3. How the Writings were Read.
To the ordinary visitor to the British Museum, looking at the cuneiform inscriptions—nothing but arrowhead characters variously grouped—it seems wonderful that they should constitute a language, and incredible that they should be read. The question is often asked, "How can we trust the translations put before us? How do we know that they are any more than guesses?" It may be well, therefore, to relate how the key to the lost character was obtained, and how the decipherment proceeded until now the translation of narrative texts can be made with as much certainty as translations from the Hebrew of the Old Testament.
The clue was obtained from the Behistun inscriptions, through the energy of Sir Henry Rawlinson; and the records of the successive steps of the discovery will be found in the Journal of the Asiatic Society, in the Quarterly Review for March 1847, and in such popular works as Mr Vaux's "Nineveh and Persepolis." Edwin Norris and others had laboured, and the process of deciphering cuneiform texts was already well advanced when Sir Henry Layard and Mr Rassam discovered such abundant treasures in the mounds on the Tigris. The inscriptions which are now known to record the personal history of Darius, the son of Hystaspes, are almost always in three forms of the cuneiform character, which may be described as Persian, Median, and Assyrian, and were addressed to different races of his subjects. The most extensive monument of the kind is found on a rock escarpment at Behistun, on the frontiers of Persia, a place on the high road from Babylonia to the further east. The rock is almost perpendicular, and rises abruptly from the plain to the height of 1700 feet, an imposing object which must always have attracted the attention of travellers. It was known
