Page:Discovery and Decipherment of the Trilingual Cuneiform Inscriptions.djvu/214

Rh (Murgab) and the Xerxes on the Vase of Caylus, arranged word for word to show the signs in the three systems that correspond to each other; and he found that the second system corresponds word for word to the first, but that the third differs considerably. In the third system he remarked also that a word could be formed with so few signs that he thought it avoided the use of vowel signs as far as possible, and employed a single character to express the threefold combination of consonant, vowel and consonant; and to that extent he concedes that it may be called syllabic.

It is a very singular circumstance that Grotefend seems to have spent the whole of his ingenuity upon his first efforts; from that time he was unable to make any farther contribution of importance, and the work of decipherment was carried on entirely by other scholars. Yet he never withdrew his attention from the subject, and when he died, in 1853, all the difficulties of the Persian column had been overcome with but little farther assistance from him, and sufficient was already known of the Babylonian to disclose a wonderland of new and unexpected knowledge. Grotefend made a careful study of all the available inscriptions as they came to light, and from first to last his interest in them never flagged.

We have already seen how carefully he analysed the three Persepolitan columns, seeking out in each the signs that might be supposed to correspond to each other. The classification of the Babylonian inscriptions as they now began rapidly to accumulate afforded him fresh material for the exercise of his ingenuity. It seems to have been some time before he would admit the practical identity of the writing of the third Persepolitan column with that of the simplest of the Babylonian styles. According to his earliest classification the three