THE ATHENAEUMThe Discovery and Decipherment of the Trilingual Cuneiform InscriptionsArthur John Booth
Ciphers
The Discovery and Decipherment of the Trilingual Cuneiform Inscriptions
Read it in the Library After Dark Or read it as plain textHow the wedge-shaped writing of Persia and Babylon, unread for nearly two thousand years, was read again in the nineteenth century, by Grotefend, Rawlinson and others, working from the inscription Darius had cut into the cliff at Behistun. Booth tells it as a story of patient men and a few lucky guesses. It is what a real decipherment looks like: a known language, a parallel text, and decades of work.
The librarian
- Reading time
- About 9 hr 20 min
- Where to find it
- The Restricted Catalogue
- Edition
- Project Gutenberg, eBook #71905. In the public domain in the United States.