Page:Discovery and Decipherment of the Trilingual Cuneiform Inscriptions.djvu/274

Rh Kermanshah during the years 1835-7, and that he succeeded in making a transcript of two hundred lines, or about one half of the great inscription at Behistun. When he first began the study, in 1835, he was aware that Grotefend had previously 'deciphered some names of the early sovereigns of the house of Achaemenes,' but he could not obtain a copy of the alphabet, nor ascertain from which inscription it had been formed. Rawlinson began upon the two inscriptions he had copied at Elvend, and 'when he proceeded to compare them, he found that the characters coincided throughout, except in certain particular groups, and it was only reasonable to suppose that the groups which were thus brought out and individualised must represent proper names. There were but three of these distinct groups in the two inscriptions, and they were arranged so as 'to indicate a genealogical succession,' no doubt 'belonging to three consecutive generations of the Persian monarchy; and it so happened that the first three names, of Hystaspes, Darius and Xerxes, which I applied at hazard to the three groups proved to answer and were in fact the true identifications.' This ingenious process was precisely the same as that already followed by Grotefend, which we have described in detail. Rawlinson appears, however, to have divined the method independently, though the application of the three names to the three groups was no doubt suggested to him by what he had heard reported by Grotefend's discovery. He next turned his attention to the first two paragraphs of the Behistun inscription, and by the same means he detected five other proper names, which he identified with Arsames, Ariarannies, Teispes, Achaemenes and Persia. The recognition of these eight proper names yielded him the values of eighteen