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In the Path of the Alphabet

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<h2 class='c010'>CHAPTER II.</h2> THE other event referred to, which was to open to scholars another field of research, in interest and importance equal to the Egyptian discoveries, was the work of Grotefend, early in the century, in the decipherment of cuneiform inscriptions. In many parts of Persia, there are to be found engraved upon the native rocks, or upon ruined temples, inscriptions in peculiar characters. These characters are called cuneiform, because they are made up from combinations of a single sign resembling the head of an arrow or a thin wedge. This sign was formed in three ways, either horizontal, <ANTIMG class='inline c021' src='images/cunih.jpg' alt='—' />; vertical, <ANTIMG class='inline c021' src='images/cuniv.jpg' alt='|' />; or angular, <ANTIMG class='inline c021' src='images/cunia.jpg' alt='<' />. From these primary signs, a great variety of combinations appear, either in groups or forming single characters. In the latter part of the eighteenth century, fragments of these inscriptions, and copies of others, had found their way to Europe and into the hands of scholars. Although some of the most powerful intellects of Europe had attempted their interpretation, but little, if any progress had been made until the beginning of the past century. [22]In the year 1802, Grotefend, then a young student in the University of Bonn, announced to his colleagues his success in the decipherment of a trilingual inscription copied by Niebuhr from the ruins of a royal palace at Persepolis. It will be remembered that this young scholar had no Rosetta Stone, with an inscription in a known language to indicate either subject or language; simply the strange combinations of these singular signs. The inscriptions were in three different systems of assortment of the elemental signs, evidently representing three different languages, and as they were placed side by side, it was also evident that they were three versions of the same decree, or record of the same event. One of the versions, which always came first, was simpler than the others. This consisted of about forty signs, while the others were more complicated and numerous. Again, in this version the groups of signs, which evidently formed words, were separated, each from the other, by a slanting wedge which did not appear in the others. Grotefend also observed that each inscription usually began with a certain group of words. One of these words, on different inscriptions, varied, while the other words of this group remained the same. By a happy guess, he conceived these groups to be royal names [23]and titles, the words which varied on the different inscriptions to be names of different kings, while the words which always continued the same in these groups were their titles. Upon this basis he began his work. It was known to scholars that certain Achæmenian princes—Darius and his successors—had erected some of the monuments from which copies of the inscriptions were taken. Turning then to the older Persian language, of the time of Darius, for the spelling of the name of this king, he gave alphabetic values to certain of these signs which he supposed might spell the name of Darius. Also, to the words which he supposed represented the titles of this king. These alphabetic values were based upon the spelling of the name and titles in the ancient Zend. In this way he obtained supposed values of six letters in the cuneiform. He then turned to another royal name which might be Xerxes. The name of Darius, in old Persian, or the Zend, is spelled: D-A-R-H-E-A-U-SCH. Again, the name of Xerxes, in Persian, is KH-SCH-H-E-R-E. Now, if the third sign in the spelling of the name of Darius was the same as the fifth sign in the spelling of the name Xerxes, in the Zend, this must have the phonetic value of R. The comparison proved the correctness of his conception. And again, further confirmation appeared in another royal [24]name, Artaxerxes, where the latter part of the name was the same as the second royal name, and the sign for the second character again corresponded with the letter R. Thus he compared letter by letter, and sign by sign, until he had found agreement in signs and sound for the names of these kings and their titles. 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, [25]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. [26]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. Subjoined are illustrations of cuneiform vowels and consonants as written: <div class='figcenter id004'> <ANTIMG src='images/i_026.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' /> <div class='ic001'> Cuneiform Vowels and Consonants </div> </div> <div class='pbb'> <hr class='pb c003' /></div> [27] <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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