Page:Discovery and Decipherment of the Trilingual Cuneiform Inscriptions.djvu/247

216 Paragraph II

A comparison of the two translations with the final version will show at a glance how vastly superior Burnoufs rendering was to that of his predecessor. Not the least important of his contributions to the work of translation was the identification of the names of some of the provinces of Darius, which are contained in the I inscription. We have already observed that Grotefend had attempted a translation of this inscription in 1832: and in 1836 he again drew attention to the circumstance that it contained a series of geographical names. The list included no less than twenty-four proper names, some of which were entirely beyond Burnoufs power to decipher; but he made an attempt to read sixteen, and out of these eight were