Page:Discovery and Decipherment of the Trilingual Cuneiform Inscriptions.djvu/372

Rh the Ninevite character presented no analogy with the PersepoHtan, or even with the characters on the Babylonian bricks. In his ' Essai de Dechiffrement ' (1845) he was, however, the first to point out that a large number of them do really correspond to the third Persepolitan ; and he based his attempted interpreta- tion partly upon the analogy he had discovered.^ In his first Essay, of 184C), Ilincks also stated his belief that ' the third Persepolitan agrees in character with the Babylonian and with the Assyrian writing in Schulz s inscriptions.'^' Lowenstern afterwards admitted that lie would scarcely have recognised the similarity from Schulz's plates ; but it bec^ame clearly apparent in the more perfect drawing of Texier.^ Indeed he was eventually so much struck l)y the resemblance that he hesitated to classify the Persepolitan with the Baby- lonian in preference to the Assyrian ; in fact, he ultimately persuaded himself that it was nearer the Assyrian. Meanwhile Botta had begun the minute study of the Assyrian character to which later investi- gators owe more than they are always willing to acknowledge.'* Those whose fortune it is to occupy the higher pinnacles of knowledge are only too prone to despise the humbler artificers who constructed the scaflblding that enabled tliem to achieve the ascent. Botta arranged the signs with great care into fifteen classes, according to the numl)er of wedges they con- tain. The first class included all those with one wedge only ; and so on up to the fifteenth class, where we find signs composed of fifteen wedges and upwards : though none appear to exceed eighteen. The result of

tutifs {\6A7), \y. 11.
 * EsMti de lUchiffmnent (1845), ]>. 11. C'f. Kvpose des Elements consti^


 * Trayii^. IL I. Acad. 1840, xxi. V6\. ' KvposCf p. 14, 7iote.

fl'Jcntnre Assyria nnej Paris, 1848.
 * Journal Asiatif/uf (4" st'ne, 1847-8), vols, ix-xi, M^mmrc »ur