A look at the world of politics, statecraft, diplomacy and books
Every now and then the Indian newspapers carry the sensational headline stating that the Harppan Script has been deciphered. Tamil enthusiasts have even found a reference to Muruga on one of the seals and others have read the same seal as a reference to one or the other Indiac deity. When identity politics hijacks archaeology strage things happen and the net result is confusion. I am witing this Blog to high light the process of deciphermet on the basis of my study of the methods used by Col. H C Rawlinson, the soldier and epigraphist who unlocked the secrets of the ancient Babylonian script or the Cuneiform system of writing.
Empires of the Plain is an excellent biography of Col. H C Rawlinson and is based essentially on the published letters and the short biography of the Soldier penned by his brother. There is little on the actual process by which H C Rawlinson deciphered the Cuneiform Script,but it does provide adequate material to help us understand the rigours of deciphermnt. A Script is like a cipher hence the process of reading or unlocking it is called decipherment. The basic and fundamental requirement for any decipherment is a known key that cn be used to unlock the forgotten / mysterious script or code. Joseph Champilion who deciphered the Egyptian Hyreoglypics had as his key the Rosetta Stone discovered by Napoleon's scholars on the banks of the river Nile just before the Battle of Trafalghar. It was written in Egyptian Hireogluphic, Greek and Demotic scripts. Since Greek could be read, Champollion rightly assumed that the proper names in the Greek could appear in trnasliterated form in the Egyptian script and he was able to read Ptolemey and tht started off the whole process of decipherment. Similarly, the earliest script of India is the one used by Ashoka in his Rock Inscriptions and Edicts both minor and major, In spite of the effort of some Tamil nationalists to give the credit to the ancient Tamils or Srilanks, the fact that the lipikara in some of the inscriptions sign themselves in kharoshti, a script derived from the Achemened Empire suggests otherwise. James Princep, used the Gree legends founs in the coins of the Selcucids, the successors of the Great Alexander to extrapolate Greek sound value on Brahmi characters in Kushana coins and thereby rightly read De va namo piya as a titl of Ashoka. This is the real and time tested method of decipherment. Wuthout a known key a language and its script remains eternally locked,
The picture on the left is that of the most famous Inscription of the ancient world the Behistun Inscription of the Persian King Darius I (BC 522-486) writeen on the escarpent of the Zagaros Moutains in resent day Iran in three languages: old Persian, Elamite, and Akkadian. One of th Persian kings Cyrus is even called called annointed of God in the Hebrew Old Testament as he was reposnsible for freeing the Jewish people from captivity when he conquered Egypt. The inscription was essesntially a record of the conquests of Darius I and given te length and details given it raises the legitmate suspicion that Darius like Ashoka waded through blood to seize the throne and then claimed that Ahuramazda had blessed him and thefore his legitimacy was beyond question.
The Cuneiform was a script and not a language and was the earliest script designed to help the ancient Babylonan and Assyrian Empires keep records of their wealth and economic output. This historical conjuncture between writing and imperial political systems suggets that Empires facilitated record keeping as an instrument of control. It derives its name from the peculiar wedge shaped characters incised on wet clay tablets with a reed flattened at one end to make it capable of inscribing wedge strokes on a clay surface. Sir Henry Austen Layard, the archaeologist who discovered Nineveh, the city of the Assyrians mentioned in the Old Testament found a veritible library of clay tablets recording the activities, politicl and military, of Nebuchednazzer and his successors. Unfortunately on 50 000 of such documents have been published and a vast majority of these clay documents are ichicago's famus Art Institute.
Given the importance of this region in the Old Testament, a number of European scholars took up the study of the ancient records of the Near Esat, Middle East or the Oreint as it was called. In the nineteenth century these palces were under the nominal authority of the Ottoman Empire whose writ was directly propotionl to the armed battalion stationed in these provinces. Persia where Rawlinson worked as Consul was nominally independent and this independence was contingennt upon playing Russia against the British Empire in India. H C Rawlinson was an Officer in the Army f the East India Company stationed in Bombay now Mumbai. Having learnt Persian well form Sir John Briggs and John Malcolmn he was sent to Baghdad as th Consul to represent British economic and military interests there.
Early during his stay, H C Rawlinson visited the Behistun Rock and wondered at the message staring down from a hieght of nearly 400 feet of smooth roch. It was obvious that Darius had taken the precaution of rendering the entire surface of the rocck and its access so smooth that it was impossible for anyone to climb to take a close look. This raises anothe question regarding literary practices in early empires, including the Brahmi Inscriptions of Ashoka. Who could read these Inscriptions and what purose did they serve if they were inscribed so high that they are just barely visible.
In his two important records presented to the Royal Society of London and in his Cuneiform Inscriptions of Old Persia Col Rawlinson has outlined his journey to the decipherment. In the nineteenth century there was almost an unseemly competition among the various "civilized nations" of the world to be the first to unlock the ancient script. Quite early M Burnouf, a Frenchman had published the Inscription of Hamadan. This too was a trilingual record and was inscribed during the reign of the son of Darius Xerxes and was an enumeration of royal titles. Bournuf also visited the site of Persepollis the capital city which was burnt and destroyed by Alexander as act of innane vandalism. Saint Mrtin another Frenchman and a close understudy and student of Joseph Champollion also started working on the Cuneiform Inscriptions around the same time as H C Rawlinson. In his letters we see a trace of desparation. Rawlinson wanted to be the first to accomplish the great feat.
To to end then, H C Rawlinson did what even we living in the twenty first century would hesitate to do. He had himself suspended by ropes on to the surface of the rock so that he could trce out the chaacters that ran like serried columns all along the face of the rock. Working thus, one small miss step would have resulted death, Rawlinson trace out/copied the entire record. Now he had the material at hand to decipher the script.
Once again the key was found in the work of an earlier scholar, a Frenchman who lived in Pondicherry for seveal years, Anquetil du Perron who was one of the earliest scholars of the Zens Avesta and Old Sanskrit. Using insight from Du Perron, Rawlinson was able to make out the names of the early kings from the Avestan and trnasposed the to old Cuneiform. The book that he published on the Behistun Inscription provides all the technical details.
H C Rawlinson died on arch 5, 1895.
Every now and then the Indian newspapers carry the sensational headline stating that the Harppan Script has been deciphered. Tamil enthusiasts have even found a reference to Muruga on one of the seals and others have read the same seal as a reference to one or the other Indiac deity. When identity politics hijacks archaeology strage things happen and the net result is confusion. I am witing this Blog to high light the process of deciphermet on the basis of my study of the methods used by Col. H C Rawlinson, the soldier and epigraphist who unlocked the secrets of the ancient Babylonian script or the Cuneiform system of writing.
 |
| a Biography of Rawlinson |
Empires of the Plain is an excellent biography of Col. H C Rawlinson and is based essentially on the published letters and the short biography of the Soldier penned by his brother. There is little on the actual process by which H C Rawlinson deciphered the Cuneiform Script,but it does provide adequate material to help us understand the rigours of deciphermnt. A Script is like a cipher hence the process of reading or unlocking it is called decipherment. The basic and fundamental requirement for any decipherment is a known key that cn be used to unlock the forgotten / mysterious script or code. Joseph Champilion who deciphered the Egyptian Hyreoglypics had as his key the Rosetta Stone discovered by Napoleon's scholars on the banks of the river Nile just before the Battle of Trafalghar. It was written in Egyptian Hireogluphic, Greek and Demotic scripts. Since Greek could be read, Champollion rightly assumed that the proper names in the Greek could appear in trnasliterated form in the Egyptian script and he was able to read Ptolemey and tht started off the whole process of decipherment. Similarly, the earliest script of India is the one used by Ashoka in his Rock Inscriptions and Edicts both minor and major, In spite of the effort of some Tamil nationalists to give the credit to the ancient Tamils or Srilanks, the fact that the lipikara in some of the inscriptions sign themselves in kharoshti, a script derived from the Achemened Empire suggests otherwise. James Princep, used the Gree legends founs in the coins of the Selcucids, the successors of the Great Alexander to extrapolate Greek sound value on Brahmi characters in Kushana coins and thereby rightly read De va namo piya as a titl of Ashoka. This is the real and time tested method of decipherment. Wuthout a known key a language and its script remains eternally locked,
 |
| The Beihistun Inscription |
The picture on the left is that of the most famous Inscription of the ancient world the Behistun Inscription of the Persian King Darius I (BC 522-486) writeen on the escarpent of the Zagaros Moutains in resent day Iran in three languages: old Persian, Elamite, and Akkadian. One of th Persian kings Cyrus is even called called annointed of God in the Hebrew Old Testament as he was reposnsible for freeing the Jewish people from captivity when he conquered Egypt. The inscription was essesntially a record of the conquests of Darius I and given te length and details given it raises the legitmate suspicion that Darius like Ashoka waded through blood to seize the throne and then claimed that Ahuramazda had blessed him and thefore his legitimacy was beyond question.The Cuneiform was a script and not a language and was the earliest script designed to help the ancient Babylonan and Assyrian Empires keep records of their wealth and economic output. This historical conjuncture between writing and imperial political systems suggets that Empires facilitated record keeping as an instrument of control. It derives its name from the peculiar wedge shaped characters incised on wet clay tablets with a reed flattened at one end to make it capable of inscribing wedge strokes on a clay surface. Sir Henry Austen Layard, the archaeologist who discovered Nineveh, the city of the Assyrians mentioned in the Old Testament found a veritible library of clay tablets recording the activities, politicl and military, of Nebuchednazzer and his successors. Unfortunately on 50 000 of such documents have been published and a vast majority of these clay documents are ichicago's famus Art Institute.
Given the importance of this region in the Old Testament, a number of European scholars took up the study of the ancient records of the Near Esat, Middle East or the Oreint as it was called. In the nineteenth century these palces were under the nominal authority of the Ottoman Empire whose writ was directly propotionl to the armed battalion stationed in these provinces. Persia where Rawlinson worked as Consul was nominally independent and this independence was contingennt upon playing Russia against the British Empire in India. H C Rawlinson was an Officer in the Army f the East India Company stationed in Bombay now Mumbai. Having learnt Persian well form Sir John Briggs and John Malcolmn he was sent to Baghdad as th Consul to represent British economic and military interests there.
Early during his stay, H C Rawlinson visited the Behistun Rock and wondered at the message staring down from a hieght of nearly 400 feet of smooth roch. It was obvious that Darius had taken the precaution of rendering the entire surface of the rocck and its access so smooth that it was impossible for anyone to climb to take a close look. This raises anothe question regarding literary practices in early empires, including the Brahmi Inscriptions of Ashoka. Who could read these Inscriptions and what purose did they serve if they were inscribed so high that they are just barely visible.
 |
| COL H C RAWLINSON |
In his two important records presented to the Royal Society of London and in his Cuneiform Inscriptions of Old Persia Col Rawlinson has outlined his journey to the decipherment. In the nineteenth century there was almost an unseemly competition among the various "civilized nations" of the world to be the first to unlock the ancient script. Quite early M Burnouf, a Frenchman had published the Inscription of Hamadan. This too was a trilingual record and was inscribed during the reign of the son of Darius Xerxes and was an enumeration of royal titles. Bournuf also visited the site of Persepollis the capital city which was burnt and destroyed by Alexander as act of innane vandalism. Saint Mrtin another Frenchman and a close understudy and student of Joseph Champollion also started working on the Cuneiform Inscriptions around the same time as H C Rawlinson. In his letters we see a trace of desparation. Rawlinson wanted to be the first to accomplish the great feat.
To to end then, H C Rawlinson did what even we living in the twenty first century would hesitate to do. He had himself suspended by ropes on to the surface of the rock so that he could trce out the chaacters that ran like serried columns all along the face of the rock. Working thus, one small miss step would have resulted death, Rawlinson trace out/copied the entire record. Now he had the material at hand to decipher the script.
Once again the key was found in the work of an earlier scholar, a Frenchman who lived in Pondicherry for seveal years, Anquetil du Perron who was one of the earliest scholars of the Zens Avesta and Old Sanskrit. Using insight from Du Perron, Rawlinson was able to make out the names of the early kings from the Avestan and trnasposed the to old Cuneiform. The book that he published on the Behistun Inscription provides all the technical details.
H C Rawlinson died on arch 5, 1895.
