The Democratic press. [volume] (Ravenna, O. [Ohio]) 1868-1901, 1886-08-12
CUNEIFoRM INSCRIPTIONS.
The Art OF Reading Them Founded Upon
n Great D,,,u of Ingenious Guessing.


The Art of Reading Them Founded Upon |
Great Dr,n OF Ingenious Guessing.
Toward the end of tho last century |
Prof Grotefend, German orientalist OF
Hanover, set to work to study cuneiform
inscriptions. He began by just looking
at them and guessing upon them. Me
buhr had already guessed little. The
marks were in three columns; so Me
buhr guessed by differences in the general
appearance of the signs that they Were
in three different languages. He also
guessed from the looks of the single
strokes of the signs that these languages
were all written from left to right, as
we write English. And he guessed that
the right hand column of the three.
whose signs were less complicated than
the others, was the simplest of the three
languages. All these guesses were
right. The Inscriptions came from
Persepolis, which was built by the
Achamenian kings of Persia (who ruled
from about 521 to 331 b. c., and they
were found in the upper parts of bass
reliefs which seemed to represent king
or ruler of some kind. Tychsen and
Munter, two other scholars, with this
set of Niebuhr's guesses to begin with,
had already guessed that a certain char
acter several times repeated in the
right-hand inscriptions of two of these
triple sets might mean king, that GER
tain others found with this might be the
| kings name.
This wasthe point at which Grotefend
took up the questioning. He took II for
! granted that the guesses so far were
right-viz. that probably the signs in
| question were the names and titles OF
some of the Achamenian Persian kings.
But which kingsP Here he happened
| to think of something; he remembered
some Inscriptions whose position and
arrangement was somewhat analogous
to those in Neutrality-suspicious. in
Pehlevi. a dialect of old Persian, already
deciphered, and known to be of the
Sassanian dynasty, q much later one.
He translated the beginning of one OF
these; and he said: perhaps my sup
posed Achamenid kings arranged the
beginning of their inscriptions as my
known Sassanid king did his. II so,
nv Achamend words in the first two
lines are these:
! (Somebody, ] the great king, the king of kings,
Son Of King Is9mebody.l of the family Of
AchRmenes. -
Then be looked about for a fact to fit
| HIS RucoSlnSs w Ahs k"o
kings were father and sonP" he asked
himself. Cyrus and Cambyses were;
but my two names do not begin with
the same sign, and therefore can not
mean them Cyrus and Artaxerxes were;
but the sign which ought to mean Cyrus
is rather too long in proportion. and
that which would be Artaxerxes too
short Darius and Xerxes were-that
will do" and Grotefend filled in his
blanks, conjecturally, thus:
Xerxes, the great king. the king Of kings,
Son of King Darius. of the family of Ach@-
And then Grotefend observed a detail
which immensely strengthened his con-
yiction that his guess was correct 1t
was this: He had been working over
two OF the inscriptions which came from
near each other. and were probably, he
thought, not unconnected. The two ini-
tial lines were similar in these two in.
scriptions, except for one variation,
which was: In one inscription the sign
for king was with the name of the faith
er mentioned; in the other not; and the
son of this non-royal father in one in.
scription was the royal father of the
royal son in the other. Now this ex-
actly suited his guess of Darius and
Xerxes; for Xerxes the king was son o.
Darius the king. whereas Darius the
king was son of Hystaspes. who was no
a king; and Grotefend now confidently
wrote down the dozen or so letters
which he extracted from his four names
-Xerxes, Darius. Hystaspes, Ache
menes.
The key to the cuneiform inscriptions
was found, although Grotefend himself
in consequence of not knowing enough
about other oriental languages, neve
got much beyond this first step.
..Cuneiform'' describes the way il
which the single strokes are made il
this method of writing, just as we cal
! q style of writing back-handed or
style of type full faced. 1t does not re
fer to the language, nor even to the
alphabet, but ESQ to speak) to the pen
manship. Each stroke of each letter in
; a .'cuneiform" inscription is cunei-
form or wedge-shaped stroke. Instead
of this word, these strokes have been
termed nail-shaped, arrow-headed, ,swal-
low-tailed, all Of which terms describe
the same characteristic.
You can easily make pen for cunei.
form writing. Take four-square-ended
. stick of wood, say eight inches long and
four-square desk-ruler will do-and use
a corner Of one end for writing; this il
your pen. Instead of paper, take some
, scottish, well-worked bricA-clay anC
spread it on board into a tablet or ia
plate say foot square and an inch OF
two thick. Hold your pen at a low
slope. nearly horizontal, with corne
of one end pointing downward over the
GLOW und mol ka strnkaS in the CLAW Sa,
, an inch long, with dab, slight lift
and draw, hitting light blow intG
the clay, and drawing the pen towar,
the right, and you will make '.cunei
form" strokes. There seems to be rea
son to suppose that instead Of this meth
cd by dab and draw the stroke
were (probably afterward made by
direct stamp. like type. In stone tn
strokes had, of course, to be cut-Ore'
land Monthly.