Mesopotamia; the Babylonian and Assyrian civilization

Front matter

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Foreword

THE SEMITES AND CIVILIZATION

M MORET’S From Tribe to Empire has revealed the e Mesopotamian peoples and empires in ,the general history of the Ancient_East; tt has assigned them their -place in that complex evolution when social organization was beginning and civilization developing through the accords and conflicts of human groups which the contradictory tendencies to mutual aid and to imperialist greed evoke.

As M. Moret’s volume on the Nile and Egyptian Civilization is destined to do for Egypt, this volume sets out to define the réle of Babylonia and Assyria, to determine their contributions to human progress.

Here will be seen how, by patient excavation and by laborious decipherment, this remote past has been conjured up gradually— conjured up with all the gaps of a shadow: L. Delaporte gives in abridged form the results of the latest works on the kings, the dynasties, the perpetual wars, the sacks of towns, the deportations of the conquered, the monotonous destructions of the products of collective labour. Maspero’s Histoire ancienne des peuples de l’Orient classique has inevitably become out of date. The period prior to Hammurabi has never yet been treated as it

. deserves in any French work. Abroad, although great tomes have been consecrated to partial syntheses, the present state of our knowledge has not been fixed taking the two great Mesopotamian empires as a whole. Moreover, if in doing so, this book leaves the same impression as certain ancient tapestries frayed by time where fragmentary scenes and mutilated figures alone are visible,

“ss that is just what the author intended. Continuous knowledge in the case of these past ages is neither possible, nor, happily, essential.

An argument against history ts often based on these gaps which exist and will always exist. But what ts vital for history—one must not weary of repeating it—is not to know all the facts, but

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836689 vi FOREWORD to solve the problems. Individual facts in infinite number have, for the most part, left no trace ; but for the solution of the problem, an integral knowledge of them, far from being necessary, would be a crushing burden. A restricted number of data can suffice Jor the establishment of general facts.

Undoubtedly in the case of Mesopotamia the main chronological framework is not yet established with all the rigour that could be wished. Still, already the history of Babylonia and that of Assyria are assuming a reasonably precise and articulate form from the beginning of the third millennium before Christ in the one case and during the first millennium in the other.

Undoubtedly the racial problems are far from being solved and nerhaps they never will be completely solved. Asia Minor, as A. Moret has remarked, has been a sort of Germany, “‘ a reservoir of peoples, disparate in origin, reflecting the shock and recoil of the ceaseless migrations which were going on further north on the plains which stretch from the present Russia to Tibet.”? In these movements of groups whose ethnic origins are diverse, tt is the Semites who appear in the first place, although behind them are seen other elements of different races and less sharply defined : the Sumerians who have been absorbed by the Semites, the Elamites, Kassites, Hittites, and Mitannians, who have“ blocked”’ the latter and limited an expansion which will start anew later in the Mohammedan epoch.*

Undoubtedly we are not fully informed about this Mesopotamian civilization on which the Semitic element has stanvped its mark, Still, many precious documents have been collected. The main object of this book is to define exactly what is and what is not known about the institutions and mental acquisitions of the Babylonians and Assyrians. And tts deepest interest—corresponding to the deepest interest of history—is to show as far as possible how amid varied chances, thanks to favourable contingencies (certain ethnic endowments, a certain natural environment, certain individuals), the logical treasury of humanity was enriched in this portion of space and time.

1 Methodical excavation might remove many of the uncertainties. See Moret, From Tribe to Empire, and the conclusion of the present volume.

2 Ibid. Contrary to A. Moret, J. de Morgan is inclined to place the cradle of the Semites in Arabia. Cf. an article by J. de Morgan on ‘The Origins of the

Semites and those of the Indo-Europeans’ in Révue de Synth. hist., T’ome AXXIV.

3 See Moret, op. cit. Are the Sumerians and Elamites Turanian, the rest Aryan? They were in any case mixed with Aryans,

FOREWORD vil

The imperialist spirit as defined in the Foreword to From Tribe to Empire found tts fullest incarnation among the Semitic population of Mesopotamia. Among these peoples—above all among the Assyrians—war played a preponderant réle ; their military institutions were specially developed ; the “‘ explottation of the weak by the strong ’’+ has been the current practice— and it was pitiless. They were not content with victory ; conquests and raids were accompanied by systematic massacres and wholesale deportations.2 At Babylon the king reserves to himself the satisfaction ‘‘ of tearing out the eyes of the conquered king.’’® In Assur war was not only a means, tt seems often to have been an end—battle for the exercise of violence, victory for the pleasure of torturing. It is useless to know all the wars which the Babylonians and Assyrians unleashed, but, to know the people themselves, one must catch a glimpse of their garden of torments by the help of some examples.

The inscriptions—and there are many of them—-in which the Assyrian kings tmmortalize their triumphs represent the most frightful expression of human “ wickedness.”’* “‘These warriors who had sinned against Ashur and had plotted evil against me, the Great One who worship him, from their hostile mouths have I torn their tongues and I have compassed their destruction. As for the others (Babylonians) who remained alive, I offered them as a funerary sacrifice at the feet of the great shédé and lamassé (winged bulls and lions) between whom Sennacharib my father’s father had been assassinated ; their lacerated members have I given unto the dogs, the swine, the wolves, the birds of prey, the fowls of the atr, and the fishes of the waters to devour. By accomplishing these deeds I have rejoiced the hearts of the great gods,

1 Tbid. 2 J. de Morgan describes the condition of Chaldea when it received its first non-Semitic colonists, thus :—‘‘The soil, of extreme richness and perpetually moist, was covered with tamarisks, willows, acacias, and date-palms, presented impenetrable thickets and wide glades where grew cereals—among them wheat, barley, and oats, of which these lands are the original home. The lagoons, quite shallow, muddy, sometimes several kilometres wide, fringed with a girdle of gigantic reeds, and choked with aquatic plants, were breeding-places for an immense abundance of fishes and clouds of waterfowl. It is here in this privileged region surrounded by deserts on every hand, that the wmagination of the Orientals placed the terrestrial paradise ’’ (Les premicres civilisations, p. 179). This ‘‘ garden of Mesopotamia,” this Eden (cf. Moret, op. cit.), must have attracted the Semites in large numbers when they began their movements—the cause of which J. de Morgan finds in the desiccation of Arabia. Cf. the article cited above in Rév. de Synth. hist. 3 See below, p. 70. 4 Tbid.

viil FOREWORD my lords.” It must not be forgotten moreover that the triumphal stele constitute at once monuments of pride and of terror ; there may be an element of cynical bluff in these inventories of massacres.

These masters of war, this strange people of Assyria who, in that respect like the Huns, have written a blood-stained page in history, have been, as so often happens, vanquished by the vanquished. From the point of view of human evolution, the Assyrians are of interest just in so far as they have been agents in the transmission of Babylonian influence. Through them and not only directly, Babylon has acted upon Israel, upon the Phenicians and Lydians ; through the latter and through the Hittites it has acted upon Greece.

Babylon owes to the mixture of the Semitic element with the Sumerian element—undoubtedly pacific and inventive—an original civilization which with Egypt? is the oldest and most notable.* In the Sumero-Akkadian empire, “it seems,” says J. de Morgan, “ that governmental conceptions, such as administration, finance and war, must be attributed to the Semites, while the arts, writing, industry, cultivation and all branches of knowledge based upon care bestowed upon the earth, were due to the aborigines.” * What the Assyrians have transmitted are then certain advances in social organization, some techniques and an art, finally myths and sciences—a false knowledge and a true knowledge.

In Chaldea and Assyria the social structure of human life was consolidated. Egoistic and practical, these people, although they moved in the religious atmosphere of which we have spoken,® although they always ascribed a religious origin to power and a sacred character to the kings,® gladly used religion as an instrument, and it was open to them to free themselves from its bonds more easily than others. They have endowed the family with rigid cohesion. They have perfected administration. Among

1 J.de Morgan, op. cit., p. 363, note 1 (the text quoted above has been revised by L. Delaporte) ; cf. pp. 340, 349, 350, 357 and, in this volume, p. 342.

2 See Moret, op.cit. Cf.J.de Morgan, op. cit., pp. 209 ff. and the conclusion to this book.

3 “The Semites have only risen to the first rank in countries where they have been mixed with other peoples such as the Sumerians in Mesopotamia’”’ R. Kreglinger, La réligion d’Israél, p. 12).

5 Foreword to From Tribe to Empire.

6 See Moret, op. cit.; Année Sociologique, Vol. XII, pp. 457 ff.

FOREWORD 1x them economic organization was exceptionally advanced and the contract particularly played a réle undoubtedly quite as important as ‘“‘in Attic law of the fourth century B.C., in Roman law at the beginning of our era, or in French law at the beginning of the Renaissance.” Legislation very consciously retained a purely social character. The Code of Hammurabi—discovered by J. de Morgan in 1902 and translated by V. Scheil—the oldest legislative text of the same wmportance in our possession, “‘ is entirely free from any religious formula, almost from any religious idea at all, a surprising fact in those days when, among all other peoples, legislation was only a department of the precepts of cult.” The penalties it inflicts are very severe, often cruel.’ Its spirit ts in the strictest sense juridical, not moral. Mesopotamia was thus as positivist as Egypt was idealist.*

Art for art’s sake, science for the sake of knowledge itself, only arise—we have pointed this out already, and we shall insist upon it subsequently—in a late phase of human evolution. Here art and science have progressed just by reason of deep-seated utilitarianism and the appetite for enjoyment.

“ The cities of Marduk, of Ishtar, and of Assur, the gardens of Babylon, the palaces of the Sargonids and of Nebuchedrezzar have endowed the sanguinary and voluptuous despotism with a grandiose and inhuman setting... . With greater knowledge than Egypt... with a more studious attention to detail, Chaldea was less nobly artistic, her thought less lofty, her taste more sober and less pure, her touch less delicate and less light ; but her defects as much as her merits have served her for the creation of that Asiatic art—sensuous, sumptuous, and colossal. Superb cities, temples and palaces of unheard-of luxury, dazzling ziggurats. . . . Blue battlements crown walls of green, white, yellow, and red; from black to gold, white, purple, blue, vermilion, silver, the seven storeys mottled with changing lustre add variely to the ascent of the tower; the towns gleam like polychrome enamels in the flames of the sun.”’ A wealth of detail corresponds to the magnificence of the whole—* glazed bricks, Jriezes of figures in relief, the glittering treasure of the miner’s toil, cunning workmanship in tron, silver and bronze, an extra-

2 J. de Morgan, op. cit., p. 273; cf. Moret, op. cit. 3 See below, pp. 98 ff.

4 J. de Morgan, op. cit., p. 251.

x FOREWORD vagance of jewels, embroideries, stuffs, fringed robes, haughty tiaras, furniture resting on pedestals like palaces on basements, a glory of tapestries, those ‘ Babylonian fabrics’ renowned throughout Antiquity, the famous ancestors of the Oriental carpets.’?+

A art of the legends which have formed the imaginative explanation of things and which have helped to regulate the conduct of men—the Creation, the victory of light over dark chaos, Paradise Lost, the Deluge—have come down from the Babylonians, although their division between the Sumerian and the Semitic element? cannot be accurately apportioned. At the same time they have been pioneers in the positive advances whereby human society has been perfected and man’s empire over his environment has been enlarged. For industrial techniques, the means of communication and the transmission of ideas, for the knowledge of nature and especially of the heavens, mankind as a whole is indebted to them. Our scientists have remote precursors among their scribes and magicians. The latter have been attracted by the brilliance of the eastern nights. Astrology rests on these two principles’—‘ the starry heaven is the visible countenance of the sacred world’ ; a necessary relation subsists between astronomical phenomena and the events of terrestrial life.” But astrology has been the nurse of astronomy since the false idea has led to true observations. Primitive science, when it does not spring directly from practice, is born of speculations which turn the spirit towards nature.

Calculation, writing, cosmology—in that gradual formation of the psychism of which we have already spoken—these are the new and pregnant elements, these are the fertile inventions of Mesopotamia.

Across the successive volumes of this work what ts to ensure their unity is the general plan, the continual preoccupation with the problems of history and the anxiety to verify some great explicative hypotheses. It is also solid knowledge, the indis-

1 Paul Lorquet, L’Art et Histoire, pp. 205-213, esp. 208 and 211

* On Israel’s debt to Babylonian mythology, see Kreglinger, op. cit., pp. 22 ff. In his conclusion, L. Delaport makes some reservations as to the originality of the Babylonians.

3 Année Sociologique, IV, p. 183. Cf. Kreglinger, op. cit., p. 25.

4 See Prehistoric Man, Language, A Geographical Introduction to History, The Earth before History, and Race and History, in this series.

FOREWORD xi pensable basis for any historical construction. But the method of exposition in history cannot be completely independent of the author’s personality. Does not that play some part even in the explanation of the natural sciences and of the truths of mathematics themselves without infecting the foundation of Science? On the same basis of profound erudition one historian proceeds by generalizations and extensive scenes, another by fine shades, by an accumulation of details and typical quotations. Properly handled the two procedures end by calling forth a similar image. We believe that the reader of this book, replete as it 1s with facts, while he views the general outline of the past in Mesopotamia, will at the same time arrive unconsciously, but inevitably, at the heart of that reanimated civilization. 3

HENRI BERR oo ; So ult. , s * ' ’

j oan

Book I: HISTORICAL OUTLINE

CHAPTER Il. Tue LAND AND ITS RESOURCES

Il. PEOPLES AND DYNASTIES

CHRONOLOGICAL SUMMARY OF THE HISTORY OF BABYLONIA

Boox IL: INSTITUTIONS

J, THe STATE AND THE FAMILY

1. The State 3. The Family

2. The Army II. LEGISLATION

_ III. Economic ORGANIZATION

1. Landed property Te

2. Industry ; apprentice- 8. ship 9.

. Trade 0.

. Sale it

. Exchange

. Hire

1 1 aD or ke

Loan

Pledges

Sureties

Deposit

The Temple ; temporal administration

Book III: Bertiters anp CRAFTS

I. RELIGION : ; . The gods 10.

2. The first triad

3. The second triad Ll: 4, Marduk r2, 5. Some other deities 13 6. The deified princes 14, 7. The Temple

8. The high clergy 15. 9, First class of the 16.

clergy (magicians) 17, xiii

Second class of the clergy (soothsayers)

The priestesses

The necessity of religion

. Man and his god

Fear of the gods, Prayer and Sacrifice

Sin

Retribution

After death

PAGE

11 16 61

Xiv CONTENTS

OHAPTER PAGE II. Tuer Arts . ’ . : : : ; : <<) ee 1. Architecture 5. Cylinder-seals 2. Sculpture 6. Enamelled brick 3. Metal figures 7. Costume 4. Engraving 8, Furniture III. LeEetrrers AND SCIENCE. : : j A F Lee 1. The Scribes 5. Money 2. Literature 6. The calendar 3. Epistolatory corre- 7. Medicine, Astronomy spondence 8. Geography 4. Weights and Measures PART II: ASSYRIAN CIVILIZATION Book I: HistToricaAL OUTLINE THE SARGONIDS . : ; : , ; : , 230 CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE OF ASSYRIAN RULERS ; . 266 Boox II: InstrrutTions J. Tue STATE AND THE FAMILY : ; : ; » “268 1. The State 3. The Family 2. The Army II. LEGISLATION ; ; / ; ‘ , F 5c III. Economic ORGANIZATION ‘ : : : ; . 204 1. Landed property 5. Loan 2. Agreements 6. Pledges 3. Sale 7. Sureties 4, Exchange Boox III: Betiters AnD CRAFTS I, RELIGION ; i i ; 4 , : : . 309 II. Tue Arts. F : ‘ : ; : ; . “S16 1. Architectur 4, Engraving on stone 2. Sculpture 5. Costume and furniture 3. Metal figures III. LiIveRATURE AND SCIENCE . : ‘ ; P « eae 1. Historical literature 3. Sciences

2. Epistolatory literature

CONCLUSION t : : ; : : ; « S56 BIBLIOGRAPHY ‘ ; i : : ; , . 3861 INDEX ‘ ; i ; : - : : oye ea

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

FIGURE

A . Votive mace-head of Mesilim (Tello, Louvre) . Ur-Nina and his family (Tello, Louvre)

om tr > GT Fe S bo

Ke Se Se eS SS a on f& WO DY —= & eSowenwnnwewnonwenwnwe wd NY FF KF eK Son a af OO NW = © © CO =I oo 99 am)

Map of the Babylonian and Assyrian Empires

. Stele of Naram-Sin (Délégation en Perse, Louvre)

. Statue of Gudea (Tello, Louvre)

. Hammurabi before Shamash (Délégation en Perse, onus, ; . Tablet of Nabu-apla-iddin (British Museum) :

. Fragment from the Stele of the Vultures (Tello, Louvre)

. Sumerian weapons (Tello, Louvre)

. Kudurru (Délégation en Perse, Louvre)

. Kudurru (Délégation en Perse, Louvre)

. Sumerian Deity (Niffer, University of Pennsylvania Museum) . The god Marduk (Babylon, Berlin Museum)

. Balaggu (Louvre) : :

. Tombs at Lagash (after Nouvelles fouilles de 5 ello, p. 126)

. The Ishtar Gate at Babylon (after ae es Das wieder erstehende Babylon)

. Fragment of the Circular Bas-relief (ello, tees

. Mace-head of Gudea (Tello, Louvre) .

. Libation-vase of Gudea (Tello, Louvre)

. Dog of Sumu-ilum (Tello, Louvre) . ‘ : i Y Prophylactic deity . ;

. Engraved shell (Tello, Louvre) .

. Engraved shell (Tello, Louvre) .

. Silver vase of Entemena (Tello, Louvre)

. Archaic seal (Louvre) :

. Cylinder not developed (Bibliothéque Rau iale N 0. 74) . Archaic cylinder (Tello, Louvre 4) ;

. Cylinder of the epoch of Agade (Louvre, Tello, 83)

. Cylinder of Lugalanda, ishakku of Lagash aiaasieeh Allotte de la Fuye) .

. Myth of Zu; epoch of Agade (Bibliotheque Nationale, N 0. 74) . Cylinder of Gudea, ishakku of Lagash (Louvre, Tello, 108)

XV

XV1 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

FIGURE

32. 33. 34, 35. 36.

Kassite cylinder (Louvre, A. 600)

Neo-Babylonian cylinder (Louvre, A. 770) .

Form of a Neo-Babylonian seal (Louvre)

Neo-Babylonian seal (Louvre, A. 759) p

Marduk’s dragon, on the Ishtar Gate (after Koldeway, Das wieder erstehende Babylon)

Decoration on the outer walls of the throne-room in the palace of Nebuchadrezzar II at Babylon (after Koldeway, Das wieder erstehende Babylon) , ; ; : :

. Painted vase (Tello, Louvre)

. Statue found among the ruins of Assur (Berlin Museum)

. Stele of Ashur-natsir-apla IT

. Tribute brought by Jehu, king of Israel (Obelisk of Etaiaane eser II, British Museum)

. Stele of Esarhaddon (Sinjerli, Berlin Museum) . Siege of a fortified city (Palace of cee after Botta, Monuments de Ninive) . : Ashur-natsir-apla attacking a fortified city (after es The Monuments of Nineveh, vol. I)

. Death of Teumman, king of Elam (after Layard, ‘bid, ) . Image of the god Nabu about 800 B.c. (British Museum)

Palace of Sargon at Dur-Sharrukin: bird’s-eye view (after Perrot et Chipiez, Histoire de l’ Art)

. Palace of Sargon: detail of the fagade, viewed from the town side

. Plinth-decoration of a passage in the palace of Dur-Sharrukin

(after Botta, Monuments de Ninive)

. Lion transfixed by an arrow (Palace of metals British

Museum)

51. Wounded lioness (Palace of Ashurbanipal, British Museum) . . King, attendants, and genii om? ena The Monuments i

Nineveh)

. Bronze lion (Palace of Sargon, thar) : . Cylinder of king Eriba-Adad (Assur, Berlin ey after

C. Weber, Altorientalische Siegelbilder, Fig. 316a) Cylinder of king Ashur-uballit (after Weber, ibid., Fig. 354a)

. Assyrian cylinder (Bibliothéque Nationale, No. 350)

Assyrian cylinder (Louvre, A. 630)

. Assyrian cylinder (Louvre, A. 648) . Assyrian cylinder (Bibliothéque Nationale, No. 330) .

Assyrian seal (Louvre, A, 648) .

Introduction

HE sources from which we derive our knowledge of the

Babylonian and Assyrian civilizations which flourished in the Tigris-EKuphrates plains before the Christian era, are almost exclusively the inscriptions and monuments of the two civilizations themselves. To M. Botta, French Consul at Mosul, is due the distinction of having first undertaken systematic excavations to recover traces of the ancient Assyrian Empire. He was responsible for the discovery in 1842, on the site of Khorsabad, of Dar-Sharrukin, the town built by Sargon at the end of the eighth century before our era. A little later, the Englishman, Layard, took up works which Botta had abandoned and revealed the important library of King Ashurbanipal (seventh century B.c.) together with the ruins of ancient Niniveh.! It lies outside the scope of our subject to recall all the researches conducted by French, English, German and American archeologists after these happy beginnings. But as far as Babylonia is concerned, we cannot forget the work of Ernest de Sarzec. Appointed French vice-consul at Basra, and two months after having taken up his duties in January, 1877, he attacked the mounds of sand named Tello and carried on till his death fruitful campaigns at the site, which were continued by Col. Cros. They have yielded tens of thousands of texts and the history of Lagash, an important city throughout the third millennium. We must also mention the Délégation Scientifique en Perse du Ministere de V Instruction Publique. Between 1897 and 1912, under the able direction of M. Jacques de Morgan, it exhumed from the ruins of Susa, the capital of a country bordering on, and often hostile to, Babylonia, numerous artistic and epigraphical documents which throw brilliant light on Babylonian civilization; it will suffice to cite the triumphal stele of Naram-Sin (twenty-eighth century) and the Code of

1 LXXII.

B 1

Hammurabi (twenty-first century), the most important text of ancient law yet discovered.

Hardly any information upon our subject that deserves attention is to be found in classical traditions. Most of the time the sources used by the Greek authors are the narratives of travellers, and, when they can be tested by Assyrian or Babylonian documents, many mistakes, many errors, are found inthem. For instance, on the testimony of Herodotus, ‘the soil of Babylonia is so favourable for cereals that they yield a two-hundredfold harvest, and in soils of exceptional quality a three-hundredfold return.”” The Greek historian had visited the country himself and his testimony is quite honest, but he had undoubtedly been shown some experimental plot from which a yield far above the average had been obtained by suckering. It has recently been possible to cite the case of some stalks of wheat, cultivated in excellent land at Mérignac (Gironde), which have produced 2250 grains from one,! but one could not infer from this that such a result is obtained under normal conditions of cultivation to-day. In the plains of the Lower Euphrates the yield of wheat, at present from thirty to forty times the sowing, has scarcely varied since antiquity ; at most, judging from the account-tablets, it may have been slightly higher during the third millennium in the region round Lagash near the Persian Gulf.?

The beginnings of the decipherment of the Babylonian and Assyrian script, called cuneiform (from the Latin cuneus, wedge, and forma, form), because each element in the signs resembles a wedge, go back beyond the discoveries of Botta. The first attempts were, in fact, made on the total of forty-one characters derived from the Babylonian script which compose the syllabary of the Achemenid Persian inscriptions.? After Pietro della Valle, who in 1621 had copied five signs in the ruins of Persepolis, and had recognized the direction of the writing, Chardin (1678), Kaempfer (1712), and Corneille de Bruyn (1718) had brought back more important summaries of the texts. About 1765 Niebuhr

transcribed several complete inscriptions, proved that they were grouped by threes, that in each group there were three different types of script, and that, if they were inscribed on the same line, the simplest was always on the right, the most complicated on the left. In 1798 Tyschen recognized that words in texts of the first type were separated by a sign, the oblique wedge. Miinter, in 1802, opined that the language of this first script must be related to Zend, which separates the words in the same way. In the same year Grotefend took his stand on archeological considerations in attempting the analysis of this first script. He found the word in which Tyschen and Miinter thought they discerned the royal title, often repeated twice near the beginning of ' the inscription, the second time with a termination in which he saw the mark of the plural; the whole group would mean “‘ king of kings.’”’? The preceding word was certainly the king’s name itself. Hence the formula ‘“ X king of kings.” The group “king” sometimes appeared again as the third word after this whole. We must then in this case have the name of the father preceded by a term which meant son. Hence the formula ‘‘ X king of kings, son of Y king.” Elsewhere, for comparison, ‘‘ Y king of kings, son of Z,’”’ occurred without the latter being himself a king. Since it was a question of the inscriptions of Persepolis, the second formula must give the name of the founder of the dynasty of the Achemenids. If it were a question of Cyrus, whose father and son bore the same names, X and Z would be identical ; Y then represented Darius and the translations must read : Xerxes, king of kings, son of Darius king... Darius, king of kings, son of Hystaspes,.. .

To decipher the three proper names Grotefend turned to the ancient transcriptions. He definitely identified two vowels and determined the phonetic value of ten syllabic signs. Eleven savants, among them Lassen and Burnouf, Hincks and Rawlinson, perfected his work. The syllable la was only recognized in 1851 by Oppert, and the ideogram under which the name of Ormuzd, the national god of the Achzemenids lay hid, resisted decipherment till 1878.

The second of the scripts of Persepolis presented greater difficulties, but it was rightly believed that the three texts must each recite the same theme in different languages. The presence of a distinctive sign in front of proper names was at once demonstrated, and much ingenuity was devoted to classifying the signs in accordance with the number and direction of their elements. The first serious attempt at translation was made in 1844 by the Dane, Westergaard. Hincks discovered the syllabism and some elements (1846), and Saulcy (1850) studied the grammatical forms. In 1853 Norris published the Inscription of Behistun recovered by Rawlinson, and the decipherment proposed by Westergaard was tested. The excavations of the Délégation en Perse were needed to increase the number of texts drawn up in this language, called Elamite, or Anzanite, spoken by the non-Semitic inhabitants of Elam.

The third script remained. To Grotefend again is due the credit of having determined the first words. He succeeded in isolating the groups of signs which must correspond to the names of Cyrus, Hystaspes, Darius and Xerxes. Having demonstrated the analogies of this script to that on some bricks picked up among the ruins of Babylon, a happy intuition enabled him to determine the group representing the name of Nebuchadrezzar. Such roughly was the state of decipherment when Botta announced his discoveries. In the third type of script it had only been possible to identify twenty proper names known from the two others. Lowenstern tried to analyse them ; he demonstrated the existence of variants of signs and suggested the principle of homophony, i.e. the existence of different signs for the same sound. Longpérier deciphered the protocol of Sargon on the monuments discovered by Botta, and the latter classified 642 different signs. Like Lowenstern he discovered homophones. He identified the script of Khorsabad with those of Persepolis and Babylon, and finally proved that the tongue was Semitic. Saulcy picked out from the texts of Persepolis short phrases corresponding to phrases in the Persian text. He determined 120 characters and found their phonetic value. Hincks of Dublin discovered the principle of syllabism, i.e. the equivalence of some signs to a syllable and not just to a single letter. Saulcy at length devoted himself to the texts from Khorsabad, convinced himself that the same inscription was repeated several times, made some comparisons and, utilizing his former readings of the signs, succeeded in translating ninety-six lines. Rawlinson, who had just published without commentary the introduction to the Obelisk of Nimrud, proposed a translation differing only very slightly. In 1851 Rawlinson transcribed and translated the Inscription of Behistun from the version in the third script; he assigned their value to 246 characters and discovered the principle of polyphony or the existence of signs which each have several values, several sounds. The following year Hincks recognized that certain signs formed composite syllables. The more one struggled with the decipherment, the more complications arose. It was then that the Royal Asiatic Society conceived the idea of inviting several savants to decipher a text of over eight hundred lines, each according to his own particular method and principles. Rawlinson, Hincks, Fox Talbot, and Oppert sent in their manuscripts, which were unsealed on May 25th, 1857. The result was very satisfactory. The four translations of this inscription of Tiglath-Pileser I, king of Assyria, were engraved on four columns to let the world see that the key had been found to the third script of the Achemenid inscriptions, the script of the Assyrians and Babylonians.