatever influences the alphabet of Aram may have had in suggesting the
idea of alphabetism to the originators of the Persian cuneiform, the
result was original and distinct.
Of this Persian cuneiform, which has furnished the key to the
decipherment of all cuneiform, the fullest vocabulary has been found in
the Behistun inscriptions.
The rock on which these are engraved is situated near the western
frontier of Persia on the direct route from Babylon to Ecbatana. It
rises an isolated mountain from the plain to a height of seventeen
hundred feet.
On one side is a sheer wall of precipitous rock. At its base is a
copious fountain. On one of the great highways of travel, its isolated
position and peculiar features have made this a notable landmark
throughout the ages. At the northern extremity of this escarpment, in a
recess to the right, are the famous inscriptions of Darius, son of
Hystapes. To make these inaccessible to foreign invaders or domestic
foes, they were placed about three hundred feet above the base of the
rock.
Sir Henry Rawlinson, who first deciphered these inscriptions, attempted
the work by the aid of powerful field glasses, but later succeeded in
obtaining a closer inspection by means of ropes let down from the cliffs
at great expense and at the risk of his life.
The wonder is, how the engravers could have done the work. The rock was
beautifully polished before inscribed, and in some places where there
were inequalities of surface, pieces of the rock were fitted in and
fastened with molten lead. This was done with such delicacy that only by
close and careful scrutiny can it be detected.
After the engraving had been completed, a fine coat of silicious varnish
was laid over, to give clearness of outline to each letter, and to
protect the surface against the action of the elements.
Of the inscriptions, Sir Henry Rawlinson says:
“For beauty of execution, for uniformity and correctness, they are
unequalled.”
The purpose of King Darius in these memorials was to set forth to his
subjects his hereditary right to the throne of Persia, and the glories
of his reign.
“I am Darieiros,” he says, “the great king, the king of kings, the king
of Persia, the king of nations.”
And then, after giving the record of his genealogy back to Achæmenes,
the first of his line, he says: “There are eight of my race who have
been kings before me; I am the ninth. In a double line we have been
kings.”
The inscriptions consist of a thousand lines in three columns and in
three languages; an Aryan, a Turanian and a Semitic speech.
The first column, addressed to the Persian people of his realm, was
written in the Persian cuneiform, with thirty-six alphabetic signs and
but four ideograms. The second was to the Proto-Medic, or as now called,
Scythic inhabitants of the kingdom, and was written in the Turanian
cuneiform, with ninety-six pure syllabic signs, accompanied by seven
surviving ideograms. The third version, to the Assyrian or Semitic
subjects of the Persian king, was inscribed in the Semitic Babylonian
cuneiform, including five hundred characters.
After the discovery by Grotefend of the key to the decipherment of the
Persian cuneiform, Sir Henry Rawlinson, an English military officer in
the service of the East India Company, while on duty in Persia,
undertook the study of cuneiform characters.
This he attempted independently, with no one to aid him, as at this time
he was not acquainted with the discoveries of Grotefend, or the methods
pursued by him.
The greater simplicity of the Persian versions in the trilingual
inscriptions, suggested less difficulties to overcome and led him to
pursue the same lines by which Grotefend had previously obtained
success.
Sir Henry Rawlinson was able to carry forward the decipherment of
cuneiform much farther than Grotefend, owing partly to the better
knowledge of the ancient languages of Persia attained at this time, and
partly to the fact that he had escaped the mistakes which obstructed
Grotefend in his later decipherments of cuneiform.
It will be remembered that Grotefend discovered the true values of
twelve of the forty-eight letters of the Persian alphabet. Further than
this he did not go. He made the mistake of supposing all the vowel
sounds were expressed in this system, which is not the case.
With some of the consonants, the vowel sound is inherent and is not
written with an independent sign. This mistake prevented his further
progress; but his success had pointed the way, and a host of eager and
able scholars at once entered this new field of oriental philology.
The most promising direction seemed to be the Zend, the so called
language in which the sacred books of the Parsees was written. Of this,
but one or two fragments known to be genuine were at this time to be
found in the libraries of Europe; one in the Bodleian Library, chained
to the wall, and here and there a few stray leaves of Zend manuscript in
other collections.
In the year 1771 a work had been deposited by its author, Anquetil
Duperron, which he claimed to be a translation from the original
Zend-Avesta, with copy of the texts.
The work had been pronounced a forgery by certain distinguished
scholars; but the well known scholarship of its author held the
judgments of other learned philologists in abeyance.
The story of this effort is of romantic interest. While a youth,
preparing for priesthood in the seminaries of Paris, he became so
absorbed in the study of language, that he gave himself entirely to
these pursuits, abandoning his intentions of the study of theology.
While thus engaged, some stray leaves of a Zend manuscript came into his
hands, which so filled his mind with a desire to read the language of
the Parsees that he determined to do so.
At this time the conflicting interests of the English and French in
India reached a crisis. Enlisting as a private soldier in the French
army, he was about to sail for India when the officers of the institute
to which he was attached, affected by his zeal for learning, obtained
from the Minister of War a free passage for him to Pondicherry, with a
seat during the voyage at the captain’s table and a salary to be paid
him on his arrival in India while he carried on his studies.
After reaching Pondicherry, he began the study of Sanscrit and Arabic,
and later on, through great hardship, finally reached Surat.
Here he obtained the confidence of certain Parsee priests, who permitted
him access to their sacred books, and through whose assistance he
acquired sufficient knowledge of the language in which they were
written, to enable him to translate the Zend-Avesta.
Returning to Paris in 1762, with over a hundred precious manuscripts, he
obtained a small post in the royal library, where he spent the next nine
years in the preparation of his copies of the original texts of the
Zend-Avesta, translating these for publication. In 1771 the work was
completed and he had the satisfaction of placing in the Royal Library of
Paris the first authentic version of the Zend-Avesta and the first
translation that had ever appeared in any European language. As before
stated, many scholars of the time were not prepared for the work,
denying its authenticity and proclaiming it an audacious forgery.
Under this cloud, the intrepid author of this work, conscious of the
importance of his contribution to learning, undaunted by the fate which
so long delayed the just recognition of his labors, passed the remainder
of his days in cheerful resignation.
He lived to congratulate Grotefend upon his achievements in the
decipherment of cuneiform and died shortly after, in 1808, at the
advanced age of seventy-seven.
Twenty years later, the honors due his name came through the researches
of the illustrious scholars, Rask and Burnouf, who proved this great
work of Anquetil Duperron to be a genuine if not correct translation of
the Zend-Avesta, as obtained through the sacred books of the Parsees.
It was by a study of this translation that the key to the ancient
Persian language was obtained and has since served an important use in
the study of Zend[5] philology.
Notwithstanding its value, this translation of the Zend-Avesta was by no
means perfect. The faulty teachings of the Parsee priests led the author
into occasional errors which obstructed the progress of later scholars
who depended too closely upon it for results. Little by little, however,
from the work of Sir Henry Rawlinson on the Behistun inscriptions, thro’
the researches of Burnouf in the original Zend manuscripts; again from
testimony furnished by other distinguished scholars, from coins and
other inscriptions, and still again by a comparative study of Sanscrit,
modern Persian and Arabic, all the letters of the old Persian cuneiform
have been obtained, until now it is as easily and distinctly read as
Greek or Hebrew.
It is impossible, within these limits, to follow the steps by which
these important results were obtained. The methods employed in such
researches are often only intelligible to philologists themselves.
In this special study, the epigraphic materials examined included not
only cuneiform signs, but characters representing the fully developed
alphabets of later periods, alphabets which had superseded the cuneiform
as systems of writing, though expressing the ancient speech of Persia.
The most ancient copies of the Zend-Avesta are only to be found in
Pehlivi characters, a Persian alphabetic system of the Sassanian period,
dating from the 3d century A. D.
The Pehlivi alphabets are direct descendants of the Aramean alphabet, a
daughter of the older Phœnician, which had developed in the highlands of
Aram, or Upper Mesopotamia, before the Achamenian period in Persia.
The Aramean language originally expressed by these characters, was at
this time one of the most widely spoken of the Semitic dialects,
including the idioms of Syria, Aram and Assyria.
At first, as a commercial and literary script, it came to be extensively
used in these and adjacent countries conjointly with the cuneiform.
In the ruins of ancient Nineveh, there are the remains of what must have
been a public registry office. From this a great number of terra cotta
tablets have been exhumed on which were inscribed in cuneiform
characters records of legal contracts, including loans of money, sales
of estates and exchanges of other properties. Many of these tablets were
docketed on the sides or edges in Aramean or Phœnician letters, by which
the subject of each document could be readily found when piled on the
shelves or in recesses where they were deposited. Reference in some of
these appears from the time of Tiglath Pileser and Sennacherib, 741 to
681 B. C.
Other evidences of the extensive use of this script comes from the later
Assyrian kings, and from Babylonia, until the decline of these empires,
606 to 538 B. C.
After the conquests of Babylonia by the Persians, the Aramean alphabet
gradually became the official script of these regions, finally
supplanting the cuneiform.
Of historic documents of this period in the Aramean script and language
was the royal decree given by Artaxerxes to Ezra for the rebuilding of
the temple at Jerusalem.
The Aramean was the language spoken at this time by all the Semitic
people of Babylonia.
It is probable that during the whole period of the Achæmenids a local
variety of the Aramean alphabet was in general use as a cursive script
throughout the empire.
The perishable materials used for this purpose, as the bark of trees,
skins, papyrus, unbaked clay, etc., have furnished but few remains of
this form of writing, but that it existed and was in extensive use at
this date, there are unmistakeable evidences.
It is not impossible that the works of Zoroaster may have been so
written in the old Bactrian, as Darius Hystaspes states in the Median
text of the Behistun inscription, that he has made a book in the Aryan
language which before him did not exist.
“The text of the divine law (Avesta)—the prayer and the
translation.” “And then this ancient book was restored by me in all
nations and the nations followed it.”
The inscription of King Asoka, at Kapur di giri on the northern and
western confines of India, is evidently a survival of this ancient
script.
About 500 B. C., the Punjaub was invaded by the Persians under Darius,
and during the remaining period of the Achæmenian kings continued a
satrapy of Persia. After the conquests of Alexander, and later, of the
decline of Greek rule, this province was restored to India. About 251 B.
C., Asoka, then king of India, an earnest and devout believer in Buddha,
ordered certain edicts to be inscribed in various parts of his empire.
These are known as the fourteen edicts of Asoka.
The type of the alphabetic character employed in the various localities
differs. Those used at Kapur di giri are in a cursive script from the
Aramean, and are often designated “the Bactrian alphabet,” from its
close relationship to these early Iranian forms.
Of this, Dr. Taylor says:
“The Kapur di giri record must be regarded as an isolated monument
of a great Bactrian alphabet, in which the Zoroasterian books and an
extensive literature were in all probability conserved.”
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Footnote 5:
This use of the word Zend is incorrect as referring to the language in
which the works of Zoroaster appear. There is no Zend language.