Page:Discovery and Decipherment of the Trilingual Cuneiform Inscriptions.djvu/444

Rh coincidences and great variations '; and even ' totally diflerent.'

Much indeed yet remained to be done before accuracy could be achieved, and the voice of the doubter was not yet stilled. In France especially, the greatest scepticism prevailed as to the geimineness of the translations, and those of Oppert, in the 'Journal Asiatique ' were received with general incredulityJ Neither T)e Saulcy nor Longperier took any farther share in the work, and their silence increased the discoura<xement. A very eminent Frenchman, Count de Gobineau, had just written on the ' Ecritures des Textes cuneiformes ' and attacked the whole system ])ursued by Eawlinson and Op{)ert.- The one lie proposed to substitute is too grotesque to merit description, but the defection of a scholar so well known in Oriental studies intensified the urowinij unl)elief.'^ It was at this conjuncture that Menant pul)lished his book on Cuneiform Writing, in which he related the successive steps that had led up to the decipherment of the inscriptions (1860): an under- taking which he describes four j^ears later, in his second edition, as having slowly produced a beneficial ellect. Some people may have been more inlluenced l)y the striking reward conferred upon M. ])pert by the Institut in 1800, which awarded him the prize of twenty thousand francs, founded by the Emperor for the ' work or the discovery most calculated to the honour of France,' and this, we learn with surprise, allbrded ' une sanction qui devrait dissiper toutes les susceptibilites.' These susceptibilities were, however,

1857, p. 663.
 * See Menant, Larif/ues jyerdnes, p. 177. lie refers to Atht-nceitmy May

'^ Mohl, op. cit. Report, June 1^69, ii. 257. 3 lb. June 1864, ii. 505.