Page 144 - Berkshire Encyclopedia Of World History Vol Two

decipherment of ancient scripts 493

Whoever wishes to foresee the future must consult the past; for human events ever
resemble those of preceding times. This arises from the fact that they are produced by men
who ever have been, and ever shall be, animated by the same passions, and thus they
necessarily have the same results. • Niccolo Machiavelli (1469–1527)

interpretation was by yet another Dane, N. L. Wester- good fortune to come across both a palace whose walls
gaard). The third language—with by far the most com- were covered with impressive reliefs and lavish inscrip-
plicated script ever deciphered—was the real historical tions and an extensive library, that of the Assyrian king
bonanza. Though credit for its decipherment is usually Assurbanipal. Much of this material was shipped back to
assigned to Rawlinson, especially by his partisans toward London, and the cuneiform tablets—shaped lumps of
the end of the nineteenth century, it is now clear that it clay impressed by a stylus with characters composed of
was done by Edward Hincks, a Church of Ireland (Angli- wedge-shaped indentations—comprising the library that
can) clergyman, whose better-known father was a pro- formed the nucleus of the British Museum’s unsurpassed
fessor in the university in Belfast and whose younger collection. (The Iraq Museum in Baghdad may possess
brother was Premier of Canada in the 1850s. His work more tablets, since it is the repository for all materials ex-
was mainly published in the Transactions of the Royal cavated in that country over the past many decades, but
Irish Academy in the late 1840s. as the events of spring 2003 made clear, they are far from
The inscribed materials in the third script that were fully catalogued, and the damage the collection may have
available to Hincks had been brought from Mesopotamia sustained has not been fully assessed.) Because it was a
to England as curiosities earlier in the nineteenth century, royal library, the inventory was skewed toward items of
often identified by the names of their owners—the lasting value—literary, scientific, and historical texts. Ini-
Bellino Stone, the India House Inscription—or had been tially, and at least through the end of the nineteenth cen-
published by explorers—notably a long inscription in a tury, biblical concerns drove the new field of Assyriology.
language now called Urartian from near Lake Van. An Sensational was the discovery of a myth of a Deluge in
important tool in the decipherment was the presence in accord in several details with the story of Noah’s Flood
these inscriptions of repeated formulas that were spelled (Genesis 6–8); some of the Laws of Hammurapi (dis-
slightly differently (so as to fit in the available space, for covered 1902) paralleled nearly word for word portions
instance).And the reason for repetitive formulas was that of the legal texts in Exodus 20–22; and so on. This era
these long inscriptions turned out to be annals, with the peaked with the “Babel and Bible” controversy, when in a
events of successive years of a king’s reign laid out in public lecture (also 1902) before the emperor of Ger-
stereotypical form. The language of the Mesopotamian many, the Assyriologist Friedrich Delitszch proclaimed
inscriptions (and the third Persepolitan variety) was soon that the heart of Christian theology could be read from a
identified as Semitic; it is now known as Akkadian. Babylonian cylinder seal.
(Essentially the same writing system, devised for Sumer- Thereafter secular Assyriology gradually prevailed, and
ian, serves Akkadian, the Indo-European language Hittite, now it is the tens of thousands of mundane ephemeral
the not very well known Urartian and its only relative documents—business records, personal letters, property
Hurrian, and the aforementioned Elamite, as well as transfers—uncovered over a century and a half of exca-
other languages of which only a few words are recorded.) vation that command the attention of most specialists.
True to the preoccupations of the time, in one of the very From these small clay tablets, which survived because
first editions of an ancient monument, the so-called Black they were imperishable so long as they did not get wet or
Obelisk of Shalamaneser, Hincks was the first to recog- were not crushed, detailed pictures of two millennia and
nize the name of a biblical personage, Omri, king of Israel more of civilizations can be reconstructed.
(1 Kings 16:16–28), among those paying tribute.
Throughout the 1840s the first excavations of sites in Hieroglyphs
Mesopotamia—at ancient Nineveh—were carried out by Alongside the wealth of Mesopotamian materials, the
Austen Henry Layard for the British Museum and Paul yield of the next most important decipherment, of Egyp-
Émile Botta for the Louvre. Layard in particular had the tian hieroglyphs, seems downright paltry: carvings and