overs the surface of a massive bluff at
Behistun in western Persia. Moreover, all three of its inscriptions
are in cuneiform characters, and all three are in languages that at
the beginning of our century were absolutely unknown. This inscription
itself, as a striking monument of unknown import, had been seen by
successive generations. Tradition ascribed it, as we learn from Ctesias,
through Diodorus, to the fabled Assyrian queen Semiramis. Tradition
was quite at fault in this; but it is only recently that knowledge has
availed to set it right. The inscription, as is now known, was really
written about the year 515 B.C., at the instance of Darius I., King of
Persia, some of whose deeds it recounts in the three chief languages of
his widely scattered subjects.

The man who at actual risk of life and limb copied this wonderful
inscription, and through interpreting it became the veritable "father of
Assyriology," was the English general Sir Henry Rawlinson. His feat was
another British triumph over the same rivals who had competed for
the Rosetta Stone; for some French explorers had been sent by their
government, some years earlier, expressly to copy this strange record,
and had reported that it was impossible to reach the inscription. But
British courage did not find it so, and in 1835 Rawlinson scaled the
dangerous height and made a paper cast of about half the inscription.
Diplomatic duties called him away from the task for some years, but
in 1848 he returned to it and completed the copy of all parts of the
inscription that have escaped the ravages of time. And now the material
was in hand for a new science, which General Rawlinson himself soon,
assisted by a host of others, proceeded to elaborate.

The key to the value of this unique inscription lies in the fact that
its third language is ancient Persian. It appears that the ancient
Persians had adopted the cuneiform character from their western
neighbors, the Assyrians, but in so doing had made one of those
essential modifications and improvements which are scarcely possible to
accomplish except in the transition from one race to another. Instead
of building with the arrow-head a multitude of syllabic characters,
including many homophones, as had been and continued to be the custom
with the Assyrians, the Persians selected a few of these characters and
ascribed to them phonetic values that were almost purely alphabetic. In
a word, while retaining the wedge as the bas