Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume V.djvu/575

 CUNEIFORM INSCRIPTIONS 571 form of the elementary characters. These ele- ments are two, the one resembling a wedge ), the other an arrow-head hut if we regard the latter as a combination of two wedges, we may consider the writing as made up wholly of wedges. All the characters were produced by different combinations and arrangements of these figures, the variations being hardly more than those in the different handwritings of different persons. The wedge is sometimes shortened to nearly the form of an equilateral triangle ( ^) ; and there are other unimportant variations. In some of the most ancient inscriptions the wedge is nearly a straight line, but all the forms are destitute of curves. This most ancient kind is sometimes, though for no good reason, styled hieratic. The inscriptions are found upon rocks, stone slabs, and monuments, on vases, gems, seals, and especially upon bricks and small cylinders or prisms, made of clay and baked in the sun or burned in kilns. The wedges are sometimes as much as two inches in length, while others, especially those made in clay, are so small as to require the aid of a magnifying glass to decipher them. Most of them are found in western Persia, but they are scattered at intervals from the confines of the Caspian to Egypt. Those which were first dis- covered and copied are in three different lan- guages, and as many different kinds of writing, although each is composed of wedges. In all these trilingual inscriptions the writing which stands first, or in the most prominent position, is the simplest and was first deciphered. It is known as the Persian cuneiform writing. That which comes next is more complicated, con- sisting of nearly three times as many char- acters as the first, and is generally called Scythian ; while the third, usually designated as the Assyrian or Babylonian, is the most complicated, and is variously estimated to con- sist of from 600 to TOO characters. The deci- phering of the characters and interpretation of the language of the first kind may be con- sidered complete and satisfactory, and will always be regarded as one of the greatest achievements of modern scholarship. The use of this kind of writing seems to have ceased soon after the time of Alexander the Great, and for nearly 2,000 years it had been utterly forgotten. In 1618 Garcia de Sylva Figueroa, ambassador of Philip III. of Spain, while on a visit to the ruins of Persepolis, copied a small portion of an inscription, and expressed the conviction that it was in some lost writing, and perhaps some lost language. Pietro della Valle, the Italian traveller, was at this time in Persia, and on terms of friendship with Figueroa ; and in 1622 he sent to Athanasius Kircher a brick inscribed with sphenograms. From that time almost every traveller of note in the East re- ferred to these inscriptions, and many brought specimens and copies to Europe. Half a century later Chardin published some which he had copied at Persepolis, and declared his opinion that they were writing and not hieroglyphics, but that nothing more would ever be known in regard to them. In 1767 Karstens Niebuhr, the father of the celebrated historian, on his re- turn from a voyage in the East undertaken in the service of the Danish government, brought with him copies of inscriptions found in the ruins of Persepolis. These were published a few years after, and it was principally upon them that the first successful attempts to de- cipher this kind of writing were made. But during the period of a century and a half that had elapsed since the time of Figueroa and Della Valle, numerous speculations as to the nature of these inscriptions had been published. Thomas Hyde, an oriental scholar of eminence, considered them mere idle fancies of the archi- tect, who wished to show how many different combinations of a simple stroke could be made ; and he regretted that he had ever wasted any time upon them. Witte of Rostock thought they were marks of the work of generations of worms. Other opinions were that they were talismanic signs, formulas of priests, astronom- ical symbols, and charms. By different per- sons the characters were considered to be Chinese, Cufic, Hebrew, Samaritan, or Greek ; and some thought they resembled the runes of the north of Europe. Those whose opin- ions were the most absurd were the most ear- nest in their advocacy. The first real step in the solution of the problem was made by Kar- stens Niebuhr. He did not pretend to inter- pret these inscriptions ; but he rightfully conjec- tured that those of which he had published copies were written in three different alpha- bets. That they were also in three different lan- guages he of course could not know, but sup- posed the same text was written in each of the three alphabets. In 1798 Tychsen of Rostock, and in 1800 Miinter of Copenhagen, attempted further to elucidate this theory; but all they really accomplished was the correct conjectures that a frequently recurring group of characters represented some word signifying "king," and that a single wedge, frequently recurring, pla- ced in an oblique direction pointing downward and to the right, was employed to separate the words. Such was the condition of the problem previous to 1802. On Sept. 7 of that year G. F. Grotefend, then 27 years old, pre- sented to the academy of sciences at Gottingen his first attempt at deciphering the cuneiform alphabet. The most complete exposition of the manner in which he arrived at his results is contained in an appendix to Heeren's Ideen uber die Politik, den VerkeJir und den Handel der vornehmsten Volfcer der alien Welt, edi- tions of 1815 and 1824. It is also contained in the English translations of that work, " Histori- cal Researches," &c. (London, 1833 and 1854, vol. ii. p. 319). Grotefend endeavored to estab- lish that the inscriptions were in some kind of writing, and that their chief characteristic was