Category: History - Ancient
The decipherment of the cuneiform inscriptions of Western Asia is worthy of being included among the great achievements of the nineteenth century. Only a hundred years ago it was still possible to maintain that there was no such thing as cuneiform writing, and that the mysteri...
The decipherment of the cuneiform inscriptions of Western Asia is worthy of being included among the great achievements of the nineteenth century. Only a hundred years ago it wa...
7. CHAPTER IThe trilingual inscriptions of the Achaemenian Kings of Persia that have led to the decipherment of the whole cuneiform literature were found chiefly at Persepolis and Behistun;...
8. CHAPTER IIIt was more than sixty years before any farther contribution was made to the knowledge of Persepolis. In 1761, however, the King of Denmark, Frederic V., fitted out an expeditio...
9. CHAPTER IIIWe have already called attention to the important services rendered by Niebuhr to the study of the cuneiform inscriptions. The copies he made at Persepolis were by far the most...
10. CHAPTER IVThe simultaneous publication of the two essays by Burnouf and Lassen roused considerable interest among those devoted to the obscure problems of cuneiform decipherment. Grotefen...
11. Part III. was at the same time in the hands of the printer, and appearedlater in the year (1847). It contains Chapters IV. and V. of the Memoir. The former gives a revised transliteration and translation of the text with an Analysis; and the other a...
12. Part IV. was not published till 1849. It included the sixth chapterof the Memoir and treated of the Vocabulary, but the dissertation was never completed. It breaks off in the middle of a sentence, when the writer had not proceeded further than...
13. CHAPTER VThe signal success that had been achieved in the decipherment of the Persian column of the Achaemenian inscriptions greatly facilitated the accomplishment of the difficult task...
14. CHAPTER VIThe task of deciphering the Third or Babylonian Column led to far more important results, and cannot be so briefly summarised. The earliest inscriptions found in Babylonia were...
15. iii. 98 ff, Plates 52-74; but four of these are devoted to copies of the[65] P. 332. The four inscriptions in Niebuhr are lettered H, I, K, and L. H and I are Persian; K is Susian; and L Babylonian. L is the H of Bezold, p. 39; Menant, p. 78. I is u...
16. part ii. p. 233.[566] Rawlinson wrote, early in 1846: ‘The cause of the affinity of the vowel i for the characters _j_, _t_, _m_ and _v_ can neither be explained, nor can we perceive any unifor...