Chapter IV · BEER AND JACQUET TO RAWLINSON—A.D. 1838-1846 (continued 2)

With the publication of Rawlinson’s Memoir, in 1846-7, the decipherment of the Persian inscriptions may be considered accomplished. In 1850, he could write that there ‘are probably not more than twenty words in the whole range of the Persian cuneiform records upon the meaning, grammatical condition or etymology of which any doubt or difference of opinion can at present be said to exist.’[599] The value of his own contribution to the general result received the fullest recognition. Professor Max Müller declared to Canon Rawlinson that, ‘thanks mainly to your brother, we have now as complete a knowledge of the grammar, construction and general character of the ancient Persian language as we have of Latin.’[600] He was greeted as the Champollion of the new decipherment, a position he has retained to a large extent in Germany and France. So late as 1895, M. Oppert found occasion to remark that, ‘after Rawlinson it was only possible for other scholars to obtain gleanings in the field of Persian cuneiform interpretation.’[601] In his own country, however, he seems to have suffered for a time from the singular affectation that was so long in fashion, of looking to Germany alone for all the springs of knowledge. As a matter of fact, in this department at least, few Germans, with the exception of Grotefend, made any important contribution. Rask, Lassen, Westergaard, were all Scandinavians, and it is certain that for many years Rawlinson continued to be the source whence Continental writers drew most largely; and the neglect into which he fell at home occasioned the surprise of at least one eminent Frenchman. ‘Young English and Germans,’ says M. Oppert, ‘pretend not to know him. An Englishman once told me he had never read a line of Rawlinson. I replied: “I supposed just so; if you had read him, your papers would be less imperfect than they are.”’[602] This testimony to the great services of Sir Henry Rawlinson is given by the scholar who for many years occupied by far the most prominent position among Continental writers upon cuneiform subjects, and who has himself contributed largely to the progress of the study.

In 1851, M. Oppert undertook a complete revision of the whole series of Achaemenian inscriptions. The work appeared in the ‘Journal Asiatique,’ between February 1851 and February 1852, and was afterwards published in a separate form.[603] He introduced a considerable number of alterations, in both the transliteration and translation, and, so far as we have noticed, a large proportion of them have been accepted. He criticised some of Rawlinson’s opinions, but rarely with asperity, and he generously acknowledges that the English scholar ‘a grandement mérité de l’histoire du genre humain.’[604] He subsequently revised his own translations for his book on the ‘Expédition en Mésopotamie,’ published in 1858. In the same year Rawlinson made an amended version of the Behistun Inscription for the edition of Herodotus published by his brother; and again in 1873 for the ‘Records of the Past.’[605] The other inscriptions were once more revised by Oppert in 1877 for the same useful publication.[606] But meanwhile a complete edition of the whole Persian inscriptions had been published by Spiegel in Germany in 1862,[607] and in France in 1872, by M. Menant.[608] The latest publications on the subject that have come under our notice are the valuable treatises on the languages of the first and second columns by Weissbach,[609] and of the third column by Dr. Bezold,[610] accompanied in each case by a revised text, transliteration and translation.