Author Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1870 Excerpt:...students. In the often mutilated or half-obliterated inscriptions, some of the characters baffle the decipherer's skill; the contractions and abbreviations are frequent, and words apparently correctly translated fail to make sense with the context. Mr. Norris says, in 1868, with reference to his dictionary: "Many years must necessarily elapse before an approach can be made to completeness in such a work; and the best Assyrian decipherers are the most assured of the vague character of their interpretations whenever the subject goes much beyond plain narrative, and when words of infrequent occurrence are made use of." Nevertheless, the key has been found which will in time put us in possession of the information contained in the entire mass of records. Incredulity, if it still exists, is answered by the fact that the inscription of Tiglath-Pileser I., published by the Eoyal Asiatic Society in 1857, has received a substantially identical" translation from Eawlinson, Hincks, Talbot, and Oppert, who deciphered it independently of each other. AVe may be permitted to add that we have ourselves recently been present while one cuneiform student not only translated at sight, into English, a passage of Assyrian written in our common alphabet by another--but also re-wrote the rendering in the original Assyrian character--and this as rapidly as one could form the ordinary Roman capitals. The number of distinct characters already discovered in the inscriptions is very large. Mr. Norris gives in his dictionary 106, besides 142 compound syllables, and 113 ideograms(x)--a total of 361. In (') Example of an ideogram.--Take the idea, front. This is represented in tho cuneiform writings by--". When a man offers a present, or prays, or when he comes in conta...