Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 32:128 (Oct 1875)
Article: Recent Assyrian Discoveries
Author: Selah Merrill

BSac 32:128 (Oct 1875) p. 715

Recent Assyrian Discoveries1

Rev. Selah Merrill

One of the notable events of the present century is the recovery of the language of the Assyrians and Babylonians, together with a great deal of their history and literature, things which but little more than thirty years ago were not known to exist. The ordinary reader who looks through the popular and unpretending volume of Mr. Smith can hardly realize the labors that cuneiform scholars must have undergone, the obstacles they must have removed, or the successes they must have achieved, before it was possible that the results of their studies could be presented in such an agreeable form.

Indifference And Even Hostility To Cuneiform Researches

In order to call attention briefly to the opposition which Assyrian studies met with at first, and to the incredulity of some of the most eminent scholars of thirty, twenty, or even ten years ago, matters of great interest in a historical point of view, we will quote the language of Sir Henry Rawlinson, who has been identified with the discovery and decipherment of these records and with the progress of these studies from the beginning to the present hour. In his opening address as President before the Semitic Section of the Oriental Congress, which met in London in September, 1874, he said: “Educated Europe was very slow to admit the genuineness of cuneiform decipherment. It was asserted at first as a well-

BSac 32:128 (Oct 1875) p. 716

known axiom, that it was impossible to recover lost alphabets and extinct languages without the aid of a bilingual key, such as was afforded to Egyptologists by the famous stone of Rosetta. Our efforts at interpretation were therefore pronounced to be empirical, and scholars were warned against accepting our results. I have a vivid recollection, indeed, of the scornful incredulity with which I was generally received, when, in 1849, I first brought to England a copy of the Babylonian version of the Behistun Inscription, and endeavored to show that by comparing this version with the corresponding Persian text I had arrived at a partial understanding of the newly-discovered records of Assyria and Babylonia. I did not assume to have done more than break the crust of the difficulty, and yet I obtained no attention. Hardly any one in England, except Dr. Hincks and Mr. Norris and the Chevalier Bunsen, was satisfied of the soundness of the basis of inquiry; nor, indeed, did the study make much progress for a long time afterwards. Semitic scholars like M. Renan, accustomed to the rigid forms and limited scope of alphabets of the Phoenician type, were bewildered at the laxity of cuneiform expression, where phonetic and ideographic elements were commingled; and refu...