The Scythic of the Monuments.

11

him in the same field of philological inquiry, have added much in the interval to the knowledge we then had of it.

Next to the Assyro-Babylonian, the so-called Median, or Scythic, forms the second great division of the arrow-headed writing. With the single exception of an inscription at Tarki, north of the Caucasus,-so, at least, Sir H. Rawlinson wrote some years since, this type of the Cuneiform exists only on the rock monuments and other remains of the Achæmenians. It is found at Behistun, at Persepolis, at Hamadán, at Ván, wherever Cyrus and his successors have left their trilingual inscriptions; and it uniformly holds a place in them midway, ' either in actual position, or in relative convenience, between the original and vernacular Persian records on the one side,' hereafter to be noticed, and the Semitic transcripts on the other.' It was a natural inference from the fact last named, that the language which this character expressed, belonged to a people inferior to the native and dominant Persian, but superior to the conquered Babylonian;' and, considering the relation in which the Medes are known to have stood to the ruling race, it was no great stretch of philological faith to believe that the character in question represented the speech of this mysterious nation. Hence the name Median, as applied to the writing. And if later investigations do not substantiate the correctness of the appellation, their results are, at present, too few and vague to furnish us with a satisfactory substitute for it. In all probability the Scythic population of the Persian Empire was addressed by this class of the inscriptions; but we need more light before we can pronounce with confidence either upon the character of the language in which they are written, or upon the ethnology and ethnography of those who spoke it. Less progress has been made in the decyphering of this branch of the Cuneiform than with the Assyrian and Babylonian; yet something has been done, and there is promise of better harvests by and by. The alphabet is less elaborate than the Babylonian, but it is built on the same model. The letters change places with one another like the coloured beads in a kaleidoscope. Vowels, except when initial, inhere in the consonants. Like the Chinese, the Median Cuneiform frowns upon the letter r, and, as often as possible, uses l as its substitute. This latter liquid, and n, too, are very much at home in each other's chairs. The language itself is a puzzle. Syntactically, and to some extent in its vocabulary likewise, it is Aryan. Many Persian words, Sir H. Rawlinson states, particularly titles, have been introduced into it, 'in their full integrity both of sense and sound.' Yet it is Semitic also.

The pronouns, and some of its verbal roots, are evidently of this type. At the same time, 'the employment of postpositions and of pronominal possessive suffixes,' the manner in which gerundal forms are sometimes used, and the similarity, both in aspect and value, between certain particles occurring in the inscriptions, and those which obtain in the modern Tartar, suggest very strongly the idea, that the language is, to a great extent, Scythic. Whether the Scythic element be the woof and warp of the language, and the Aryan and other parts of it mere colouring and embroidery, or whether the reverse of this is the fact, may yet be doubtful. Sir H. Rawlinson, with the admirable caution which characterizes his researches and findings, leaves the question open. Possibly when London

condescends to receive an ambassador from Pekin, the savans of his suite may amuse themselves, between their kite-flying and their chop-sticks, in endeavouring to determine how far Darius Hystaspis had any sound knowledge of Mongol or Manjou.

Last, not least, among the various kinds of the Cuneiform, is the simple, stately, and elegant character, by means of which the Achæmenian Kings inform the world of their exploits in their own native language, and the reading and interpretation of which, so happily effected by Sir H. Rawlinson, have helped more than anything else to clear our way to the Assyrian and other less intelligible forms of the arrow-headed writing. The remains of the Persian Cuneiform are few in number; so few, indeed, that they have been published, with translations and elaborate notes, in a single octavo volume by Sir H. Rawlinson. Yet they are all of high philological interest, and some of them, at least, possess an historical value, which future scholars will be likely to rate even more highly than ourselves. The oldest of them belong to Cyrus the Great, the probable inventor of the character. They are found at Murgháb, the ancient Pasargadæ, where the conqueror of Babylon was buried, and consist of the words, I am Cyrus, the King, the Achæmenian,' which are repeated several times among the ruins. Darius Hystaspis has not only given us the far-famed inscription of Behistun, of which below, but has left his mark likewise at Persepolis, and at Elwend, near Hamadán; still more impressively at Nakhshi-rustam, his burial-place; and elsewhere in two or three less important monuments. Xerxes, the supporter of this great world,' glorifies himself at Hamadán and Ván, as well as at Persepolis, he does not mention Salamis and Platæ,-and seems, with vastly less reason, to have been fonder of appearing in print than even his magnificent father before him. There is

Rock-Writings of Cyrus and his Successors.

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a legend of Xerxes, too, on the Caylus vase, with a translation in hieroglyphics. Artaxerxes Longimanus and Artaxerxes Mnemon either had no taste for Cuneiform, or time has deprived us of the proofs of it. No record of their reigns has been discovered; and it is doubtful whether we have any memorial of Darius Nothus. There are barbarous and clumsily executed, though important, inscriptions of the reign of Artaxerxes Ochus, at Persepolis; and a line of Cuneiform, belonging in all likelihood to this Monarch, occurs on a porphyry vase in the treasury of St. Mark's, at Venice. By far the longest and most valuable specimen of the Persian Cuneiform that has come down to us, however, is the splendid inscription on the scarped rock of Behistun, where Darius Hystaspis has published to posterity, in several hundred lines of writing, the principal deeds of his stirring reign. This is the inscription, the copying, deciphering, and expounding of which, have secured for Sir H. Rawlinson an imperishable name in the annals of literature, and have opened the door to a knowledge of the old historical nations of the world, such as our fathers never dreamt of. Grotefend, indeed, has the merit of having taken the first step or two towards determining the alphabet of the Persian Cuneiform; and the labours of Rask, Burnouf, and Lassen, particularly those of the last-named eminent orientalist, made important additions to the discoveries of their predecessor. It was reserved, however, for the acuteness, learning, and patience of Sir H. Rawlinson, and that in almost entire independence of the labours of previous or contemporary investigators, to construct a complete and satisfactory alphabet of the language, and to furnish connected, intelligible, and trustworthy renderings of the Behistun and other inscriptions of the same linguistic class. This he has done with so much success, that both the grammar and vocabulary of the language are, to a great degree, recovered to us, and we are now, for the most part, scarcely less sure of the meaning of a sentence in Persian Cuneiform, than of a passage of the Véda, the Zend-Avesta, or even the Korán. The language is unquestionably Aryan. It is one of the elder brothers of the house to which the Sanskrit, Greek, Gaelic, Russian, and English belong. It cannot be mistaken. It left its home, no doubt, before profane history was born, and it has picked up some Scythic manners in its wanderings, but it has the build and features of the great IndoEuropean family. We know it from its likeness to its fellows. But for the Sanskrit, indeed, which it resembles so closely in its structure, and the Zend, with which it has so many orthographical peculiarities in common, in all probability it would still

lie in mystery behind its bristling defences. It is written in an alphabet of about forty characters, the powers of which are, to a great extent, identical with those of the Dévanágarí and the language of the Zend-Avesta. There are but three vowel letters, as in Arabic. The short a, as in Sanskrit and Ethiopic, where no other vowel follows, inheres in the preceding consonant. The Indian series of sonant aspirates, gh, jh, &c., is altogether wanting. Nasals occupy a prominent place among the elementary sounds. The letter is excluded from the list of semivowels. What is still more striking, an orthographical law prevails in the language, by which certain consonants are only employed in juxtaposition with certain vowels,—a peculiarity which points to Tartar influence, and is unshared by any other Aryan tongue. At the same time, the Tartar-like practice of the Zend, which inserts an i or u before a consonant, apparently for the purpose of establishing a harmony of vowel expression, is wanting in the cuneiform Persian. Neither does it use the guna and vriddhi of the Sanskrit, nor admit of the perplexing euphonic changes arising out of the collocation and composition of words, which mark the language of the Véda, and, in a lower degree, the Greek and Latin likewise. Altogether, this fossil Persian, alike in its elements, its forms, and its syntax, exhibits a simplicity, crudeness, and unequal development, which, while they carry us back to a high antiquity for its origin, tell likewise of trouble and tossing, that befell it in the morning of its days.

Such, then, is an imperfect conspectus of the arrow-headed writings of the nearer East: writings which cover nearly the whole period of the postdiluvian Old Testament history; which contain original records of races, nations, and potentates, whose doings were closely interwoven, in many cases, with those of the forefathers and descendants of Abraham; and from which, on supposition of the truth of the Bible, we might expect to obtain important corroboration or illumination of certain portions, at least, of its inspired narrative. The interest which this last-named consideration threw about the inscriptions from the beginning, has only strengthened as we have worked our way further and further into their meaning. We will not say that the most sanguine expectations of the friends of revelation have been realized. At present we have only succeeded in spelling out a few of the mysteries over which we pore. We are still in the dark as to the precise signification of many of them. But one thing is settled. There is no more hope on this ground for Eichhorn and De Wette. Even the little we know of the Cuneiform abundantly confirms and illustrates what

The Interpreters on their Trial.

15 'holy men of old spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.' After thousands of years' silence they come forward to tell us, that the primeval cities, both in name and situation, were such as the author of the Pentateuch states them to have been; that, much as the ethnology of Moses has been questioned, the statements he makes concerning the early inhabitants of the world, and the lines of migration along which they moved from the starting-point of the race, are neither blunder nor fiction; that the political condition and relations of the countries between the Tigris and the Mediterranean, from the dawn of history down to the times of Cyrus and his successors, were precisely those which the writers of the Old Testament one after another describe to us; and that, in particular, the Hebrew people are most accurately portrayed on the sacred pages, the very names of their towns, kings, neighbours, enemies, to say nothing of the general character of their national life and fortunes, being vouched for by the consenting signature of these disinterested or even hostile witnesses. The only way in which the pressure of this evidence can be escaped is, by disputing the interpretation of the inscriptions. This, however, is a shift that will not avail. The labours of the men who have worked upon them have been too independent of one another. The checks, which the natural love of originality and differences of judgment as to first principles have imposed upon their progress, have been too numerous and effectual. Finally, the general agreement which marks the result of their investigations, taken in connexion with what is scarcely less important in inquiries of this class, considerable diversity of detail, are too striking to allow of any serious doubt as to the substantial correctness of their conclusions. Many of our readers are aware that two or three years since, this question was brought to a practical issue, at the instance of Mr. Fox Talbot, by the Royal Asiatic Society. It was agreed that Mr. Talbot, Sir H. Rawlinson, Dr. Hincks, and M. Oppert, all of whom were well-known students of the Cuneiform, should be requested, without any communication with one another, to translate certain portions of the great inscription of Tiglath Pileser I., (King of Assyria, B.C. 1150,) from an octagonal prism, found at Kaleh Sherghát, in Mesopotamia, and now preserved in the British Museum, and to send their renderings and notes in sealed packets to a committee appointed to examine and report upon them. The committee consisted of Dr. Milman, Dr. Cureton, Dr. Whewell, Sir J. Gardner Wilkinson, Mr. Grote, and Professor Wilson; and we have their finding in print, with the names of the Dean of St. Paul's, the historians of Greece and Egypt, and the late lamented Boden