Page:Discovery and Decipherment of the Trilingual Cuneiform Inscriptions.djvu/367

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338

CUNEIFORM INSCRIPTIONS

discerned three well-marked varieties of writinjr ; but he was a])le to a]i]K)unce that Grotefeud, after a careful comparisr)]!, considered that they were all closely related to one another and to the third Persepolitan.^ It was sr)on recomiised that there are in fact only two varieties of Hal)ylonian, and what Mr. Rich supposed to be a third is due only to the vaL^aries of the scribe, or, as Rawlinson explained, it 'arises from the distortion of oblique elon^ration.' -^ It was loni»-, however, before the identification of the two svstems was satisfactx)rilv established. In the fifth volume of the ' Fundsrruben des Orients' Grotefend demonstrated the essential identity of the third Persepolitan and the simple Habvlonian, and in the followiuir volume he illustrated the similarity oi' the two svstems of Babylonian.^ In 1840 he succeeded in identifvhio' a few lapidary <!haracters witli tlieir equivalents in Xew Ha])ylonian. In his (•()ntri])uti()n to the subject he endeavoured to render tlie names of Tlystaspes and Darius into the two Habvlonian forms.'* In Hystaspes he seems to have succeeded in only one cliaracter — the lai)idary sign for • as ' — but his spellino* out of Darius was correct, l)oth in the cursive and lapidary forms. lie was able also to recoLHiise tliat certain inscriptions on vases written in the cursive style reproduced in part the same text as those on the bricks written in the lai)idary style. With a litth* farther study h(^ would have been able, from the material colh^'ted in this Table, to draw up a short list of equival(Mit sij/ns in tlie two systems. As it was, he left tliis demonstration to be accomplished by Dr. Ilincks in a mncli more successful manner than it was

' nidi, lifdii/lfni (I ml Perstpolis, p. IS."), note.

^ Thf* tliird systt-m is rtt«'n in Uicli, PI. IX. No. 4. Cf, liawlinsoii, J. R. A, .V. X. '2A.

^ lieitniife^ 1S40, ]). 7. ' See Table, ih. p. 05.

•' See Ilincks, Trans, li. 1. Aca<L x.\i. 24l>.