Page:Discovery and Decipherment of the Trilingual Cuneiform Inscriptions.djvu/423

394 same inscription as tin* conqueror of Aslidod ; and he made out the names of other cities that fell before the arms of that kin^' : ' llamath, Beroea, Damascus, Banibyce. Carchemish;

Ikit the inscription to which he now more particularly drew attention was recently found l)y Mr. Lavard on a colossal bull at the ", l)Ut they n^count the subiui>-ation of Babylon in the beiiinninii' of his reiu'u, and the defeat of Ilezekiah and the capture of J(*rusalem in his third year. The narratiye agrees with what was already known from the I lebrew writinLjs and froiu Polyhistor. The discovery, in a cuneiform inscri])tion, of the three* names Hezekiah, Jerusalem and Judah, and an account of eyents related in I lie Book of K'm<i*s, naturally sthnulated the interest of a wider pul)lic than is o'enerally occupied with arclueology.^ From this pei'iod dates the great popularity these studies enjoyed for a time, a popularity that culminated more than twenty-fiye years later by the desi)atch of Georc^e Smith on amission to the East l)y the 'Daily Telegraph.'

A year after the publication of the third colunm of the Behistun inscri])tion, llincks read a i)aper 'On the Assyrio-liabylonian Phonetic Characters' (1852), which may be reizarded as havhiLj' closed the early stau'e of in- (piiry into th(* subject.- Tu this essay he contributes no less than a hundred and ei^'htc^en new yalues, of which sixty-eight c(M'tainly, and possibly more, are correct. Wlien these are addcul to the Syllal)arium of Pawlinson, ii})wards of two hundred correct signs, in addition to ihose for tht^ xowels and dii)lithoiigs, were now at the

' Afhenoirn,, Aug. 1>.'J, IS.')!, p. {){)•>. - rra7i.<. L\ I. A;5 m^.