Page:Discovery and Decipherment of the Trilingual Cuneiform Inscriptions.djvu/445

416 by no means dispelled by any such Imperial mandate. Mold writes with evident sympathy that ' j)eople decry a languag'e in which one can never know if a syllable is ideographic or phonetic, and, when phonetic, which of two or tliree different values it may have in that place." ^ Gobineau still remained recalcitrant (1864), and Sir Georu^e Cornewall Lewis contended in the 'Astronomy of the Ancients' that neither Egyptian nor As>vrian could ever l)e restored.- Lord ^Macaulav also rejected the interpretation with undisguised contempt.^ It was only by slow deiirees that these doubts were hnally extinguished, and that the cuneiform lanij^uaofes have conquered the univei'sal recognition of all com- petent inquirers.

When liawlinson returned from Bagdad in 18^5, he was appointed a Director of the East India Company, and he entered Parliament as ^Member for Eeigate. In 18-">9 he went to Persia as British envoy, a position from which he retired iji the following year.

After his resignation, he devoted himself for some years almost exclusively to his old cuneiform pursuits. H(*. undertook to supervise the pul)lication of the ' Inscriptions of Western Asia,' and he might be found at work upon them daily at the Kritisli Museum. Mr. George Smith was aiipoiiited liis working assistant, and in that position ]w gained the intimate knowledge of the Assyrian laniiiuiiie which he afterwards turned to such excellent account. Thc^ lirst volume of the Inscriptions appeared in IS-V.), and the last, or fifth, in 1884.^ liawlinson entered Parliament once more in 1865, as Member for Frome, but retired on his re-appointment

' Mohl, oj>. ciV. June lS^l,ii. oG4.

'^ Trans, S. //. A. lss(i, ix., article by Mr. Pinches. Cf. Report, May 1S62, ./. B. A. S. 1S(jl>, xix.

^ Layard, 2sinereli and liahylon, new ed. p. xxxviii, note. ' J. li, A. *V. 1S0, xvii. lit'port, 1S.*)9. Memoirs, p. 241.