Page:Discovery and Decipherment of the Trilingual Cuneiform Inscriptions.djvu/303

274 he received Lassen's Second Memoir. It did not reach him till August 1845, when his own translations were completed and already beyond the reach of alteration. He had little cause, however, to regret the delay that arose from the difficultv in those times of ' communica- tint' between Bonn and Bagdad,' for he could have derived small benefit from the verv inferior translations { his predecessor. In the philological l)ranch of the subject, however, he found the Memoir ' of the greatest convenience as a manual of reference,' aiid his marginal notes show how carefully he consulted it.^

By the publication of this work Major Eawlinson at length took his place among the cuneiform scholars of Europe. We liave shown that the study was by that time far advanc-ed, and most of the difficulties of the Persian column were already surmounted. Eawlinson did not, therefore, put forward any pretension to original discovery in that department, but was, he said, ' content to rest my present claims on the noveltj' and interest of my translations.'- He hoped eventually to earn the higher distinction of an original discoverer, ' according to the success that may attend my efforts to decipher the Median [Susian] and Babylonian inscriptions.' It was not, however, without an effort that he presented himself in so modest a garb upon this occasion. He was con- vinced that he had made each step in the tedious process of decipherment by his own unaided effort; and in whatever light he might appear to the public, he was certainly an original discoverer to himself. He had no doubt that if Grotefend and Lassen had never lived the world would have been indebted wholly to him for the discovery, and, although we think he may have been influenced more than he suspected by other scholars, there is no great improbabihty in supposing

» J. Ji. A. s. X. 18. - lb. X. 2.