Page:Discovery and Decipherment of the Trilingual Cuneiform Inscriptions.djvu/137

 less part of his duty to cultivate physical activity. He accordingly passed much time in hunting and shooting, and in various athletic games, and one of his great achievements was an extraordinary ride that might now incur the humanitarian censure of a less strenuous age. In 1833, when still a lieutenant, he was one of eight officers selected to proceed to Persia to assist in training the army of the Shah. They landed at Bushire, where they were delayed for some months by the heavy snow on the mountains between that port and Shiraz. Rawlinson's interest in archæological subjects was already awakened, and he took the first opportunity of visiting Shapoor and Persepolis, and making numerous sketches of both places. He was stationed at Tabriz during the summer of 1834, and with characteristic energy he endeavoured to reach the top of Mount Ararat, but he was prevented by the great depth of snow. In the following spring (1835) he was nominated by the Shah to act as Military Adviser to the Kind's brother, who was Governor of Kurdistan and resided at Kermanshah. On his way he visited Hamadan, and copied the cuneiform inscription at Mount Elvend (April 1835). At Kermanshah he was within twenty miles of Behistun, which, as his biographer observes, 'has been in the Providence of God the great means by which the ancient Persian, Assyrian, and Babylonian languages have been recovered, and a chapter of the world's history that had been almost wholly lost once more made known to mankind.' He passed his leisure time during 1835-37 in transcribing as much of the inscriptions as he could reach, and in the endeavour to fathom their meaning. Sometimes he ascended and descended the slippery rock three or four times a day 'without the aid of rope or ladder or any assistance whatever.' The difficulties are, he modestly says, 'such