Page:Discovery and Decipherment of the Trilingual Cuneiform Inscriptions.djvu/321

292 that were hitherto entirely misapprehended now appear hi their correct form. ' The son of xA.rcis ' gives place to ' the son of a Persian, an Arian of Arian descent/ The last paragraph of the same inscription is satis- factorily explained. Even where he fell short of success, as m the end of the I inscriptioii, he made important contributions to the elucidation of intricate passages.

Eawlinson added the inscription on the Venice vase, not known to Lassen. It had been recently published by Longperier in the 'llevue Archeologique ' (1844), who thouijht it should be referred to Artaxerxes I. Eawlinson translated it 'Artaxerxes the Kino-' and assigned it to Artaxerxes Oclius. Opinion has since been divided upon the subject; Spiegel and Menant follow Longperier; Oppert and Weissbach follow Eaw- linson.

Very few additional inscriptions in Old Persian have been brouaht to liiiht since the date of Eawlinson's Memoir. But a good deal of lal)our has been spent in clearing up the doubtful passages in those already known. Li some cases the text was, as we have said, so much mutilated as to defv inieUi^ible translation. This was the case with the fifth column of the Behistun; and Eawlinson thought it best to omit it altogether from his revised edition of ISTo.^ This diiiidence, however, may have stinndated M. ])pert to attempt a restoration of the text. We havi' ah-eady described the process followed by Eawlinson. It consisted in selectinii' a word or words containing: the number of letters required to fit into the space left vacant by the erasure of the text, and which would at the same time make some kind of sense. It is obvious how much of the success of this operation will depend upon the ingenuity of the restorer; and still more upon the

' Records, 0. S. i. 128.