Page:Discovery and Decipherment of the Trilingual Cuneiform Inscriptions.djvu/323

294 Elsewhere Oppert translates it quite diflerently: 'Aspathines, minister of King Darius, who makes the law observed.' Spiegel's version is : ' Aspacana des Konigs Darius genosse, Ziigelhalter (?).' ^

In the autumn of 1846, when Rawlinson's 'Memoir' was passing through the press, Dr. Frederick Hitzig published a tract on the Persian Text of the Tomb Inscription of Darius ; but his translation shows little advance beyond the point reached by Lassen.^ The edition of the Persian inscriptions by Theodore Benfey made its appearance early in 1847. His transliteration suffers from having been made before the method of writing explained by Hincks and Eawlinson in the previous year had l)ecome generally known. We have already sufficiently noticed Benfey 's translations, which show considerable improvement on those of Lassen, but fall far short of the comparative excellence obtained by Eawlinson. In the course of the summer, another writer appeared whose name has been already men- tioned and who was destined to occupy a very im- portant place in the future history of Cuneiform Research. M. Oppert was born in Hamburg in 182-5, and studied successively at Heidelberg, Bonn and Berlin. At ]ionn he was a pui)il of Lassen, and to this cir(!umstance probably we owe his early interest in cuneiform and the publication of a tract on the subject at the age of twenty-two. The promising youth was precluded by his Jewisli faith from holding a professorship- in Germany, and consequently he went to Paris in 1847. His later writings have all appeared in the French lanuuaae, and for this reason he is generally included among the number of French scholars, of whom, till quite recent years, he was by far the

^ Spit'gel, pp. 51), 122.

'^ Die Grahschnft des Darius^ Ziiricli, 1847.