"سرد لرحلة إلى موقع مدينة بابل في ١٨١١، طُبعت الآن لأول مرة: مذكرات على الأطلال؛ مع نقوش من الخرائط المدبئية للمؤلف: ملاحظات على طبوغرافية بابل القديمة،بقلم الرائد رينيل؛ في إشارة إلى المذكرات: مذكرات ثانية على الأطلال؛ في إشارة إلى ملاحظات الرائد رينيل: مع سرد لرحلة إلى برسبوليس: طُبعت الآن لأول مرة، مع كتابات مسمارية نسخت في برسبوليس ولم تُنشر من قبل: كتبها الراحل كلوديوس جيمس ريتش، المحترم، المقيم البريطاني السابق لشركة الهند الشرقية في بغداد. حررته أرملته." [‎١‎٨‎٣] (٤٧٤/٢٧١)

APP.] BABYLONIAN ANTIQUES. 183
upon to communicate to the world his valuable la
bours in a separate and more perfect form.
Dr. Grotefend, who professes to be rather the
decipherer than the translator of the cuneiform in
scriptions, and who engages merely to open the way
to those whose attention has been much devoted to
the study of the ancient languages of Persia, has
however succeeded in translating some of the in
scriptions on the ruins of Persepolis, and one from
those of Pasargadse. He observes that there are
three varieties of those inscriptions distinguished
from each other by the greater complication of the
characters formed by the radical signs of a wedge
(or arrow) and an angle. Each inscription is re
peated in all the three species. The first or simplest
species deciphered by Dr. Grotefend is in Zend,
the language of Ecbatana j and there are grounds
for believing that the remaining ones are translations
into the languages of the other capitals of the Per
sian empire, Susa and Babylon. This conjecture
acquires force from the fact of one of the species
of cuneiform writing discovered at Babylon corre
sponding, or nearly so, with one of the Persepolitan
species.
The cuneiform is the most ancient character of
which we have any knowledge. It is difficult to
say in what country it was invented; but its use
was common to the great nations of antiquity, the
Median, Persian, and Assyrian; and, as Prof.
Heeren very justly observes, it is in all likelihood