monuments. The characters are still more numerous and complicated than those of the second species, while on the Behistun rock the tablets containing the third or Babylonian version are so mutilated, that only the latter half of all the lines is now legible. The publication of these fragments, however, with a table of characters and a partial analysis, by Rawlinson, in 1851,' was the earliest important step towards the comprehension of the language. It had already, even at that time, been sufficiently evidenced by the researches of Grotefend, Hincks, Botta, De Saulcy, and others, in the extant remains of the Assyrio-Babylonian language, that these embodied a Shemitic dialect, and this was clearly shewn in the memoir referred to, while it has been fully confirmed by other more recent publications in the same department of cuneiform writing." We have thus the same fact repeated which has been already noticed in connection with the other kinds of trilingual writing, viz., that a language bearing the characteristic marks of a certain group of tongues, in this case a group well known, and with analogies easily recognizable, comes out unforcedly by the application to those remains of the Grotefendian system of decipherment, and thus verifies the validity of the process by which it has been reproduced. As this department of the trilingual inscriptions of Persia has been studied almost exclusively in connection with the records on the Assyrian and Babylonian monuments, in which relation its chief importance lies, I go on to consider its bearing upon these, and the progress made in the reading of these larger and more interesting remains.

II. Those who believe that the right path has been struck for the interpretation of the engraved annals of Assyria and Babylonia, cannot fail to be impressed with the relations existing between the times in which the various discoveries have been made; and if our religious faith extends the oversight of Divine providence to the falling of a sparrow to the ground, it may well allow that its control is manifest here, in a matter so closely

In the Journal of the Asiat. Soc., vol. xiv. De Saulcy had published, in 1849, an Analyse de l'Inscription de Hamadan et des Inscriptions de Persepolis, of the third species.

etc.

See, e. g., De Sauley, Traduction de l'Inscription Assyrienne de Behistoun, in the Journal Asiatique, 1854-5, with other articles in the Revue Archéologique, Oppert, in the Nakshi-Rustam inscription, in the Zeitschrift d. Morg. Ges., xi., p. 136; and in his more recent works, Expédition Scientifique, tom. ii., and Eléments de la Grammaire Assyrienne. It is no valid objection to the Shemitic characters of the Assyrio-Babylonian language, urged by Renan and Schoebel (Examen Critique du Déchiffrement des Inscriptions Cuneiformes, p. 10, f.), that the system of writing is altogether unlike what we elsewhere find in Shemitic dialects. New facts are not to be refused because they are unexpected. Rather the unexpectedness of the result is a confirmation of the truthfulness of the system from which it emerges.

pertaining to the elucidation and establishment of the divine word. It has needed almost fifty years of diligent research on the part of many scholars to perfect the interpretation of the Persian trilingual inscriptions; and just about the close of this period, when the learned world had been furnished with the requisite key, the Assyrian palaces are exposed to view, and a new and vast store of wedge-shaped records is brought to light, relating to another people and another history more ancient and more interesting still than those of Persia. "The wonderful thing is," says Fergusson," "that just when the one discovery was on the eve of completion, the other was made to complete its usefulness: had either preceded the other, half of what is now known to us might have been lost from our not knowing what we were doing, or being careless of what is now of so much interest; but the one came with the other, and together revealed to us the records of a history that had been lost for centuries, and so completely lost that no man living even so much as suspected the possibility of their existence."

It gave new interest to the third column of the Persian tablets, when it was shewn that the complicated and uncouth combinations of wedges found there were reproduced, with only slight dissimilarities, in the large, and, in great part, recently discovered records of Babylon and Nineveh. The hope was thus awakened of finding in the former the desiderated key to the latter. Before the key could be tried, however, not a little preliminary work had been accomplished with these AssyrioBabylonian documents. The arrangement and comparison of the numerous characters had been attended to, their syllabic nature had been demonstrated, the apparent equivalence or power in the case of many of the signs had been pointed out, the Shemitic cast of the language had been shewn, and some important proper names, as Nebuchadnezzar, Babel, Sargon, had been more or less successfully determined. Sir Henry Rawlinson, as already stated, published his transcript of the third column of the Behistun inscription in 1851, and since that time almost every year has seen new and valuable contributions made to our knowledge of the language and contents of

" Palaces of Nineveh and Persepolis, p. 6.

• Of those who laboured on the Assyrian and Babylonian inscriptions before the publication of the Behistun text, the most distinguished are Grofetend, Hincks, Loewenstern, Botta, Longperier, De Saulcy. An account is given of these earlier labours by Ménant, Ecritures Cunéiformes, p. 120, f. Into the questions, in regard to priority of discovery, which have arisen among these and the other investigators, I desire not to enter.

He had, in 1850, published a Commentary on the Cuneiform Inscriptions of Babylonia and Assyria, based on his acquaintance with the Behistun record.

the engraved monuments of the Mesopotamian valley. It would be impossible, in any reasonable space, to give anything like a complete list of the several works published in this department. Besides Rawlinson himself, the scholars whose writings are of highest authority are Hincks, Talbot, and Oppert, the last of whom, in the second volume of his recent Expédition Scientifique en Mesopotamie, has furnished the most regular and complete work yet published on the Assyrio-Babylonian inscriptions. Another Frenchman, Ménant, has recently entered the field, and has printed some useful works. The publication of the original texts, an essential condition of progress in this study, is also being proceeded with, though too slowly for the impatience of some of the investigators. The largest and most important collection of original Assyrian writings is possessed by the British Museum, secured by the excavations of Layard, and his successors at Nineveh and elsewhere in the Mesopotamian valley. From this source emanated the volume entitled, Inscriptions in the Cuneiform Character, from Assyrian Monuments discovered by A. H. Layard, D.C.L., printed in 1851, and containing an important selection of documents. Another and still more valuable publication, drawn from the same ample store, is now going forward, edited by Sir H. Rawlinson, entitled, The Cuneiform Inscriptions of Western Asia. From France, besides numerous detached inscriptions, we have a full edition of the inscriptions found at Khorsabad, in Botta's Monument de Ninive. Of these, a considerable portion has recently been published in a more accessible form, edited and translated by Oppert and Ménant. It was the third compartment of the Achæmenian tablets which first introduced us to an acquaintance with the meaning of these deeply interesting records, and in this application its aid has been of invaluable consequence. At the same time, the means thus furnished have proved inadequate to effect a full interpretation of the many and long inscriptions now possessed. The remains of the Achæmenian writing present about one hundred and sixty different characters, and of these the proper names which they contain determine only about ninety," while grammatical changes and flexions give the means of arriving at a probable opinion in regard to about twenty more. But when we turn to the Assyrio-Babylonian documents, we find the number of signs to which there is no direct clue greatly multiplied. Oppert, in 1858, gave a list of three hundred and eighteen characters, those known as "most in use," and the number now

Les Fastes de Sargon, roi d'Assyrie, traduits et publiés d'après le texte Assyrien de la grande inscription des salles du palais de Khorsabad, 1863. See Oppert, Exped., ii., p. 34.

known must considerably exceed this. What is true of the signs is true also of the roots, of which, as was to be expected, many occur in the long and numerous inscriptions of Assyria and Babylonia, which are not presented in the Achæmenian records. But, in addition to this accidental inadequacy of the key, difficulties of a peculiar and formidable kind have presented themselves to the students of these inscriptions. It was soon ascertained that the numerous characters had a syllabic power, and that the language possessed a very full set of the signs requisite to express syllables, both open and close. But, besides their phonetic value, it was found that a non-phonetic power also prevailed; that some of the signs were determinatives, indicating the class to which the word following them belongs; and that others of them were ideographs or monograms, representing things, not sounds, like our ordinary numeral characters. And still more, along with the recognition of these syllabic and nonphonetic powers, Hincks and Rawlinson, at an early period of the investigation, announced that they had found that many of the signs were also polyphonetic, actually bearing, in different words, and sometimes in the same word, different syllabic values. These facts seemed to cast the study of these records into hopeless confusion. The difficulty of determinatives and ideographs is not, indeed, of an insuperable kind, and a precedent may be found for such phenomena in other alphabetic systems, specially in that of ancient Egypt. The polyphonous power, however, ascribed to many of the signs, appeared, if really existing, to bar all certain advancement, and to reduce the whole business of decipherment to an unguided play of fancy or conjecture. Serious doubt, rather entire disbelief, based chiefly on this ground, has been expressed, especially on the Continent, in regard to the whole procedure and results of what has been called the British school of interpreters. It is to be observed, that the objections thus brought forward revolve round the à priori improbability of the polyphony of the signs in a language intended to be read, and possessing so great a variety of characters as the Assyrian, and mainly proceed from persons who have not themselves attempted the decipherment of these inscriptions. But à priori considerations, as already remarked in regard to a

Hincks, On the Khorsabad inscriptions, p. 15, f.; Rawlinson, On the Babylonian and Assyrian inscriptions, in Jour. As. Soc., vol. xiv., p. 2. It was the opinion of Loewenstern, Botta, and, at one time, of Rawlinson (see his Commentary, p. 4), that there existed also homophones, i. e., characters different in form, but having the same phonetic value. These, however, have disappeared before the more exact analysis of words and forms. See Oppert, Exped., ii., p. 35; Ménant, Ecritures Cuneiformes, p. 174.

As by Ewald, Renan, Brandis, Schoebel.

NEW SERIES.-VOL. VI., NO. XI.

H

kindred matter, cannot here be admitted to have any validity. In the case of one of the objectors, Brandis, an attempt has been made to read the inscriptions on the principle of strictly adhering to a mono-phonetic system, but his ill-success is manifestly so glaring as to discourage all perseverance in the path he has chosen."

There can be no doubt that the untoward but stubborn fact of polyphony renders much more difficult and embarrassing the task of reading these documents, and must seriously impede their complete decipherment. At the same time, it is not to be supposed that the polyphony of the characters of the AssyrioBabylonian language is a thing unregulated and capricious: that every character has any value, or even that every value assignable to any polyphonetic character is indiscriminately to be suspected wherever the character occurs. Already, by the persevering efforts of the students of these writings, the laws and limits of the polyphony affecting the characters are beginning to be understood. It is found, that often by means of the "phonetic complement" the writing itself gives indications of its presence, and means of guidance in the selection of the proper phonetic power." There is also reason to believe that the signs are not universally polyphonous, and that a number of those most frequently employed are not liable to be affected by this ambiguity. Moreover, a most important discovery made by Mr. Layard, at Kouyunjik, has furnished new and valuable means for surmounting the difficulties which polyphony presents, and also for explaining the origin of this linguistic phenomenon. Among the chambers which he there laid open were two of comparatively small size, forming a repository of inscribed tablets and cylinders. "To the height of a foot or more from the floor they were entirely filled with them, some entire, but the greater part broken into many fragments. They were of different sizes; the largest tablets were flat, and measured about 9 inches by 6 inches; the smaller were slightly convex, and some were not more than an inch long, with but one or two lines of writing... The adjoining chambers contained similar relics, but in smaller numbers. Many cases were filled with these tablets before I left Assyria, and a vast number of them have been found, I understand, since my departure. . . The documents

" See his work, Ueber den historischen Gewinn aus der Entzifferung der Assyrischen Inschriften. Berlin, 1856.

See Oppert, Exped. Scient, ii., chap. 9; Hincks, in Jour. Sac. Lit., Oct., 1855, p. 155; Jan., 1862, p. 404; On Polyphony, p. 33.

See Ménant, Observations sur les Polyphones Assyriennes, p. 9, f.; Les Ecritures Cuneiformes, p. 193, f.; cf. Hincks, On Polyphony, p. 32.