Page:Discovery and Decipherment of the Trilingual Cuneiform Inscriptions.djvu/385

356 haddon, and the appearance of sea in the bas-relief left no doubt that this was the place referred to. He had thus ingeniously conjectured the names of the city and the conqueror by independent means ; and there was little difficulty hi fixing the cuneiform groups in which they were to be found. We have already said that Lowenstern observed the close resemblance between the Assyrian and Persepolitan characters ; and he at first thought that the similarity extended to the square writing of the Hebrews. It was by comparison with these that he sought to achieve his decipherment. The name of the town consisted of five characters. The first he did not know, but assumed to Ue a ; the second corresponded exactly to the Hebrew ' shin,' the third to the Old Persian d\ and, pursuing this method, he satisfied himself that he had deciphered ' Asdoh ' or ' Asdod.' Botta afterwards pointed out that the word had been improperly transcribed, and that the first sign, translated a, was simply the determinative of ' QAty} As regards the group that should contain the name of Esarhaddon, Lowenstern thought it consisted of three signs. The first, he erroneously stated, had been ascertained by Grotefend to be r;- the second was already known as5 in ' Asdod ' ; the third bore a remote resemblance to the Hebrew ' koph' turned over on its side. It remained to adapt the result, r s k^ to the name of Esarhaddon. The matter was simplified by Isaiah, who calls the kin<>' in whose reis^n Asdod was captured Sargou. Another reading of this name is 'Sarak,' which is evidently the word in the inscription, the transposition of the r and s being obviously unimportant. It happened, curiously enough, that

^ Jouimal AsiatiquCy ix. ^77.

- 6/. Grotefend, Beitrafje^ 1840, p. 65. LiiwensttTii's r is only the first portion of (irotefend's sign.