Page:Discovery and Decipherment of the Trilingual Cuneiform Inscriptions.djvu/280
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THE PERSIAN COLUMN
nine years of age, and it was far in advance of any- thino* that had yet been accomplished. Meanwhile the number of inscriptions available for study continued to increase. In 1837, Grotefend pu])lislied four lines of an inscription from the collec- tion of Lord Aberdeen and Sir Gore Ouseley, which had recently been presented to the British Museum by Mountstuart Elphinstone. With the assistance of Lassen's alphabet he deciphered the name of the king to whom it Ijelonged. It read ' Artks't'ft,' which he easilv identified with Artaxerxes.^ The last line con- tained what appeared to be a new letter (^^5 which he thought had the vahie of r. Two years later (1830) the inscriptions copied by Mr. liich so far back as 1821 at last saw the light.^ Several of them were alr(*ady known by the copies made by Le Bruyn and Niebulir ; but the plates were found to contain the complete text of the Inscription of Artaxerxes, of which Grotefend's formed the four con- cluding Hnes (PL 23, Inscr. P). It was taken from the north wall of the palace, now identified as that of Ochus, facini( the Palace of Darius. He also was the first to copy the Inscription of Xerxes from the anta of liis j)alace (PI. 16, Inscr. E). The same inscriptions are frequently repeated, and it was an advantage to have copies of more than one version. Thus Eich gave the celebrated four-line Inscription of Xerxes, copied from the east portal of the palace, which was already so well known from Niebuhr s cop}', taken from the north (Inscr. G, PL 18). Rich has also given two versions of the Inscription of Darius— one taken from the anta of the palace and already known from Le Bruyn (131) (Inscr. C), the other from the south stairs, which he was ' Beitrwje^ p, 16.
