Page:Discovery and Decipherment of the Trilingual Cuneiform Inscriptions.djvu/217

188 mind was, no doubt, less able to grapple with the series of discoveries that were just on the point of being made. In the previous year (1836) Burnouf and Lassen had simultaneously published their Memoirs on the cuneiform decipherment that soon carried the subject far beyond the point at which Grotefend had left it some thirty years before. Grotefend accepts the general results, but without much evidence of enthusiasm. The reading of 'Auromazda' is now satisfactorily established; but he clings to his ogh with unabated affection. On the other hand, he suggests the surrender of the sr in 'Kurus,' and reads r or rh. As regards 'Achaemenian,' the utmost he will concede is that the Greeks probably derived it from 'Akhâsosôschôh,' and to do this he reluctantly softens his tsch to a soft c to give the s; but he will on no account admit the true reading, n. He still contends that the languages of the three Persepolitan columns are related to each other, but he sees that the first, though resembling Zend, is not identical with it. He entirely rejects the idea already broached that the third is Semitic, and he adheres to his conviction that none of the three can be called syllabic or ideographic in the strict sense of those terms.

Notwithstanding the tenacity with which he adhered to some of his old errors, his later contributions were not entirely without result. He devoted great attention to the comparison of the language of the first with those of the other two columns, and in this task he exhibited a considerable amount of penetration. For example the word 'adam,' which is constantly recurring in the Old Persian, continued to be translated, even