Page:Discovery and Decipherment of the Trilingual Cuneiform Inscriptions.djvu/406

Rh represent the consonaiital sound, and a variable portion to indicate the conjunction of the vowel. 'The signs,' he said, 'reproduce in part the same forms differently combined, which suggests a syllabic union in many of the signs,' but he subsequently became the most thorough-going' champion of the alphabetical theory. Botta only just found it 'possible to conceive that the language was syllabic,' yet he followed Longpérier in the luminous suggestion already described. Even De Saulev was haunted by dim fears that, after all, Assyrian might turn out to be syllabic, and the consistency with which he adhered to the opposite or Semitic mode of writing rendered his subsequent studies almost valueless. Rawlinson, as we shall soon see, yielded in time, and his transliteration of the Behistun inscription shows small traces of his early heresy, which he was still ready to defend in August 1850.

Such was the progress already made in decipherment when Rawlinson at length gave to the world some of the results of his labours in the same field. It will be remembered that in the autumn of 1847 he succeeded in taking a copy of the third column of the Behistun inscription. Whatever leisure he could command during the year 1848 and the early part of 1840 he devoted to its study; and when he returned to England in the autumn of that year, he brought the translation home with him. The work of publication was one of great difficulty, in consequence of the multitude of strange characters in many languages that had to be reproduced and corrected; and although Rawlinson remained in England till 1851, he was obliged to leave before it was accomplished. Some Continental writers chose to make this delay a matter of complaint against