Page:Discovery and Decipherment of the Trilingual Cuneiform Inscriptions.djvu/415

386 son's return to Persia, that the publicatiou of the third coluuui of the Behistuu iuscu'iptiou was completed. It nils the fourteeutli volume of the ' Journal of the Eoyal Asiatic Society,' and the greater part of it was laid on the table l)efore May 18-jl.^ A poiticm of the expense was defra^Td Idv a Government ijrant, made at the suiz- gestion of I^ord John Iiussell: and the volume consists of seventeen lar^e plates ccmtaininuthe cuneiform text with transliteration and a T>atin translation. Then comes an * Indiscriminate List of liabvlonian and Assyrian (,'haracters,' with their phonetics jiowers, and also such ideographic values as had l)een ascertained. The list includes two Inmdred and forty-six princijial signs, many of which are followed l)v others varvinu' in form; and wnerally rei)resentinix the dillerent methods of writing' found at Persepolis, Babylon and Xineveh. An analysis of the text, extending over a hundred pages, follows, but it has not l)een carried farther than t(^ the end of the first eolunui. The ' Memoir on the liabvlonian and Assyi'ian Inscriptions ' is even more incom2)lete. It covers onlv sixteen naiics. and Ijreaks off in the middle of a sentence, before the analvsis of the second si^'u was concluded. Xo explaruition is given of this abrupt termination.

The discovery of a separate sign for each combina- tion of vowel and consonant, explained Ijy Dr. Ilincks in his Appendix of January 18-")0, no doubt exercised i-onsiderable influence on liawlinson,- and we are now in a ])sition to recognise the full efl'ect it produced in the progr(^ss of the study. Ilow far Pawlinson independently

1 i

The cuneiform text accompanied by a transcrijtt in Uoman cliaracters

and an interlineary Latin translation wa?- ])rlnted ' before May; see lleport,

May 18ol, J. 11. A. S. xiii. p. vi. The comjtb'te volinne appeared in Jaunarv

18.')2 ( //y. p. 19'.)). Uawlinson returned to Baj^dad in the autumn of 1851

{Me?noh\ p. 171).

Trans, li. I. Acad. xxii. o6.

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