Chapter VI (3)

The two tracts of De Saulcy, written in 1849, gave the transliteration according to his peculiar system of the whole of the Achaemenian inscriptions accessible to him. The text of the Behistun inscription had not, of course, escaped as yet from the jealous hands of the English Major. The translation of these inscriptions was comparatively easy, for it was only necessary to follow the Persian version, which was already known. De Saulcy may therefore claim to be the first who accomplished this task, which neither Hincks nor Rawlinson thought necessary to attempt. But De Saulcy did not rest satisfied with this achievement. On February 3, 1850, he published a transliteration of ninety-six lines of the inscription engraved upon the bulls at the entrance to Khorsabad; and he accompanied it by a translation, which two years later he still considered was sufficiently accurate. On February 12, he also contributed a Memoir on the Royal Names at Nimrud.[857] These two publications appeared between Major Rawlinson’s lectures of January 19 and February 16. In the first lecture, Rawlinson gave the earliest translation of a purely Assyrian inscription that had ever appeared, with the exception of the few lines rendered by Longpérier and Hincks. It was taken from the Black Obelisk, and he promised to read at the next sitting a _précis_ of the Khorsabad inscription.[858] It was clear, therefore, that he had already prepared it. Meanwhile, after this announcement was made, and thirteen days before it was carried into execution, De Saulcy’s translation appeared. This forms the second long Assyrian inscription to be translated, and it can scarcely be denied that De Saulcy and Rawlinson had worked upon it independently of each other. The report of Rawlinson’s second lecture was given in the ‘Athenæum’ on March 2. It is, as we have said, impossible to estimate the comparative merits of the two works, because we have not seen De Saulcy’s pamphlet. It can only be judged by what we know of that writer’s later acquirements.

The transliteration from which we have quoted made its appearance in February 1854, having apparently been sent to press in June 1853, or some three years after Rawlinson’s version of the same text.[859] It cannot, therefore, claim the indulgence so willingly accorded to a first effort; on the contrary, it is distinctly put forward as a rival Essay, intended to prove ‘the essential error of Rawlinson’s method of reading.’ It was designed at the same time to show that not one of the general results reached in the two Memoirs of 1849 had now to be abandoned, and also to establish his legitimate right to a large share of priority of discovery to which De Saulcy says he attached great value. We have already disposed of his claims to priority so far as regards the consonantal values of the Babylonian signs found in the trilingual inscriptions, and we are at a loss to imagine in what other direction he fancied that he had achieved priority. So far indeed from his studies having ever been in advance of his contemporaries, they uniformly lagged far behind, and he evinces a singular inability even to follow the results obtained by their genius. A remarkable instance of this is seen in his rejection of Longpérier’s reading of ‘Sargon’ in the Khorsabad inscription. ‘The _kh_, _k_ or _g_,’ he writes in 1852, ‘is in reality a _d_’; and in the Table he published in 1854 it is actually found under that heading. He regrets that he is obliged to renounce all hope of finding the ‘Sargon of the Bible’ at Khorsabad; and he reads ‘Sardon’ instead.

De Saulcy still adheres to his alphabetical interpretation, and it is no doubt the syllabarium of Rawlinson that is ‘the essential error’ he sets himself to remove. His transliteration accordingly consists, as the reader will have observed, of an immense agglomeration of consonants which the student is left to bring within the possibilities of human utterance as best he may. It is clearly a comparatively easy task to arrange a number of signs according to the simple consonantal sounds they contain. Hincks reached this point in 1847, and De Saulcy’s latest effort seems to carry us back to that rudimentary stage of the inquiry. Here we find the signs distributed among the various classes of gutturals, dentals and so on, exactly as in Hincks’s Table seven years before. It is possible that the later writer is more complete and accurate; it could scarcely have been otherwise, considering the large amount of data now available and the impossibility of not being guided, to some extent at least, by the Syllabarium of Rawlinson and Hincks. Yet in this elementary work of simple classification there are numerous errors he might have escaped if he had condescended to place more dependence upon their authority. Thus, for example, among his gutturals we find (of course bare and stripped of their vocalic garments) the signs for _ip_, _up_, _al_ and _zi_. His dentals include two gutturals, the signs for _ga_ and _gi_. Among his labials he gives us the signs for _as_ and _ku_. Among his linguals are those for _ki_ and _su_ and they include the signs for the syllables _tar_, _kur_ and _rit_; while the sign for _ul_ is found among the sibilants. Notwithstanding all his efforts to escape syllabic values, he was forced to enumerate a few—_kam_, _ak_, _akh_, _at_, _bar_, _far_, _in_ or _an_, _ar_, _as_, _is_. Some of these are correct; but not even here would he submit to authority, and he has accordingly blundered. His _ak_ should be _uk_, his _akh al_, his _far par_, and of the two signs he gives for _as_, one should be _si_ and the other _sur_, while his _is_ should be _us_. With few exceptions all these might have been found correctly given by Rawlinson three years before. Hincks had long ago pointed out in his Khorsabad Essay (June 1849) that a clear distinction is maintained between the vowels, and between the surd and sonant consonants. Yet here we find the signs for _m_, _w_, _ou_ and _b_, and those for _l_ and _r_ all classed indifferently together. His treatment of the vowels is not less behind the knowledge of the time. The single vowel _a_ is represented by no less than seven signs that really express _an_, _a_, _ap_, _i_, _ruh_, _man_, _it_. Two of these signs, according to De Saulcy, also express _ha_, and one either _e_ or _i_. _Ha_ has four signs, none correct. They are really the signs for _a_, _it_, _i_ and _il_. He was correct in supposing the language contained two diphthongs, _ai_ and _ia_; but neither of his signs for _ai_ is correct: one has, in fact, the value of _tir_.

It may be said in conclusion that on all points of difference between Rawlinson and De Saulcy, both as regards the theory of the language and the details of its expression, Rawlinson was right and De Saulcy hopelessly wrong. De Saulcy was not only unable to teach Rawlinson anything, but, as we have already observed, he was incapable to a very remarkable degree of apprehending the truth from others. He lived for many years afterwards, but his Essay on the Behistun inscription seems to have been the last occasion on which he meddled with cuneiform studies. He probably recognised more clearly than some of his admirers how incompetent he was to make any useful contribution to the subject. It is impossible to refrain from sympathy with him. He tells us he spent a whole year in ‘comparing sign by sign and transcribing all the Achaemenian texts without exception.’[860] Nothing is more calculated to overwhelm the mind with despondency than to pass years of fruitless toil amid such arid wastes as these and to discover in the end that the natural ability to make useful application of the knowledge acquired is wholly wanting. For the true genius of a decipherer is a rare gift, and no amount of industry or learning can compensate for its absence. Hincks and Rawlinson possessed it with exceptional intensity. Many of the other scholars whose labours we have reviewed were endowed to a less degree—Grotefend, Jacquet and Lassen. Even Longpérier, in the few lines he contributed to the subject evinced no little aptitude in this direction; but De Saulcy was singularly deficient in the special qualifications it required. It would have been more worthy of the position he occupied in other departments of study if he could have restrained the irritation that the consciousness of the waste of so much effort could not fail to produce. It was lamentable that he should fretfully pretend to have anticipated the discoveries of Rawlinson, or that he should have presented his own crude performance as a possible rival to his. It would almost seem, from the extreme rarity of his pamphlets, that he endeavoured to suppress the evidence of his failure, and it would be well if his countrymen were to allow his work in this department to pass out of the reach of farther controversy.

The translation of the Babylonian Column of the Behistun inscription was apparently thought at the time to dispense with the necessity of any special publication of the Semitic columns of the other Achaemenian inscriptions at Persepolis and Naksh-i-Rustam. De Saulcy had indeed devoted himself to this portion of the subject in 1849, and Menant informs us that ‘all the trilingual inscriptions then known were already translated.’[861] But they do not appear to have attracted the attention of any more competent scholar till 1859, when M. Oppert published a portion of them in the second volume of his ‘Expédition en Mésopotamie.’ He gave the text, with transliteration and translation of the Window inscription L and B (Darius); D and E (Xerxes), and the unilingual H (Darius) from Persepolis; the long inscription and the three short ones at Naksh-i-Rustam, the K of Xerxes at Van, and the S of Artaxerxes Mnemon at Susa. He also gave a new translation of the Behistun inscription without text or transliteration. A peculiar feature of his book is that he has made a transcription of the inscription into Hebrew characters. A complete edition of the Babylonian columns of the Achaemenian inscriptions was published by Dr. Bezold in 1882, with text, transliteration, translation and commentary, and is now the standard edition.

We have now brought to a close this tedious history of the various steps that led up to the decipherment of the Achaemenian inscriptions; and we have described the share taken in its accomplishment by a long succession of scholars, from Tychsen to Oppert. The whole of these inscriptions were now interpreted and their contents made known to the world. The difficulties of the cuneiform character, which at first appeared insuperable, were at length surmounted.

The subject for a long time seemed to yield no results at all commensurate to the labour and ability lavished upon it. Its interest seemed to be limited to the arid domains of philology, or at best to throw a sidelight upon a few matters of no great importance in ancient history. Some scholars were gratified to find that their old and greatly maligned friend Herodotus was ascertained to be much more trustworthy than was long supposed; but these were matters that could only affect a small and comparatively worthless class of _dilettanti_. At length, however, there came the great Assyrian discoveries and the apparition in the cuneiform records of ‘Jehu, the son of Omri,’ and a host of other notabilities of sacred history. The study was raised at once, especially in England, to an entirely different plane of interest. Lectures began to be delivered upon it throughout the provinces; books were written by Vaux, Bonomi, Fergusson, and many others, to explain the subject to the public. The great work of Layard was quickly followed by a popular edition, and was translated into German. Curiosity was stimulated by the appearance, in 1853, of an account of the results of farther explorations. Whether the new learning would tend to confirm the ancient records or whether it would compel a revision of cherished beliefs began to be debated in many quarters, far beyond the circle of learned societies.

An account of the progress subsequently made in the knowledge of the Assyrian language lies beyond the scope of our present work. It was indeed a happy accident that the power of reading Assyrian should have been acquired just as a countless number of inscriptions in that language were brought to light. Excavations continued at Nineveh and elsewhere under the direction of Mr. Layard during the winters of 1849 and 1850; and in the autumn of 1851, Colonel Rawlinson returned to Bagdad. He was charged with the general supervision of the work, while Mr. Hormuzd Rassam assumed the practical direction in the field. Parliament sanctioned a grant of three thousand pounds, and many large sums were contributed by private individuals, including five hundred pounds from Lord John Russell.[862] Soon after, Rassam discovered the famous inscription of Tiglath Peleser, which afforded the earliest glimpse into a long-forgotten history. In it the genealogy of the Assyrian kings was traced back to the fourteenth century B.C., and the names of no less than twenty-five sovereigns were recorded.[863] The inscription itself was written at a time when Assur was still the capital of the kingdom and Nineveh was too unimportant to be mentioned. Rawlinson was surprised to find that the language was more polished then than at a later time, and he was obliged to admit that the discovery ‘annihilates all my theories about the modernicity of Assyrian civilisation.’[864] Shortly after, he was able to announce that ‘all the Assyrian kings mentioned in the Bible have now been identified,’[865] and many others who occur in profane history, so, that almost a perfect list has now been obtained. Two French expeditions were engaged at the same time on the work of exploration. M. Place, from 1851 to 1854, devoted himself chiefly to Khorsabad, though with scarcely the success his perseverance merited. But the chief effort was made by the Commission headed by M. Fresnal, 1852-4, which included M. Oppert among its members, and which concerned itself principally with the exploration of the ruins of Babylon. Meanwhile Southern Babylonia was explored by Mr. Loftus, whom we have already mentioned in connection with Susa; and by Mr. Taylor, the Vice-Consul at Bussorah. It is to their labours during the winters of 1853 and 1854 that we owe the recovery of the history of the Early Babylonian Empire that long preceded even the foundation of Assyria. The forgotten cities of Nippur, Erech, Larsa, Ur and Eridu were once more summoned to surrender the records of a civilisation reaching back many thousand years before the Christian era. In 1854, Rawlinson was able to send home a list of eighteen of the primitive kings of the ancient Babylonia and of twenty other personages of less exalted station; and he records his surprise at the discovery of ‘monarchs who must have reigned before the establishment of the Assyrian Empire.’[866] Till then it was generally held that Babylon owed its foundation to the late period of the great Nebuchadnezzar.[867] Early in 1854, a fruitful discovery was made in the Lion Room of the North Palace of Assurbanipal at Kouyunjik.[868] Here large numbers of tablets were found, which subsequent investigation showed to consist of lexicons and phrase-books to enable the student to acquire the primitive language of Babylonia, from which it afterwards became apparent the larger portion of the Assyrian literature had been derived. Rawlinson was the first to detect the existence of this language in a tablet sent to him from Larsa by Mr. Loftus.[869] He announced the discovery in a valuable paper, contributed to the ‘Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society’ in 1855, on the Early History of Babylonia. At that time, however, he had made but little progress in this new study, for he says: ‘I have no hesitation in pronouncing the language to be Semitic.’[870] In the following year he found out his mistake, and, having carefully studied the vocabularies from Kouyunjik, he speaks of it more guardedly as ‘the Chaldean or Hamitic language of Babylonia.’[871] Six years later, we still hear of the ‘Hamitian language, of which not much is yet understood.’[872] For a time it was known also as the Proto-Chaldean;[873] Hincks seems to have been the first to call it by its later name of Akkadian,[874] but Rawlinson was the earliest to make any considerable progress in its study. In 1866, he endeavoured to translate the tablets bearing on astronomy and other scientific subjects; but he found ‘the primitive Babylonian language’ was so extensively employed in these documents that it was ‘advisable to undertake a thorough examination of this ancient and most difficult language.’ The result was that he thought it was intermediate between the African languages and the Proto-Turanian or Finno-Ugrian, which he proposed to classify under the name of the ‘Erythean Group.’ He considered it came from the uplands of Central Africa, and was the speech of the Akkads or Highlanders. From that circumstance it gradually acquired the name of Akkadian, suggested by Hincks.[875]

The recovery of this ancient language is among the most interesting results of cuneiform discovery. The most ancient records in the world are written in it, and it opens a page of history hitherto entirely unknown. It shows that a Turanian race led the van of civilisation, and was the founder of both the religion and literature of the Semitic people of Irak.

The first period of discovery was now drawing to a close. The French retired in 1854, and Colonel Rawlinson in March 1855. Nearly twenty years were to elapse before the excavations were renewed by George Smith, in 1873.

Meanwhile the number of scholars interested in these subjects began to increase. Dr. Samuel Birch did good service in assisting the publication of Layard’s inscriptions.[876] Mr. Bosanquet contributed a large number of articles on the questions of chronology raised by these new discoveries,[877] a matter that also occupied Rawlinson.[878] Hincks also turned his attention to translation, and it is to him we owe the translations in Mr. Layard’s ‘Nineveh and Babylon,’ published in 1853, and also a version of the Bavian inscription.[879] In 1854 he wrote an essay on Assyrian mythology, but he still continued to be chiefly engaged with the grammar. His dissertation on the Pronoun appeared in 1853; on the Verb in 1855 to 1856, a work that has been characterised as his most valuable contribution;[880] on Akkadian, 1855; on Tiglath Peleser, 1857; on Polyphony, 1863; and finally a treatise on Assyrian Grammar, begun in 1866 in the ‘Journal of the Asiatic Society,’ which was interrupted by his death. Mr. Fox Talbot was also added to the number of translators. In 1856 he rendered a portion of the East India House inscription, and for a number of years he applied himself to the translation of the most important inscriptions.[881] Mr. Norris, relieved from the burden of the Susian Column, turned his attention to Assyrian weights (1856), and subsequently became known as the author of the first Assyrian dictionary (1866).[882] In France, M. Oppert acquired an interest in Assyrian during his recent journey to the East, and he earned a reputation in this department of study by the appearance of his ‘Etudes Assyriennes’ in the ‘Journal Asiatique,’ February 1857. From that period he has continued to be one of the most prolific and the most useful of the cuneiform scholars of France. The number of these was farther increased by the appearance of M. Menant, in 1858, as the writer of a ‘Notice sur les Inscriptions cunéiformes de la Collection de M. L. de Laval.’[883] Soon afterwards (1860) he published the ‘Ecritures cunéiformes,’ an ‘Exposé des Travaux qui ont préparé la Lecture des Inscriptions,’ which is still a useful apology for the science.[884] For, notwithstanding all the magnificent results already obtained, the science was still in need of an apologist.[885] In 1852, Professor Wilson, the President of the Royal Asiatic Society, went so far as to regard the Assyrian Inscriptions as still ‘merely dumb memorials of antiquity.’[886] Very great discrepancies were indeed yet to be found in translations of the same passages by different scholars, and the true meaning of a large number of words continued to be warmly disputed. It was found, in fact, that M. Stern of Göttingen still maintained that the language was entirely alphabetical; that there were no ideographs; and he read every syllable of one inscription differently from De Saulcy, except the proper names.[887] Mr. Fox Talbot attributed the prevailing incredulity ‘to the fact that each cuneiform group represents not always the same syllables, but sometimes one and sometimes another’: in other words, to the existence of polyphones. Hence it was inferred that the system adopted ‘cannot be true, and the interpretations based upon it must be fallacious.’[888] He proposed, therefore, to submit the whole matter to a practical test. He accordingly translated the inscription of Tiglath Peleser, recently found at Kaleh Sherghat, and forwarded it in a sealed envelope to the President of the Asiatic Society. Three other scholars—Rawlinson, Hincks, and Oppert—were then invited to make independent versions of the same inscription, and to communicate them under cover to the Society. Carefully lithographed copies had been executed for this purpose, so that there might be no variation in the text. A competent jury of examiners were selected, among whom were Professor Wilson (the President), Mr. Grote, Dean Milman, Sir Gardner Wilkinson, and Whewell; and on the day appointed the sealed packets were opened in their presence. It was found that Dr. Hincks had not had time to translate the whole, and that Oppert had committed the double blunder of working from a copy executed by himself, and of making his translation in English, a language with which he was imperfectly acquainted. A careful comparison was, however, undertaken, and the Jury issued their report on May 29, 1857. Grote and Milman were of opinion ‘that the coincidences between the translations, both as to the sense and the verbal rendering, were very remarkable.’ Wilkinson made a separate report, and stated that ‘the similarity is quite equal to what it would be in the translation of an ordinary historical inscription in Egyptian hieroglyphics.’ ‘Indeed,’ he adds, ‘the resemblance is so great (very often exactly the same, word for word) that the interpretation could not be arbitrary’; but while ‘there is a remarkable concurrence as to the general meaning of each paragraph ... very many words were differently translated.’ The closest resemblance was found to exist between the versions of Rawlinson and Hincks. Talbot was ‘less positive and precise,’ and Oppert showed the greatest divergence. The examiners farther noted their opinion passage by passage, and as we look down the pages, among many verdicts of ‘very near,’ ‘much alike,’ and so on, we find other judgments much less satisfactory, such as ‘many coincidences and many variations’; ‘some coincidences and great variations’; and even ‘totally different.’

Much indeed yet remained to be done before accuracy could be achieved, and the voice of the doubter was not yet stilled. In France especially, the greatest scepticism prevailed as to the genuineness of the translations, and those of Oppert, in the ‘Journal Asiatique’ were received with general incredulity.[889] Neither De Saulcy nor Longpérier took any farther share in the work, and their silence increased the discouragement. A very eminent Frenchman, Count de Gobineau, had just written on the ‘Ecritures des Textes cunéiformes’ and attacked the whole system pursued by Rawlinson and Oppert.[890] The one he proposed to substitute is too grotesque to merit description, but the defection of a scholar so well known in Oriental studies intensified the growing unbelief.[891] It was at this conjuncture that Menant published his book on Cuneiform Writing, in which he related the successive steps that had led up to the decipherment of the inscriptions (1860): an undertaking which he describes four years later, in his second edition, as having slowly produced a beneficial effect. Some people may have been more influenced by the striking reward conferred upon M. Oppert by the Institut in 1860, which awarded him the prize of twenty thousand francs, founded by the Emperor for the ‘work or the discovery most calculated to the honour of France,’ and this, we learn with surprise, afforded ‘une sanction qui devrait dissiper toutes les susceptibilités.’ These susceptibilities were, however, by no means dispelled by any such Imperial mandate. Mohl writes with evident sympathy that ‘people decry a language in which one can never know if a syllable is ideographic or phonetic, and, when phonetic, which of two or three different values it may have in that place.’[892] Gobineau still remained recalcitrant (1864), and Sir George Cornewall Lewis contended in the ‘Astronomy of the Ancients’ that neither Egyptian nor Assyrian could ever be restored.[893] Lord Macaulay also rejected the interpretation with undisguised contempt.[894] It was only by slow degrees that these doubts were finally extinguished, and that the cuneiform languages have conquered the universal recognition of all competent inquirers.

When Rawlinson returned from Bagdad in 1855, he was appointed a Director of the East India Company, and he entered Parliament as Member for Reigate. In 1859 he went to Persia as British envoy, a position from which he retired in the following year.

After his resignation, he devoted himself for some years almost exclusively to his old cuneiform pursuits. He undertook to supervise the publication of the ‘Inscriptions of Western Asia,’ and he might be found at work upon them daily at the British Museum. Mr. George Smith was appointed his working assistant, and in that position he gained the intimate knowledge of the Assyrian language which he afterwards turned to such excellent account. The first volume of the Inscriptions appeared in 1859, and the last, or fifth, in 1884.[895] Rawlinson entered Parliament once more in 1865, as Member for Frome, but retired on his re-appointment to the India Office in 1868. He fell a victim to influenza in 1895, at the age of eighty-five. During his life he was gradually overwhelmed with honours bestowed upon him by learned Societies in various quarters of the globe;[896] but a grateful country was long reluctant to confer its seal of recognition. Military authorities are naturally unwilling to acknowledge the merits of distinguished officers who descend to civil employments; and in 1851, after the publication of the Behistun inscription, he had to sue in somewhat humble terms for promotion to the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel. On his return from Bagdad in 1855, when the walls of the Museum were lined with the trophies he had accumulated and the country was enraptured with the new arcana of knowledge his genius had unveiled, Lord Clarendon thought a knighthood worthy of his acceptance. This he hastened to decline, and shortly afterwards he received the more appropriate honour of K.C.B. (1856).

The dignities to which he subsequently rose were due to political services and social position, and seem to have been entirely unconnected with the achievements we have recounted.

As for Dr. Hincks, he appears never to have obtained any reward whatever, unless the Gold Medal of a provincial academy can be regarded as such.[897] He had the misfortune to be born an Irishman, and to fill the obscure position of a country clergyman, so that he was, no doubt, reconciled from the first to the inevitable sequence of disparagement and neglect. After all, hieroglyphic figures and cuneiform signs are inconvenient subjects for pulpit oratory, and not likely to edify a rustic congregation or to lead to preferment in the Church. The estimate in which he was held, even in learned circles, may be gathered from the short paragraph allotted to him in the ‘Athenæum,’[898] where he explained one of the most far-reaching discoveries in Assyrian, as compared to the three long columns that follow, devoted to a few unimportant observations made by Rawlinson. But notwithstanding his apparent failure to obtain the recognition that was his due, when the evening of life approached and the time for departure came, he could dwell with satisfaction on the work of his life; and though in the years to come few might remember his name, he could not fail to enjoy the conviction that the rich fields of knowledge he had opened to view would remain the assured possession of man for all generations to come.

APPENDICES

A.—TABLE SHOWING VALUES ASSIGNED TO THE LETTERS OF THE OLD PERSIAN ALPHABET.

B.—TABLE SHOWING THE TRUE VALUES OF OLD PERSIAN LETTERS, AND THE AUTHOR AND DATE OF THEIR DECIPHERMENT.

C.—TABLE SHOWING THE VALUES GIVEN TO EACH SIGN OF THE SUSIAN (MEDIAN) SYLLABARY.