Page:Discovery and Decipherment of the Trilingual Cuneiform Inscriptions.djvu/439

410 Palace of Assurbanipal at Koiiyunjik. Here large number of tablets were found, which subsequent investigation showed to consist of lexicons and phrase- books to enable the student to acquire the primitive language of Babylonia, from which it afterwards became apparent the larger portion of the Assyrian literature had been derived. Rawlinson was the first to detect the existence of this language in a tablet sent to him from Larsa by Mr. Loftus. He announced the discovery in a valuable paper, contributed to the 'Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society' in 1855, on the Early History of Babylonia. At that time, however, he had made but little progress in this new study, for he says : ' I have no hesitation in pronouncing the language to be Semitic' In the following' year he found out his mistake, and, having carefully studied the vocabularies from Kouyunjik, he speaks of it more guardedly as the Chaldean or Hamitic language of Babylonia.' Six years later, we still hear of the 'Hamitian language. of which not much is yet understood.' For a time it was known also as the Proto-Chaldean; Hincks seems to have been the first to call it by its later name of Akkadian, but Rawlinson was the earliest to make any considerable progress in its study. In 1866, he endeavoured to translate the tablets bearing on astronomy and other scientific subjects ; but he found 'the primitive Babylonian language' was so extensively employed in these documents that it was ' advisable to undertake a thorough examination of this ancient and