Note 371 — Chapter XIV · NINEVEH AND ITS WONDERS

Explorations in Bible Lands during the 19th Century, pp. 23, 24 (by H. V. Hilprecht, Philadelphia, 1903).

How Grotefend achieved such marvelous success when others, apparently more competent than he, had failed has been explained by the fact that “he early displayed a remarkable aptitude for the solution of riddles: a peculiar talent which he shared in common with Dr. Hincks, who also acquired great distinction as a cuneiform scholar.” The Discovery and Decipherment of the Trilingual Cuneiform Inscriptions, p. 169 (by A. J. Booth, London, 1902).

Dr. R. W. Rogers, in his instructive work, A History of Babylonia and Assyria, Vol. I, p. 61 (New York, 1915), referring to the same subjects, writes:

“It were difficult, if not impossible, to define the qualities of mind which must inhere in the decipherer of a forgotten language. He is not necessarily a great scholar, though great scholars have been successful decipherers. He may know but little of the languages that are cognate with the one whose secrets he is trying to unravel. He may, indeed, know nothing of them, as has several times been the case. But the patience, the persistence, the power of combination, the divine gift of insight, the historical sense, the feeling for archæological indications, these must be present, and all of these were present in the extraordinary man, Grotefend, who now attacked the problem that had baffled so many.”