The discovery and decipherment of the trilingual cuneiform inscriptionsBooth, Arthur John
History
The discovery and decipherment of the trilingual cuneiform inscriptions
Booth, Arthur John
Achaemenian inscriptions; Cuneiform inscriptions
Hager’s book was still going through the press when another important
inscription was added to the Paris Library (1802). It is on a stone
found by M. Michaux at Tak Kasra below Bagdad. The Vase of Caylus and
the Caillou Michaux continued for a time to be the two most celebrated
samples of the Persepolitan and Babylonian styles in Europe. Later on,
the Persepolitan collection was enriched by the discovery of the ‘Suez
Stone,’ published in the ‘Travels of Denon,’ in 1807. But all these were
entirely eclipsed by the long inscription found at Babylon and sent
by Sir Harford Jones to the India House. It was long known simply as
the India House Inscription, till later knowledge proved it to be the
Standard Inscription of Nebuchadnezzar. Shortly afterwards (1808) the
Library of Trinity College, Cambridge, received an inscription from Sir
John Malcolm of which we hear little till a much later period.
We have said that an inscription published by Hager without commentary
in 1801 fell into the hands of Lichtenstein, who made it the subject
of a Memoir published in the ‘Brunswick Magazine.’[292] This eccentric
writer put forward the theory that the bricks concerning which so much
noise was being made were in fact not older than the seventh or eighth
century A.D., and that the characters bore a ‘striking resemblance’ to
Cufic.[293] Nothing more was necessary than to remove the arbitrary
additions of unnecessary wedges, in order to detect the Cufic symbols
they concealed. Unlike most other scholars, he chiefly studied the
Babylonian bricks and the most complicated of the Persepolitan systems;
and he regarded an entire group of characters as only one letter. Having
reduced it to the necessary simplicity by simply dropping out all the
inconvenient wedges till he could discover something that suggested the
appearance of a Cufic letter, he was enabled to draw up an alphabet by
which he read all the cuneiform inscriptions with the greatest ease.[294]
He then discovered that the language was an ancient form of Arabic and
should be read from right to left. He was quite surprised that Hager
should have been so deluded by wild dreams of Belus and Semiramis that he
failed to see that his bricks ‘contained only a few miserable sentences
in Arabic.’ What the Arabic words really were he did not consider it
necessary to disclose to the public, but he communicated a few of them to
De Sacy, who pronounced that they were not Arabic at all. Lichtenstein
was good enough to translate Hager’s brick, and found that it was a
prayer; from thence he passed on to Niebuhr’s inscriptions, and selected
the difficult specimens (C, E, and L, Pl. 24). From C he obtained the
most astonishing result. The words ran as follows: ‘The King, the
Sovereign, Prince of all Princes, the Lord Saleh, Jinghis, son of
Armerib, governor-general for the Emperor of China, Orkhan Saheb.’[295]
Encouraged by this striking success, he next took in hand the long
inscription on the Caillou Michaux.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account