Page:Discovery and Decipherment of the Trilingual Cuneiform Inscriptions.djvu/281

252 himself the first to disinter from the rubbish by which it was hidden (Pl. 20, Cᵇ)

Of greater importance than any of these were the copies taken by the Danish Sanscrit scholar Westergaard. He was commissioned bv the Danish Government to visit Persia for the purpose of collecting inscriptions and other matters of archaeological interest. He went to Persepolis and Naksh-i-Rustam in 1843, and not only did he carefully recopy all the inscriptions already known, but some others that had hitherto been neglected. Among the latter are the inscriptions over the animals on the great Eastern Porch at Persepolis, and the long inscription upon the tomb at Naksh-i-Rustam. The first is indeed to be found in Mr. Rich's collection (Pl. 24, 25, 2G); but the copy, as we have seen, was made by his Seyid and was found useless for purposes of study. All previous travellers had recoiled before the difficulties of transcribing the tomb inscription, but these were at length surmounted by Westergaard, and his copy is the greatest prize he secured. It was found to be an inscription of Darius, and it served to identify the rock-hewn sepulchre upon which it is inscribed with the tomb of that king. It contained a more complete enumeration of the provinces than the I inscription, and as it was trilingual, it was hoped that so large a number of proper names would at length afford a clue to the values of the signs in the second and third colunms, which had as yet remained unknown. Westergaard was the first of the travellers who possessed a competent knowledge of the cuneiform character, before he undertook the difficult task of transcribing them; and consequently his copies