Page:Discovery and Decipherment of the Trilingual Cuneiform Inscriptions.djvu/413

384 after that I was established on the throne I assembled the (•hief> of iiiv people and came down into the plains of Esmes, where I took the ritv of Haridu, the chief city ])elonf£inif to Xakharmi/ A recent translation of the same passa^'c I'uns : ' At the Ijegimiinnf of my reiirn

when on the throne of the kinodom I had seated myself

• *.

in state, my chariots and, my] armies I assembled. Into the depths of the land of Siinesi I penetrated ; Aridu the strontr city of Xinni I captured/ Again liawlins(^n translates: 'I went out from the city of Nineyeh and crossinir the Eupln^ates I attacked and defeated Aliuni, the son of Ilateni, in the city of Sitrat, which was situated upon the Iui])hrates, and which Ahuni had made one of his capitals. Ahuni, the son of Hateni, with his gods and liis chief priests, his horses, his sons and his daughters and all liis men of war, I brought away to my country of Assyria/ The modern yersion says: 'I de[)arted from Nineyeh; the Euphrates I cross(Hl at its flood: 1 marched against Akhuni, the scm of Adiiii. The country of Shitamrat, a mountain peak on the banks of the Euphrates, he made his stronghold. The peak of the mountain I captured; Akhuni, with his gods, liis chariots, liis horses, his sons, his daughters and his ai-my, I carried away and to my city of Assur I l)rUi^ht ' ; ^ and so on through the eyents of thirty-one years of the reian of the ixreat kini>'. On the other hand, it would be too much to say that eyen the sense is always })reseryed. There are, in fact, many and serious diyeraencies from the correct translation as it now stands, after more than forty years' continuous study. It is impossil)le that it could haye been other-

' Of. J. IL A. S. xii. 432-8; liecords of the Past, ^.S. 1890, iv. 30-40. The translator is Father Scheil, who has not thought it worth while to mention the name of his great predecessor. From what he says the reader might suppose the inscription was first translated by Oppert (p. 37).