Page:Discovery and Decipherment of the Trilingual Cuneiform Inscriptions.djvu/289

260 and of the second • Darius the LTeat KinL^' ^ The same abbreviation occurs in the inscription on the Caylus vase, but in this case Lassen transLates it simply as 'rex' — ' Xerxes rex magnus.' -

Ahhou;/h Las<en may justly claim cn-eat praise for the skill lie has dispLayed in his translations, it must not be supposed that lie succeeded in overcoming all the difficulties that stood in his wav. His task was sreatlv simplified by the r-onstant recurrence of a set form of words with which the inscriptions usually begin.^ At Persepolis this form is first met with on the Porch, and it oecurs altogether five times in the ten Persepolitan inscriptions. The two Hamadan inscriptions consist of nothinf^ else. A shorter form, which begins at the second paragraph of the one just mentioned, is repeated three times at Persepolis. The longer form sometimes reaches over twentv lines, and as the whole series of these inscriptions only amount to three hundred lines, it is evident how considerably the task of the translator was reduced. Most of the inscriptions are, as we have seen, repeated in several places : the window inscription in the Palace of Darius no less than eighteen times. But the very limitation thus imposed upon him was one ^)f the chief obstacles to his progress. Indeed, until the l^ehistun inscription became available it was impossible to acquire any extensive knowledge of the language. To this circumstance must be partly ascribed the inferiority of Lassen's rendering of difficult passages, when compared with the facility we observe in Pawlinson from the first.

F^etween the publication of the First Memoir and the one we are lunv (•onsiderinir, Lassen made consider- able progress. In the I inscription the names of the

' IJawlinson In /. 1(. A, S x. .'U^. - Second Memoir, pp. 80, 145.

^ See abo\e, p. 7.