Very few additional inscriptions in Old Persian have been brought to light since the date of Rawlinson’s Memoir. But a good deal of labour has been spent in clearing up the doubtful passages in those already known. In some cases the text was, as we have said, so much mutilated as to defy intelligible translation. This was the case with the fifth column of the Behistun; and Rawlinson thought it best to omit it altogether from his revised edition of 1873.[591] This diffidence, however, may have stimulated M. Oppert to attempt a restoration of the text. We have already described the process followed by Rawlinson. It consisted in selecting a word or words containing the number of letters required to fit into the space left vacant by the erasure of the text, and which would at the same time make some kind of sense. It is obvious how much of the success of this operation will depend upon the ingenuity of the restorer; and still more upon the restraint he exercises over his imagination. No one is more distinguished than M. Oppert for the ingenuity of his conjectural restorations; and the column that Rawlinson abandoned as hopeless appears in Oppert’s edition as the ‘Complementary Behistun Text,’ and in a comparatively perfect condition. In this case he could receive no assistance from the translations, because both the other columns are destroyed; and not much by comparison, for there are few parallel passages. His work is, therefore, the more admirable as a display of the imaginative faculty. But his reading has not been accepted by Menant or Spiegel, or by Weissbach.[592] No doubt we owe the ‘Testament of Darius at Naksh-i-Rustam’ to the same method which appears to have been exercised upon the few lines copied by Westergaard from the long inscription below the one known and which Spiegel declares it is clearly impossible to translate.[593] One of the three short inscriptions engraved above the figures of the Tomb has also given rise to some discussion. Mr. Tasker, an English traveller, sent them to Rawlinson, by whom they were published in the ‘Journal of the Asiatic Society,’ and an improved version appeared some time afterwards.[594] Even at that period considerable difference of opinion existed as to the meaning of at least one of these short legends. According to Rawlinson, Norris, and Oppert, Aspathines is the ‘keeper of the arrows’ of King Darius; but Norris adds ‘chamberlain’ and Oppert ‘quiver-bearer.’ Elsewhere Oppert translates it quite differently: ‘Aspathines, minister of King Darius, who makes the law observed.’ Spiegel’s version is: ‘Aspacanâ des Königs Darius genosse, Zügelhalter (?).’[595]