cuneiform characters, which later study showed he had correctly identified.[1]
Such was the progress he had made down to the autumn of 1836 by his own independent research. Shortly afterwards he received copies of Heeren and Klaproth's writings, where at length he found the alphabets of Cfrotefend and St. Martin explained; but he writes: 'Far from deriving any assistance from either of these sources, I could not doubt that my knowledge of the character .... was much in advance of their respective and in some measure conflicting systems of interpretation.'[2] He had indeed some cause for congratulation, for he had discovered eighteen correct values, while Grotefend was only successful in twelve, though, with the two from Münter, he had at his disposal fourteen in all. St. Martin only made out two letters by his own ingenuity, and dis- posed altogether of not more than ten.[3]
Having thus greater means at his disposal, Rawlinson succeeded, in the course of 1837, in arriving at an approximate translation of the first two paragraphs of the Behistun inscription, 'which,' he says, 'would have been wholly inexplicable according to the systems of interpretation adopted either by Grotefend or Saint Martin,' the only ones with which he was at that time acquainted. By the end of the year his paper was
- ↑ Canon Rawlinson explains the process thus: 'Applying to the letters of these names the phonetic values previously obtained from the trio Hystaspes, Darius, Xerxes, twenty-one out of the twenty-eight letters were found exactly to suit their place. The remainder were new forms and furnished the alphabet wMth four new letters, m, n, h, and ch, (Memoir of Sir Henty Rawlinson, p. 320) Rawlinson himself, however, confessed in 1846 : 'I am neither able, nor is it of any consequence after the lapse of so many years, to describe the means by which I ascertained the power of each particular letter, or to discriminate the respective dates of the discoveries.' (J. R. A. S. x. 6, note.)
- ↑ J.R.A.S.x.7.
- ↑ See above, pp. 179, 201.
