The proper names contained in the Persian texts furnished the clue to the reading of the Babylonian transcripts. The values thus obtained for the Babylonian characters made it possible to read many of the words, the meaning of which was fixed by a comparison with the Persian original. It then became clear that Assyrian was a Semitic language, standing in much the same relation to Hebrew that the Old Persian stood to Zend. Its Semitic origin was proved to demonstration by the French scholar de Saulcy in 1849. Another French scholar, de Longpérier, had already discovered the name of Sargon in the Khorsabad inscriptions[14]--the first royal Assyrian name that had yet been read. De Saulcy himself subjected the Babylonian transcript of the trilingual inscription of Elwend to a minute analysis, and so carefully was the work performed, and so secure were the foundations upon which it rested, that the translation needs but little revision even to-day.[15] The old belief in the alphabetic nature of the characters, however, still possessed the mind of the decipherer, although in one passage he goes so far as to say, “I am tempted to believe” that the signs are syllabic. But he did not go beyond the temptation to believe, and the discovery was reserved for Hincks. Rawlinson was now at Bagdad. De Saulcy sent him his Memoirs, and the British scholar had the immense advantage of having in his hands the Babylonian version of the great Behistun inscription, of knowing the country in which the monuments were found, and of possessing copies of inscriptions which had not yet made their way to Europe. Nevertheless, it is amazing with what rapidity and perspicacity he forced his way through the thick jungle of cuneiform script. In his Memoir on the Persian texts, published in 1847, he already maps out with marvellous fulness and exactitude the different varieties of cuneiform writing. It is his second Memoir, however, which excites in the Assyriologist of to-day the profoundest feelings of surprise and admiration. This consists of notes on the inscriptions of Assyria and Babylonia, and was communicated to the Royal Asiatic Society at the beginning of the year 1850.[16] [Illustration: BLACK OBELISK OF SHAL-MANESER II. [_See p. 21._] [Illustration: CHALDÆAN HOUSEHOLD UTENSILS IN TERRA-COTTA. [_See p. 52._] One of the inscriptions he has translated in full--the annals of Shalmaneser II., on an obelisk of black marble discovered at Nimrûd and now in the British Museum. The text is a long one, and for the first time the European reader had placed before him a contemporaneous account of the campaigns of an Assyrian monarch in the ninth century before our era. The translation is substantially correct; it is only in the proper names that Rawlinson has gone much astray. The values of many of the characters were still uncertain or unknown, and he was under the domination of the belief that they represented alphabetic letters.