4.2.1. Georg Friedrich Grotefend
The immense periods of time over which cuneiform writing developed brought about an evolution not only of the languages but also of the script. A new problem then arose: the cuneiform inscriptions Botta was sending to Paris looked different from those Niebuhr had brought back from Persepolis.
Both Botta's samples and Niebuhr's would become the models for everything that emerged later from the ruins that gradually came to light in the valleys of the Tigris and the Euphrates.
To Grotefend goes the credit for the first steps in the decipherment of cuneiform. All thanks to a bet.
Grotefend made use of a few poor copies of inscriptions found at Persepolis to achieve what the leading specialists of his day had considered impossible.
In 1802 he presented to the Göttingen Academy of Sciences the first results of his research, under the title Praevia de cuneatis quas vocant inscriptionibus persepolitanis legendis et explicandis relatio.
Although he initially leaned on Greek authors to decipher cuneiform, he had no trilingual stele to support him as Champollion would have twenty years later for the hieroglyphs; on top of that, he knew none of the three languages and scripts the inscriptions contained. He proceeded from a simple, meticulous study of the text: cuneiform signs were not mere ornaments, as Hyde had claimed, but real writing.
As Grotefend showed, the wedges tended to point in four preferred directions, but always in such a way that the main direction was from top to bottom or from left to right. The angles formed by two wedges always opened to the right. He also concluded that the writing should be read from left to right — unlike, for example, the eastern languages that are written from right to left.
He also assumed that certain customs would not have changed too greatly despite the passage of time. As the copies of cuneiform inscriptions he had came from monuments, it was reasonable to think that the equivalent of "rest in peace" on Western tombs was already being engraved at that time. From that vantage point, the opening words on contemporary Persian monuments could not differ greatly from those on their oldest forebears.
If the oldest known inscriptions begin with a formula glorifying the king, why could not cuneiform inscriptions do the same?
With this hypothesis Grotefend took the first step that led him to decipher and then translate cuneiform writing.
It was only a first step, but his work — based on the Greek writings about the Persian dynasties, especially Herodotus — led him to advance a theory that proved to be irrefutable. From then on he simply made corrections until he had reconstructed the entire alphabet.
4.2.2. Henry Rawlinson and the Behistun Inscription
Henry Rawlinson (1810–1895), without any knowledge of the work of Grotefend or other authors, deciphered cuneiform in a way similar to the German. But in 1836, comparing his alphabet with Grotefend's, he realised he had surpassed him.
In the region of Bagistana, on the ancient route from Hamadan to Babylon, stands a cliff with a frieze carved into the rock wall on which figures are depicted: the Great King (Darius) triumphant over his enemies, and the enemies themselves. On either side and beneath are written, in fourteen columns, the king's accounts of himself and of his deeds in three languages: Old Persian, Elamite and Babylonian. This is the cliff of Behistun.
From where the inscription sits to the bottom of the ravine is a fifty-metre drop, but it did not deter Rawlinson, who lowered himself down to it and copied the ancient Persian inscription.
In 1846 he presented to the Royal Asiatic Society of London not only the first accurate copy of the Behistun inscription but also a complete translation.
Among the most important names to have contributed to the decipherment of cuneiform we may also mention the Irish Assyriologist Edward Hincks, the German-born French scholar Julius Oppert, the Briton William Henry Fox Talbot and the Dane Westergaard.