Page:Discovery and Decipherment of the Trilingual Cuneiform Inscriptions.djvu/322

Rh restraint he exercises over his imagination. No one is more distinguished than M. Oppert for the ingenuity of his conjectural restorations; and the column that Eawlinson abandoned as hopeless appears in Oppert's edition as the ' Complementary Behistun Text/ and in a comparatively perfect condition. In this case he could receive no assistance from the translations, because both the other columns are destroyed; and not much by comparison, for there are few parallel passages. His work is, therefore, the more admirable as a display of the imaginative faculty. But his reading has not been accepted by Menant or Spiegel, or by Weissbach.^ No doubt we owe the ' Testament of Darius at Naksh- i-Kustam ' to the same method which appears to have Ijeen exercised upon the few lines copied by Westergaard from the long inscription below the one known and which Spiegel declares it is clearly impossible to translate.^' One of the three short inscriptions engraved above the figures of the Tomb has also given rise to some discussion. Mr. Tasker, an English traveller, sent them to Eawlinson, by whom they were published in the ' Journal of the Asiatic Society,' and an improved version appeared some time afterwards.^ Even at that period considerable difference of opinion existed as to the meaning of at least one of these short legends. According to Eawlinson, Xorris, and Oppert, Aspathines is the 'keeper of the arrows' of Khig Darius; but Norris adds ' chamberlain ' and Oppert ' quiver-bearer.'

^ Ih. Lx. 68, 69. Cf, Spiegel, pp. 41, 109; Menant, Les AchhrUnides, p. 122; Weissbacb, Altpersischen Keilinschriften, p. 31.

'^ Records, O.S. ix. 77; Kawlinson, J,R. A. S. x. 311; Spiegel, p. 121. M. Benfey attempted to restore this inscription, but in 1852 Oppert de- clared that the labour was a simple loss of time. It is perhaps to be regretted that he did not adhere to his first impression. Journal Asiatique^ xix. 172 (March 1852).

'* Vol. xii. p. xix, XV. p. 432; Spiegel, p. 69; Oppert, Rec, O.S. ix. 78.