of being included among the great achievements of the nineteenth century. Only a hundred years ago it was still possible to maintain that there was no such thing as cuneiform writing, and that the mysterious figures that went by that name were merely a grotesque form of ornamentation. We propose to recount the method pursued by the long succession of scholars who in the end succeeded in solving the perplexing problem that was presented to them. Few, if any, of those who, in the beginning of last century, occupied themselves with the subject, could have imagined the brilliant discoveries that would result from their tedious labours. In these pages we shall be chiefly occupied with the inscriptions of the Achaemenian kings. They were the first to be discovered and studied, and they possess the peculiar advantage of being, with few exceptions, trilingual. They are, in fact, generally found in three parallel columns, and it was seen that the characters and no doubt the languages also varied in each. It was observed that the writing in one of the columns was much simpler than in the others; the number of different signs being limited to about forty-two. It was assumed that they were alphabetical, whereas there could be little doubt from their great number that the signs in the other columns were syllabic or ideographic. Notwithstanding the comparative simplicity of the former, it was not till forty years had been devoted to their study that the riddle was successfully solved. At length the sound of each letter was fully established, and the words they combined to form were found to belong to a language, akin to Zend, to which the name of Old Persian is now given. From its analogy to Zend and Pehlevi it was a comparatively easy task to assign correct or approximately correct meanings to the words, and to arrive at the sense of the short sentences that occur on the monuments. The first stage in the progress of decipherment was reached in 1845, when Professor Lassen of Bonn published a tentative but fairly correct translation of the whole of the inscriptions then accessible, belonging to the first or Persian column. This success was no doubt a matter of great interest to the philologist; but the inscriptions themselves were found to be almost wholly wanting in historical importance. They were nearly all taken from buildings at Persepolis or elsewhere, and they simply commemorated their erection by Darius or by Xerxes or by Artaxerxes Ochus. They are uniformly conceived in the same set form of words, from which at the most some deductions might be drawn as to the relations existing between the Persian and his god Ormuzd. Two of them indeed were varied by a list of the provinces included in the Empire. It is true the inscription at Behistun was not included in this collection; but even it adds little of importance except with reference to the revolt of the Magian impostor. The publication of this inscription by Major Rawlinson, in 1846, marks the successful termination of the task of deciphering the first column, and a complete mastery over the Old Persian language had then been obtained. It was correctly supposed that the other two columns contained translations of the same Persian text; and the knowledge now acquired of the latter could not but afford an invaluable key to unlock the difficulties of the others. The decipherment of the inscriptions in the second column was attended by even less interest than the first. The language was ascertained to be Scythic, but nothing was found written in it...