Page:Discovery and Decipherment of the Trilingual Cuneiform Inscriptions.djvu/182

Pehlevi, Chaldee, Arabic, Syriac and Armenian.^[1] He failed to recognise fully the intention of the diagonal wedge, so that upon some occasions he rendered it by the conjunction 'and.' He had, however, the merit of pointing out that a particular group of seven cuneiform letters were continually recurring, often followed by the same group with three or four other letters added to the termination. These are enclosed by diagonal wedges, and we now know they are single words, the simplest form being the nominative singular of 'King,' and the two longer the same word with the addition of the genitive singular and the genitive plural terminations. But Tychsen had no suspicion, at this time at least, that the letters occurring between the diagonals must be treated as one word,^[2] nor that the terminal variation was a grammatical inflexion. Accordingly he makes the simple form of seven letters represent two words, which he transliterates and translates Osch Aksak, 'is Aksak'; and the two longer groups he treats as three words—Osch Aksak yka, 'is Aksak divus,' for the first; and Osch Aksak acha, 'is Aksak perfectus,' for the second.^[3] The personage named Aksak, whom he had thus evolved, he took to be Arsaces, the founder of the Parthian dynasty; and he accordingly found himself compelled to attribute the inscriptions and monuments to that comparatively late date.^[4] Tvchsen's efforts at translation were exhausted by his rendering of the B and G Inscriptions of Niebuhr both of which he found to belong to Aksak; but he has transliterated the Inscriptions A. H, I, and L, for the benefit of other scholars who mav wish to read some

1. Tychsen, p. 27.
2. He made this discovery afterwards, either independently or else he accepted it from Mὓnter. See Heeren, Historical Researches (Eng. ed. 1846), ii. 329
3. Tychsen, pp. 29-30.
4. Ib. pp. 17, 22.