Grotefend never succeeded much beyond this discovery, which was confined chiefly to the Persian inscription. The language of the others was unknown, and the characters peculiar and more numerous. They each evidently represented more ancient forms of writing, with complications not found in the simpler Persian version. Other scholars have however, carried forward the work begun by Grotefend, some of these reaching the same results independently, as in the case of Sir Henry Rawlinson, who applied the same processes to the other trilingual inscriptions, quite ignorant of Grotefend’s methods, and with further success. Still, to Grotefend is due the honor of first discovering the clew to the cuneiform system, and he it was who first laid a basis for future labors, which, wherever adopted, has reached the most satisfactory results. As rightly conjectured, the other texts of the trilingual inscriptions are copies of the same decrees, addressed to other peoples of the realm, speaking different languages and possessing different systems of writing. As a Persian ruler of to-day publishes an edict in Persian, Arabic and perhaps a Turanian dialect, so that it may be understood by all his subjects, so the ancient Persian kings put theirs into the languages and systems of writing peculiar to the principal races or people inhabiting the country. It was not, however, until the discovery and translation of the inscriptions at Nineveh, that the full story of these Persian inscriptions was distinctly revealed. It was then found that the two other texts were addressed, the one to a Semitic people of Persia, the other to a Turanian people, descendants of the primitive inhabitants of the country. The close relations of these two systems of writing to the two similar systems found in Assyria and Babylonia, were in evidence of the kinship of these separate races. Through the systematic arrangement of the vocabularies of the Semitic and Accadian people, found in the Ninevite remains, the secret of the Persian trilingual inscriptions came to light, revealing the extensive use of the cuneiform writing among the various people of western Asia. A significant fact in the early history of the decipherments of hieroglyphic and cuneiform characters, are the coincidences in these narratives. Thus the keys to both interpretations came through the sound and spelling of the royal names. Again, the clew given by the Coptic to the sounds of the old Egyptian, was also afforded by the ancient Zend, the sacred language of the Parsees. Notwithstanding the fact that alphabetic signs were the key to each of these systems of writing, we are not to find that either the hieroglyphic or cuneiform systems were founded on the alphabet. We are to find that alphabetism and a pure alphabet are not identical. We are also to find that before the simplicities of an alphabet are reached; the art of writing in all systems is a series of bewildering complications.