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Updated: May 6, 2025
Carsten Niebuhr was the first to make and bring to Europe an exact and complete copy of inscriptions at Persepolis in an unknown character. Many attempts had been made to explain them, but all had been vain, until in 1802 Grotefend, the learned Hanoverian philologist, succeeded, by an inspiration of genius, in solving the mystery in which they were enveloped.
This is not the place to enter upon a detailed illustration of the method adopted by ingenious scholars, notably Edward Hincks, Isidor Löwenstern, Henry Rawlinson, Jules Oppert, to whose united efforts the solution of the great problems involved is due; and it would also take too much space, since in order to make this method clear, it would be necessary to set forth the key discovered by Grotefend for reading the Old Persian inscriptions.
VR. 61, col. iv. ll. 33, 34. IR. 7, no. ix. Heuzey in De Sarzec's Découvertes en Chaldée, p. 209. Several examples occur in De Sarzec's Découvertes en Chaldée. See also Ward, Proc. Amer. Oriental Soc., May, 1888, p. xxix, and Peters' Nippur, ii. pl. 2. Wellhausen, Reste Arabischen Heidenthums, p. 106. Grotefend Cylinder, col. li. ll. 36-39.
It would be beyond our province to give an account of the ingenious deductions, the skilful guesses, and the patient groping through which Grotefend finally achieved the recognition of an alphabetic system of writing, and succeeded in separating from certain groups of words what he believed to be the names of Darius and Xerxes, thus attaining a knowledge of several letters, by means of which he made out other words.
The observation was made previous to the days of Grotefend that the inscriptions at Persepolis invariably showed three styles of writing.
Through the efforts chiefly of Gerhard Tychsen, professor at Rostock, Frederick Münter, a Danish scholar, and the distinguished Silvestre de Sacy of Paris, the beginnings were made which finally led to the discovery of the key to the mysterious writings, in 1802, by Georg Friedrich Grotefend, a teacher at a public school in Göttingen.
He made out that there were three cuneiform alphabets, because of the threefold inscriptions at Persepolis. In 1802 Grotefend, of Hanover, put before the Academy of Gottingen the first cuneiform alphabet. Then, among other great investigators, followed Rawlinson. The first of these alphabets is Persian; the second the Median; the third the Babylonian.
The Rock of Behistun became as famous as the Stone of Rosetta and Rawlinson shared the honors of deciphering the old nail-writing with Grotefend. Although they had never seen each other or heard each other's names, the German schoolmaster and the British officer worked together for a common purpose as all good scientific men should do. Another human mystery had been solved.
The Hebrew word for prophet, nabi, is of the same stem as the Assyrian Nabu, and the popular tradition is placing the last scene in the life of Moses on Mt. Nebo is apparently influenced by the fact that Moses was a nabi. See above, p. 123. E.g., in the so-called Grotefend Cylinder, col. ii. 34. Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde d. Morgenlandes, iv. 301-307.
Then it took thirty years before a patient German school-master by the name of Grotefend had deciphered the first four letters, the D, the A, the R and the SH, the name of the Persian King Darius. And another twenty years had to go by until a British officer, Henry Rawlinson, who found the famous inscription of Behistun, gave us a workable key to the nail-writing of western Asia.
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