Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume V.djvu/578

 574 CUNEIFORM INSCRIPTIONS sent the rebels who at various times and places had proclaimed themselves kings, and had been subdued by Darius. Above the figure of Da- rius is an inscription which begins, "I am Darius the great king, the king of kings, king in Persia, king of the provinces, son of Vistacpa, grandson of Arsama the Acha3menian." The inscription then gives his genealogy, and closes : " Eight of my family were kings before ; I am the ninth. For a very long time have we been kings." Under the prostrate figure is in- scribed : "This Gaumata the Magus lied. Thus said he : I am Bardiya, the son of Cyrus ; I am king." On the third figure, and extending over on the rock, is inscribed : " This Fravartis lied; thus said he: I am Kshathrita of the family of Uvakshatara; I am king in Media." Over each of the other figures is a similar in- scription, the name of each being given, and each being accused of lying in pretending to be a king in provinces in which he had rebelled. Under this group of sculpture the great Persian inscription is cut. The wedges of which the writing is composed are a little more than an inch in length, and for foeauty and correctness of execution it stands unrivalled. After being cut it was covered with a kind of hard silicious glazing, which in some places has peeled off and fallen down. Pieces of it are still found on the rocks below. The inscription is in five parallel columns, but the fifth is only about half as long as the other four. The first column is almost entirely preserved. A stream of wa- ter flowing from above has rendered illegible the central part of the second column, but by comparison with the other parts of the inscrip- tion, and the Scythian and Assyrian transla- tions which accompany it, the missing portions have been satisfactorily restored. The third column is almost perfectly preserved. The fourth has been injured in the same way as the second, but more extensively, and cannot be so satisfactorily restored. The fifth column is almost entirely destroyed, and when Rawlin- son last visited it he found that the rock had suffered so much since, his previous visit that it was no longer possible to reach it with the ladders. The copy of the inscription was made by Rawlinson, with the aid of two skilful Kurdish climbers, at considerable persona] risk. The lower part has been injured by the ele- ments and probably by the Mohammedans, who when they overran Persia destroyed all the in- scriptions which fell in their way ; but the in- accessibility of the place where this one was situated preserved it in a great measure from their fanatical zeal. The inscription printed in Roman letters of the size here used would fill about eight columns of this Cyclopaedia ; and in- cluding the Scythian and Assyrian translations (the former in five, the latter in four columns), and the smaller inscriptions, there would be about a dozen pages. Considering that, on an average, there are about four wedges for every letter, one can form some idea of the immense labor expended. The inscription was most probably made a little before the year 500 B. 0. It commences in a manner similar to the inscription over the figure of Darius men- tioned above, and enumerates the 23 countries over which, through the grace of Auramazda, Darius had succeeded in establishing his sway. The greater part of the inscription is then oc- cupied with an account of his wars against the various persons represented in the sculpture who had rebelled against him, and of their sub- jugation and punishment. The latter part of the inscription is occupied with praises and thanks to Auramazda, and invocations of his blessings upon all those who should preserve and make known this record, and of his wrath upon all who should destroy or conceal it. Throughout the inscription he constantly as- cribes each one of his victories to the grace and assistance of Auramazda. Of the other inscriptions found in various places, the most ancient is one of the first Cyrus. It was found at Murghab, which is supposed to be the seat of the ancient Pasargadae, upon an isolated block of marble, and is repeated in several places in the neighborhood. It consists of only four words, "I Cyrus, king, AchsBmenide." Of Cambyses, the successor of Cyrus, no inscrip- tions have been discovered. Of Darius there are several others, the most important being those found in the ruins of Persepolis and the neighboring country. The inscriptions of Xerxes are next in extent and importance. Of the remaining kings of the Achaemenian dynas- ty we have a few, mostly very short. The most important are one of Artaxerxes Mne- mon, found at Susa, and one of Artaxerxes Ochus, found at Persepolis. This, the last in chronological order, shows that the language of Persia was already becoming corrupted. The facsimile copies of the inscription published by the royal Asiatic society were accompanied by an elaborate paper by Rawlinson, and a complete translation. The subsequent labors of Rawlinson and of other European scholars have brought the interpretation both of this and the other inscriptions to such a degree of completeness that they can now be studied with almost as much facility and satisfaction as Sanskrit or Greek. The language in which they are written belongs to the Iranian branch of the great Indo-European family. It is near- ly related to the language of the Zend Avesta and to the Sanskrit, and it was principally by comparison with those two languages that Rawlinson, and after him the other scholars of Europe, succeeded in interpreting it. We pass now to the other two kinds of writing which, as we have remarked, appear upon almost all the monuments on which the first is found. They are much more complicated than the first, and far more difficult of interpretation. The writing of the second kind, so designated because on the monuments it stands next after the Persian, is undoubtedly older than the lat- ter, and is nearly related to the third kind. It consists of about 100 different characters, some