Page:Discovery and Decipherment of the Trilingual Cuneiform Inscriptions.djvu/102

Rh vignettes, which convey but a poor impression of the objects they are designed to represent. Le Bruyn has, however, devoted one of the plates to Inscriptions and this is the most important work he has achieved in connection with this subject. He has copied five separate inscriptions, four of which were now published for the first time. (1) The Inscription on the Sculptured Stairs. (2) The Inscription on the pilaster in the Portico of the Palace of Darius. It is in three tablets, each tablet containing from thirteen to fifteen lines. (3) The Inscription seen over the King in the same palace. It is also in three tablets, each containing six lines. (4) The Inscription in the folds of the royal robe—of which seven lines are given. (5) Finally, he has reproduced the window Inscription already published by Chardin and Kaempfer, but instead of representing it as it occurs round a window, he has placed the three lines under one another in parallel lines, By this simple change of position he has shown the fallacy of the theory that the lines at the sides may be read from top to bottom: or that the wedge can occur with the point upwards. Le Bruyn is a more accurate copyist than Kaempfer, and in some respects he even excels Ouseley, a hundred years later. With Le Bruyn the cuneiforms assume the bold and regular appearance with which we are now familiar, al- though he confuses many of the letters by too great compression.

Le Bruyn appears to have been one of the first travellers to attempt to make a collection of these antiquities to send home to Europe. The extreme hardness