Page:Discovery and Decipherment of the Trilingual Cuneiform Inscriptions.djvu/100

Rh occupied a slab no less than ten paces in length, and was divided into four tablets, each containing twenty-four lines. he copied the one on his right hand as carefully as the difficulties of the situation would permit; he was unfortunately prevented from copying the others, but he observed that the characters in them varied to a certain extent. The inscription he gave was afterwards known as the 'L of Niebuhr,' and belongs to the third or Babylonian system of writing. He has transcribed the whole of the twenty-four lines, and it was by far the longest text that had ever yet been published to the world. Although the copy is defective when compared with the perfection that has since been achieved, yet as a first attempt upon so large a scale it deserves high commendation. He also gives the trilingual inscription round a window in the Palace of Darius, but in this he had been anticipated by Chardin.

He is careful also to direct the reader's attention to the position of inscriptions in other parts of the ruins. He mentions the inscription over the animals in the Porch (of which, however, we had already heard from Chardin), but he also fixes the position of the inscription in twenty-four lines on the sculptured stairs; of the three inscriptions on the south stairs of the Palace of Darius; of the three inscriptions, each of six lines, over the bas-relief on the great doors of the same edifice, and of the three inscriptions, each of four lines, in the corresponding position in the Palace of Xerxes. Kaempfer favoured the opinion then most generally