See J. Nicolson and R. Burn,History and Antiquities of the Counties of Westmorland and Cumberland(London, 1777); W. Hutchinson,History of Cumberland(Carlisle, 1794); S. Jefferson,History and Antiquities of Cumberland(Carlisle, 1840-1842); S. Gilpin,Songs and Ballads of Cumberland(London, 1866); W. Dickinson,Glossary of Words and Phrases of Cumberland(London, English DialectSociety, 1878, with a supplement, 1881); Sir G. F. Duckett,Early Sheriffs of Cumberland(Kendal, 1879); J. Denton, “Account of Estates and Families in the County of Cumberland, 1066-1603,” inAntiquarian Society’s Transactions(1887); R. S. Ferguson,History of Cumberland(London, 1890); “Archaeological Survey of Cumberland,” in Archaeologia, vol. liii. (London, 1893); W. Jackson,Papers and Pedigrees relating to Cumberland(2 vols., London, 1892); T. Ellwood,The Landnama Book of Iceland as it illustrates the Dialect and Antiquities of Cumberland(Kendal, 1894);Victoria County History, Cumberland; andTransactions of the Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society.
See J. Nicolson and R. Burn,History and Antiquities of the Counties of Westmorland and Cumberland(London, 1777); W. Hutchinson,History of Cumberland(Carlisle, 1794); S. Jefferson,History and Antiquities of Cumberland(Carlisle, 1840-1842); S. Gilpin,Songs and Ballads of Cumberland(London, 1866); W. Dickinson,Glossary of Words and Phrases of Cumberland(London, English DialectSociety, 1878, with a supplement, 1881); Sir G. F. Duckett,Early Sheriffs of Cumberland(Kendal, 1879); J. Denton, “Account of Estates and Families in the County of Cumberland, 1066-1603,” inAntiquarian Society’s Transactions(1887); R. S. Ferguson,History of Cumberland(London, 1890); “Archaeological Survey of Cumberland,” in Archaeologia, vol. liii. (London, 1893); W. Jackson,Papers and Pedigrees relating to Cumberland(2 vols., London, 1892); T. Ellwood,The Landnama Book of Iceland as it illustrates the Dialect and Antiquities of Cumberland(Kendal, 1894);Victoria County History, Cumberland; andTransactions of the Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society.
CUMBERLAND,a city and the county-seat of Allegany county, Maryland, U.S.A., on the Potomac river, about 178 m. W. by N. of Baltimore and about 153 m. S. by E. of Pittsburg. Pop. (1890) 12,729; (1900) 17,128, of whom 1113 were foreign-born and 1100 were of negro descent; (1910) 21,839. Cumberland is served by the Baltimore & Ohio, the Western Maryland, the Pennsylvania, the Cumberland & Pennsylvania (from Cumberland to Piedmont, Virginia), and the George’s Creek & Cumberland railways, the last a short line extending to Lonaconing (19 m.); by an electric line extending to Western Port, Maryland; and by the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal, of which it is a terminus. The city is about 635 ft. above sea-level, and from a distance appears to be completely shut in by lofty ranges of hills, which are cut through to the westward by a deep gorge called “The Narrows,” making a natural gateway of great beauty. Cumberland has a large trade in coal, which is mined in the vicinity. As a manufacturing centre it ranked in 1905 second in the state, the chief products being iron, steel, bricks, flour, cement, silk and leather; there is also a large dyeing and cleaning establishment. The value of the city’s factory products increased from $2,900,267 in 1900 to $4,595,023 in 1905, or 58.4%. Cumberland is an important jobbing centre also. The municipality owns and operates its water-works and electric lighting plant. The first settlement of the place was made in 1750; in 1754 Fort Cumberland was erected within what are now the city limits, and in the year following this fort was occupied by General Edward Braddock. Cumberland was laid out in 1763, but there was little growth until 1787, and it was not incorporated as a town until 1815; it was chartered as a city in 1850.
CUMBERLAND,a township of Providence county, Rhode Island, U.S.A., in the N.E. part of the state, about 6 m. N. of Providence and having the Blackstone river for most of its W. boundary. Pop. (1890) 8090; (1900) 8925, of whom 3473 were foreign-born; (1910) 10,107; area, 27.5 sq. m. It is served by the New York, New Haven & Hartford railway. Within its borders are the villages of Cumberland Hill, Diamond Hill, Arnold Mills, Abbott Run, Berkeley, Robin Hollow, Happy Hollow, East Cumberland, and parts of Manville, Ashton, Lonsdale and Valley Falls. The surface of the township is generally hilly and rocky. In the N. part is a valuable granite quarry; and limestone, and some coal, iron and gold are also found. Cumberland has been called the “mineral pocket of New England.” The Blackstone and its tributaries provide considerable water power; and there are various manufactures, including cotton goods, silk goods, and horse-shoes and other iron ware. The value of the township’s factory product in 1905 was $3,171,318, an increase of 80.6% since 1900, this ratio of increase being greater than that shown by any other “municipality” in the state having a population in 1900 of 8000 or more. At Lonsdale, William Blackstone (c.1595-1675), the first permanent white settler within the present limits of Rhode Island, built his residence, “Study Hall,” about 1635. Cumberland was originally a part of Rehoboth, and then of Attleborough, Massachusetts, and for many years was called, like other sparse settlements, the Gore, or Attleborough Gore. In 1747, by the royal decree establishing the boundary between Massachusetts and Rhode Island, Attleborough Gore, with other territory formerly under the jurisdiction of Massachusetts, was annexed to Rhode Island, and the township of Cumberland was incorporated, the name being adopted in honour of William Augustus, duke of Cumberland. In 1867 a part of Cumberland was set off to form the township of Woonsocket.
CUMBERLAND MOUNTAINS(or more correctly the Cumberland Plateau or Highlands), the westernmost of the three great divisions of the Appalachian uplift in the United States, composed of many small ranges of mountains (of which Cumberland Mountain in eastern Kentucky is one). It extends from Pennsylvania to Alabama, attaining its greatest height (about 4000 ft.) in Virginia. The plateau is rich in a variety of mineral products, of which special mention may be made of coal, which occurs in many places, and of the beautiful marbles quarried in that portion of the plateau which lies between Virginia and Kentucky and crosses Tennessee. The plateau has an abrupt descent, almost an escarpment, into the great Appalachian Valley on its E., while the W. slope is deeply and roughly broken. The whole mass is eroded in Virginia into a maze of ridges. Cumberland Mountain parts the waters of the Cumberland and Tennessee rivers. This range and the other ranges about it are perhaps the loveliest portion of the whole plateau. The peaks here and in the Blue Ridge to the E. are the highest of the Appalachian system. Forest-filled valleys, rounded hills and rugged gorges afford in every part scenery of surpassing beauty. The Cumberland Valley between the Cumberland range and the Pine range is one of special fame. In the former range there are immense caverns and subterranean streams. Cumberland Gap, crossing the ridge at about 167 ft. above the sea, where Kentucky, Virginia and Tennessee meet, is a gorge about 500 ft. deep, with steep sides that barely give room in places for a roadway. The mountains, river and gap were all discovered by a party of Virginians in 1748, and named in honour of the victor of Culloden, William, duke of Cumberland. Afterwards the gap gained a place in American history as one of the main pathways by which emigrants crossed the mountains to Kentucky and Tennessee. During the Civil War it was a position of great strategic importance, as it afforded an entrance to eastern and central Tennessee from Kentucky, which was held by the Union arms; and it was repeatedly occupied in alternation by the opposing forces.
The mountaineers of Kentucky and Tennessee are a strange stock, who retain in their customs and habits the primitive conditions of a life that has elsewhere long since disappeared. They have been pictured in the novels of Miss Murfree and John Fox, Junr. They are a tall, straight, angular folk, of fine physical development; the volunteers for the Union army from Kentucky and Tennessee during the Civil War—most of whom came from the non-slave-holding mountain region—exceeded in physical development the volunteers from all other states. For the education of these mountaineers Major-General Oliver Otis Howard founded in 1895 at Cumberland Gap, Tennessee, the Lincoln Memorial University (co-educational; non-sectarian; opened in 1897), which has collegiate, normal training and industrial courses, and an affiliated school of medicine, Tennessee Medical College, at Knoxville. The university had in 1907-1908 14 instructors and 570 students. Berea College in Kentucky was a pioneer institution for the education of mountaineers.
CUMBERLAND RIVER,a large southern branch of the Ohio river, U.S.A., rising in the highest part of the Cumberland plateau in south-east Kentucky, and emptying into the Ohio in Kentucky (near Smithland) after a devious course of 688 m. through that state and Tennessee. It drains a basin of somewhat more than 18,000 sq. m., and is navigable for light-draught steamers through about 500 m. under favourable conditions—Burnside, Pulaski county, 518 m. from the mouth, is the head of navigation—and through 193 m.—to Nashville—all the year round; for boats drawing not more than 3 ft. the river is navigable to Nashville for 6 to 8 months. At the Great Falls, in Whitley county, Kentucky, it drops precipitously 63 ft. Above the falls it is a mountain stream, of little volume in the dry months. It descends rapidly at its head to the highland bench below the mountains and traverses this to the falls, then flows in rapids (the Great Shoals) for some 10 m. through a fine gorge with cliffs 300-400 ft. high, and descends between bluffs of decreasing height and beauty into its lower level. Save in the mountains its gradient is slight, and below the falls, except for a number of small rapids, theflow of the stream is equable. Timbered ravines lend charm to much of its shores, and in the mountains the scenery is most beautiful. Below Nashville the stream is some 400 to 500 ft. wide, and its high banks are for the most part of alluvium, with rocky bluffs at intervals. At the mouth of the river lies Cumberland Island, in the Ohio. During low water of the latter stream the Cumberland discharges around both ends of the island, but in high water of the Ohio the gradient of the Cumberland is so slight that its waters are held back, forming a deep quiet pool that extends some 20 m. up the river. A system of locks and dams below Nashville was planned in 1846 by a private company, which accomplished practically nothing. Congress appropriated $155,000 in 1832-1838; in the years immediately after 1888 $305,000 was expended, notably for deepening the shoals at the junction of the Cumberland and the Ohio; in 1892 a project was undertaken for 7 locks and dams 52 ft. wide and 280 ft. long below Nashville. Above Nashville $346,000 was expended on the open channel project (of 1871-1872) from Nashville to Cumberland Ford (at Pineville); in 1886 a canalization project was undertaken and 22 locks and dams below Burnside and 6 above Burnside were planned, but by the act of 1907 the project was modified—$2,319,000 had been appropriated up to 1908 for the work of canalization. During the Civil War Fort Donelson on the Cumberland, and Fort Henry near by on the Tennessee were erected by the Confederates, and their capture by Flag-officer A. H. Foote and General Grant (Feb. 1862) was one of the decisive events of the war, opening the rivers as it did for the advance of the Union forces far into Confederate Territory.
CUMBRAES, THE,two islands forming part of the county of Bute, Scotland, lying in the Firth of Clyde, between the southern shores of Bute and the coast of Ayrshire.Great Cumbrae Island, about 1½ m. W.S.W. of Largs, is 3¾ m. long and 2 m. broad, and has a circumference of 10 m. and an area of 3200 acres or 5 sq. m. Its highest point is 417 ft. above the sea. There is some fishing and a little farming, but the mainstay of the inhabitants is the custom of the visitors who crowd every summer to Millport, which is reached by railway steamer from Largs. This town (pop. 1901, 1663) is well situated at the head of a fine bay and has a climate that is both warm and bracing. Its chief public buildings include the cathedral, erected in Gothic style on rising ground behind the town, the college connected with it, the garrison, a picturesque seat belonging to the marquess of Bute, who owns the island, the town hall, a public hall, library and reading room, the Lady Margaret fever hospital, and a marine biological station. The cathedral, originally the collegiate church, was founded in 1849 by the earl of Glasgow and opened in 1851. In 1876 it was constituted the cathedral of Argyll and the Isles. Millport enjoys exceptional facilities for boating and bathing, and there is also a good golf-course. Pop. (1901) 1754, of whom 1028 were females, and 59 spoke both English and Gaelic.Little Cumbrae Islandlies to the south, separated by the Tan, a strait half a mile wide. It is 1¾ m. long, barely 1 m. broad, and has an area of almost a square mile. Its highest point is 409 ft. above sea-level. On the bold cliffs of the west coast stands a lighthouse. Robert II. is said to have built a castle on the island which was demolished by Cromwell’s soldiers in 1653.
The strata met with in the Great and Little Cumbrae belong to the Upper Old Red Sandstone and Carboniferous systems. The former, consisting of false-bedded sandstones and conglomerates, are confined to the larger island. The Carboniferous rocks of the Cumbrae belong to the lower part of the Calciferous Sandstone series with the accompanying volcanic zone. In the larger island these sediments, comprising sandstones, red, purple and mottled clays with occasional bands of nodular limestone or cornstone, occupy a considerable area on the north side of Millport Bay. In the Little Cumbrae they appear on the east side, where they underlie and are interbedded with the lavas. The interesting geological feature of these islands is the development of Lower Carboniferous volcanic rocks. They cover nearly the whole of the Little Cumbrae, where they give rise to marked terraced features and are arranged in a gentle synclinal fold. The flows are often scoriaceous at the top and sometimes display columnar structure, as in the crags at the lighthouse. Those rocks examined microscopically consist of basalts which are often porphyritic. In Great Cumbrae the intrusive rocks mark four periods of eruption, three of which may be of Carboniferous age. The oldest, consisting of trachytes, occur as sheets and dikes trending generally E.N.E., and are confined chiefly to the Upper Old Red Sandstone. They seem to be of older date than the Carboniferous lavas of Little Cumbrae and south Bute. Next come dikes of olivine basalt of the type of the Lion’s Haunch on Arthur’s Seat, which, though possessing the same general trend as the trachytes, are seen to cut them. The members of the third group comprise dikes of dolerite or basalt with or without olivine, which have a general east and west trend, and as they intersect the two previous groups they must be of later date. They probably belong to the east and west quartz dolerite dikes which are now referred to late Carboniferous time. Lastly there are representatives of the basalt dikes of Tertiary age with a north-west trend.
The strata met with in the Great and Little Cumbrae belong to the Upper Old Red Sandstone and Carboniferous systems. The former, consisting of false-bedded sandstones and conglomerates, are confined to the larger island. The Carboniferous rocks of the Cumbrae belong to the lower part of the Calciferous Sandstone series with the accompanying volcanic zone. In the larger island these sediments, comprising sandstones, red, purple and mottled clays with occasional bands of nodular limestone or cornstone, occupy a considerable area on the north side of Millport Bay. In the Little Cumbrae they appear on the east side, where they underlie and are interbedded with the lavas. The interesting geological feature of these islands is the development of Lower Carboniferous volcanic rocks. They cover nearly the whole of the Little Cumbrae, where they give rise to marked terraced features and are arranged in a gentle synclinal fold. The flows are often scoriaceous at the top and sometimes display columnar structure, as in the crags at the lighthouse. Those rocks examined microscopically consist of basalts which are often porphyritic. In Great Cumbrae the intrusive rocks mark four periods of eruption, three of which may be of Carboniferous age. The oldest, consisting of trachytes, occur as sheets and dikes trending generally E.N.E., and are confined chiefly to the Upper Old Red Sandstone. They seem to be of older date than the Carboniferous lavas of Little Cumbrae and south Bute. Next come dikes of olivine basalt of the type of the Lion’s Haunch on Arthur’s Seat, which, though possessing the same general trend as the trachytes, are seen to cut them. The members of the third group comprise dikes of dolerite or basalt with or without olivine, which have a general east and west trend, and as they intersect the two previous groups they must be of later date. They probably belong to the east and west quartz dolerite dikes which are now referred to late Carboniferous time. Lastly there are representatives of the basalt dikes of Tertiary age with a north-west trend.
CUMIN,orCummin(Cuminum Cyminum), an annual herbaceous plant, a member of the natural order Umbelliferae and probably a native of some part of western Asia, but scarcely known at the present time in a wild state. It was early cultivated in Arabia, India and China, and in the countries bordering the Mediterranean. Its stem is slender and branching, and about a foot in height; the leaves are deeply cut, with filiform segments; the flowers are small and white. The fruits, the so-called seeds, which constitute the cumin of pharmacy, are fusiform or ovoid in shape and compressed laterally; they are two lines long, are hotter to the taste, lighter in colour, and larger than caraway seeds, and have on each half nine fine ridges, overlying as many oil-channels or vittae. Their strong aromatic smell and warm bitterish taste are due to the presence of about 3% of an essential oil. The tissue of the seeds contains a fatty oil, with resin, mucilage and gum, malates and albuminous matter; and in the pericarp there is much tannin. The volatile oil of cumin, which may be separated by distillation of the seed with water, is mainly a mixture of cymol or cymene, C10H14, and cumic aldehyde, C6H4(C3H7)COH. Cumin is mentioned in Isaiah xxviii. 25, 27, and Matthew xxiii. 23, and in the works of Hippocrates and Dioscorides. From Pliny we learn that the ancients took the ground seed medicinally with bread, water or wine, and that it was accounted the best of condiments as a remedy for squeamishness. It was found to occasion pallor of the face, whence the expression of Horace,exsangue cuminum(Epist.i. 19), and that of Persius,pallentis grana cumini(Sat.v. 55). Pliny relates the story that it was employed by the followers of Porcius Latro, the celebrated rhetorician, in order to produce a complexion such as bespeaks application to study (xx. 57). In the middle ages cumin was one of the commonest spices of European growth. Its average price per pound in England in the 13th and 14th centuries was 2d. or, at present value, about 1s. 4d. (Rogers,Hist. of Agric. and Prices, i. 631). It is stimulant and carminative, and is employed in the manufacture of curry powder. The medicinal use of the drug is now confined to veterinary practice. Cumin is exported from India, Mogador, Malta and Sicily.
CUMMERBUND,a girdle or waistbelt (Hindostanikamar-band, a loin-band). In the East the principle of health is to keep the head cool and the stomach warm; the turban protects the one from the sun, and the cummerbund ensures the other against changes of temperature. In India the cummerbund consists of many folds of muslin or bright-coloured cloth.
CUMMING, JOSEPH GEORGE(1812-1868), English geologist and archaeologist, was born at Matlock in Derbyshire on the 15th of February 1812. He was educated at Oakham grammar school, and Emmanuel College, Cambridge, taking the degree of M.A., and entering holy orders in 1835. In 1841 he was appointed vice-principal of King William’s College, Castletown, in the Isle of Man, and this position he held until 1856. During this period his leisure time was devoted to a study of the geology and archaeology of the island. The results were published in a classic volumeThe Isle of Man; its History, Physical, Ecclesiastical, Civil and Legendary(1848). In 1856 he became master of King Edward’s grammar school at Lichfield, in 1858 warden and professor of classical literature and geology in Queen’s College, Birmingham, in 1862 rector of Mellis, in Suffolk, and in 1867 vicar of St John’s, Bethnal Green, London. He died in London on the 21st of September 1868.
CUMNOCK AND HOLMHEAD,a police burgh of Ayrshire, Scotland, on the Lugar, 33¾ m. S. of Glasgow by road, with two stations (Cumnock and Old Cumnock) on the Glasgow & South-Western railway. Pop. (1901) 3088. It lies in the parish of Old Cumnock (pop. 5144), and is a thriving town, with a town hall, cottage hospital, public library and an athenaeum. Coal and ironstone are extensively mined in the neighbourhood, and the manufactures include woollens, tweeds, agricultural implements and pottery. When Alexander Peden (1626-1686), the persecuted Covenanter, died, he was buried in the Boswell aisle of Auchinleck church; but his corpse was borne thence with every indignity by a company of dragoons to the foot of the gallows at Cumnock, where they intended to hang it in chains. This proving to be impracticable they buried it at the gallows-foot. After the Revolution the inhabitants out of respect for the “Prophet’s” memory abandoned their then burying-ground and turned the old place of execution into the present cemetery. Five miles S.E. lies the parish of New Cumnock (pop. 5367) at the confluence of Afton Water and the Nith. It is rich in minerals, iron, coal, limestone and freestone, and has a station on the Glasgow & South-Western railway. Two miles N.W. of Cumnock is Auchinleck (pronounced Affleck), with a station on the Glasgow & South-Western railway. Coal and iron mining and farming are important industries. It is the seat of the Boswell family, three generations of which abbreviated greatness—Lord Auchinleck, the judge (who dubbed Dr Johnson “Ursa Major”), his son James, the biographer, and his grandson Sir Alexander, the author of “Gude nicht and joy be wi’ you a’,” “Jenny’s Bawbee,” “Jenny dang the weaver,” and other songs and poems, who perished miserably in a duel. Pop. of Auchinleck parish (1901) 6605.
CUNARD, SIR SAMUEL,Bart. (1787-1865), British civil engineer, founder of the Cunard line of steam-ships, was born at Halifax, Nova Scotia, on the 21st of November 1787. He was the son of a merchant, and was himself trained for the pursuits of commerce, in which, by his abilities and enterprising spirit, he attained a conspicuous position. When, in the early years of steam navigation, the English government made known its desire to substitute steam vessels for the sailing ships then employed in the mail service between England and America, Cunard heartily entered into the scheme, came to England, and accepted the government tender for carrying it out. In conjunction with Messrs Burns of Glasgow and Messrs MacIver of Liverpool, proprietors of rival lines of coasting steamers between Glasgow and Liverpool, he formed a company, and the first voyage of a Cunard steamship was successfully made by the “Britannia” from Liverpool to Boston, U.S.A., between July 4 and 19, 1840 (seeSteamship Lines). In acknowledgment of his energetic and successful services Cunard was, in 1859, created a baronet. He died in London on the 28th of April 1865.
CUNAS,a tribe of Central American Indians. Their home is the Isthmus of Panama, from the Chagres to the Atrato. They are sometimes called Darien or San Blas Indians. They are a small active people, with remarkably light complexions.
CUNDINAMARCA,till 1909 a department of the eastern plateau of Colombia, South America, having the departments of Quesada and Tundama on the N., Tolima on the W. and S., and the Meta territory on the S.E. and E. The territorial redistribution of 1905 deprived Cundinamarca of its territories on the eastern plains, and a part of its territory in the Eastern Cordillera out of which Quesada and the Federal district were created—its area being reduced from 79,691 to 5060 sq. m., and its estimated population from 500,000 to 225,000. A considerable part of its area consists of plateaus enjoying a temperate climate and producing the fruits and cereals of the temperate zone, and another important part lies in the valley of the Magdalena and is tropical in character. The district of Fusagasuga in the southern part of this region is celebrated for the excellence of its coffee. The capital of the department was Facatativá (est. population, 7500), situated on the western margin of thesabanaof Bogotá, 25 m. N.W. from that capital by rail. Other important towns are Caqueza, Sibaté, La Meza and Tocaima.
CUNEIFORM(from Lat.cuneus, a wedge), a form of writing, extensively used in the ancient world, especially by the Babylonians and Assyrians. The word “cuneiform” was first applied in 1700 by Thomas Hyde, professor of Hebrew in the university of Oxford, in the expression “dactuli pyramidales seu cuneiformes,” and it has found general acceptance, though efforts have been made to introduce the expression “arrow-headed” writing. The name “cuneiform” is fitting, for each character or sign is composed of a wedge (or), or a combination of wedges (), written from left to right. The wedge is always pointed towards the right () or downwards () or aslant (), or two may be so combined as to form an angle () called by German Assyriologists aWinkelhaken, a word now sometimes adopted by English writers on the subject. The word cuneiform has passed into most modern languages, but the Germans useKeilschrift(i.e.wedge-script) and the Arabsmismārī() or nail-writing.
In Persia, 40 m. N.E. of Shiraz, is a range of hills, Mount Rachmet, in front of which, in a semicircular form, rises a vast terrace-like platform. It is partly natural, but was walled up in front, levelled off and used as the baseDiscovery and decipherment.of great temples and palaces. The earliest European, at present known to us, who visited the site was a wandering friar Odoricus (aboutA.D.1320), who does not seem to have noticed the inscriptions cut in the stone. These were first observed by Josaphat Barbaro, a Venetian traveller, about 1472. In 1621 the ruins were visited by Pietro della Valle, who was the first to copy a few of the signs, which he sent in a letter to a friend in Naples. His copy was not well made, but it served the useful purpose of directing attention to an unknown script which was certain to attract scholars to the problem of its decipherment. To this end it was necessary that complete inscriptions and not merely separate signs should be made accessible to European scholars. The first man to attempt to satisfy this need was Sir John Chardin, in whose volumes of travels published at Amsterdam in 1711 one of the small inscriptions found at the ruins of Persepolis was carefully and accurately reproduced. It was now plainly to be seen, as indeed others had surmised, that these inscriptions at Persepolis had been written in three languages, distinguished each from other by an increasing complexity in the signs with which they were written. The three languages have since been determined as Persian, Susian and Babylonian. But before the decipherment could begin it was necessary that all the available material should be copied and published. The honour of performing this great task fell to Carsten Niebuhr, who visited Persepolis in March 1765, and in three weeks and a half copied all the texts, so well that little improvement has been made in them since. When Niebuhr returned to Denmark he studied carefully the little inscriptions and convinced himself that the guesses of some of his predecessors were correct, and that the inscriptions were to be read from left to right. He observed that three systems of writing were discernible, and that these were always kept distinct in the inscriptions. He did not, however, draw the natural conclusion that they represented three languages, but supposed that the proud builders of Persepolis had written their inscriptions in threefold form. He divided the little inscriptions into three classes, according to the manner of their writing, calling them classes I., II. and III. He then arranged all those he had copied that belonged to class I., and by careful comparison decided that in them there were employed altogether but forty-two signs. These he copied out and set in order in one of his plates. This list of signs was so nearly complete and accurate that later study has made but slight changes in it. WhenNiebuhr had made his list of signs he naturally enough decided that this language, whatever it might be, was written in alphabetic characters, a conclusion which later investigation has not overthrown. Beyond this Niebuhr was not able to go, and not even one sign revealed its secret to his inquiry. When, however, he had published his copies (in 1777) there were other scholars ready to take up the difficult task. Two scholars independently, Olav Tychsen of Rostock and Friedrich Münter of Copenhagen, began work upon the problem. Tychsen first observed that there occurred at irregular intervals in the inscriptions of the first class a wedge that pointed neither directly to the right nor downward, but inclined diagonally. This he suggested was the dividing sign used to separate words. This very simple discovery later became of great importance in the hands of Münter. Tychsen also correctly identified the alphabetic signs for “a,” “d,” “u” and “s,” but he failed to decipher an entire inscription, chiefly perhaps because, through an error in history, he supposed that they were written during the Parthian dynasty (246B.C.-A.D.227). Münter was more fortunate than Tychsen in his historical researches, and this made him also more successful in linguistic attempts. He rightly identified the builders of Persepolis with the Achaemenian dynasty, and so located in time the authors of the inscriptions (538-465B.C.). Independently of Tychsen he identified the oblique wedge as a divider between words, and found the meaning of the sign for “b.” These may appear to be small matters, but it must be remembered that they were made without the assistance of any bilingual text, and were indeed taken bodily out of the gloom which had settled upon these languages centuries before. They did not, however, bring us much nearer to the desired goal of a reading of any portion of the inscriptions. The whole case indeed seemed now perilously near a stalemate. New methods must be found, and a new worker, with patience, persistence, power of combination, insight, the historical sense and the feeling for archaeological indications.
In 1802 Georg Friedrich Grotefend (q.v.) was persuaded by the librarian of Göttingen University to essay the task. He began with the assumption that there were three languages, and that of these the first was ancient Persian, the language of the Achaemenians, who had erected these palaces and caused these inscriptions to be written. For his first attempts at decipherment he chose two of these old Persian inscriptions and laid them side by side. They were of moderate length, and the frequent recurrence of the same signs in them seemed to indicate that their contents were similar. The method which he now pursued was so simple, yet so sure, as he advanced step by step, that there seemed scarcely a chance of error. Münter had observed in all the Persian texts a word which occurred in two forms, a short and a longer form. This word appeared in Grotefend’s two texts in both long and short forms. Münter had suggested that it meant “king” in the short form and “kings” in the longer, and that when the two words occurred together the expression meant “king of kings.” But further, this word occurred in both inscriptions in the first line, and in both cases was followed by the same word. This second word Grotefend supposed to mean “great,” the combined expression being “king great,” that is, “great king.” All this found support in the phraseology of the lately deciphered Sassanian inscriptions, and it was plausible in itself. It must, however, be supported by definite facts, and furthermore each word must be separated into its alphabetic parts, every one of them identified, and the words themselves be shown to be philologically possible by the production of similar words in related languages. In other words, the archaeological method must find support in a philological method. To this Grotefend now devoted himself with equal energy. His method was as simple as before. He had made out to his own satisfaction the titles “great king, king of kings.” Now, in the Sassanian inscriptions, the first word was always the king’s name, followed immediately by “great king, king of kings,” and Grotefend reasoned that this was probably true in his texts. But if true, then these two texts were set up by two different kings, for the names were not the same at the beginning. Furthermore the name with which his text No. I. began appears in the third line of text No. II., but in a somewhat longer form, which Grotefend thought was a genitive and meant “of N.” It followed the word previously supposed to be “king” and another which might mean son (N king son), so that the whole expression would be “son of N king.” From these facts Grotefend surmised that in these two inscriptions he had the names of three rulers, grandfather, father and son. It was now easy to search the list of the Achaemenian dynasty and to find three names which would suit the conditions, and the three which he ventured to select were Hystaspes, Darius, Xerxes. According to his hypothesis the name at the beginning of inscription I. was Darius, and he was ready to translate his texts in part as follows:—
The form which he provisionally adopted for Darius was Darheush; later investigation has shown that it ought really to be read as Daryavush, but the error was not serious, and he had safely secured at least the letters D, A, R, SH. It was a most wonderful achievement, the importance of which he did not realize, for in it was the key to the decipherment of three ancient languages. To very few men has it been given to make discoveries so important both for history and for philology.
To Grotefend it was, however, not given to translate a whole text, or even to work out all the words whose meaning he had surmised. Rasmus Christian Rask (1787-1832), who followed him, found the plural ending in Persian, which had baffled him; and Eugène Burnouf (1801-1852), by the study of a list of Persian geographical names found at Naksh-i-Rustam, discovered at a single stroke almost all the characters of the Persian alphabet, and incidentally confirmed the values already determined by his predecessors.
At the same time as Burnouf, the eminent Sanskrit scholar Professor Christian Lassen (1800-1876), of Bonn, was studying the same list of names; and his results were published at the same time. The controversy which resulted as to priority of discovery may be here passed over while we sum up the results in general conclusions. Lassen may certainly claim in the final court of history that he discovered independently of Burnouf the values of at least six and possibly of eight signs. But in another respect he made very definite progress over Burnouf. He discovered that, if the system of Grotefend were rigidly followed, and to every sign were given the value Grotefend had assigned, some words would be left wholly or almost wholly without vowels; and therefore unpronounceable. As instances of such words he mentioned ÇPRD, THTGUS, KTPTUK, FRAISJM. This situation led Lassen to a very important discovery, towards which his knowledge of the Sanskrit alphabet did much to bring him. He came, in short, to the conclusion that the ancient Persian signs were not entirely alphabetic, but were at least partially syllabic, that is, that certain signs were used to represent not merely an alphabetic character like “b,” but also a syllable such as “ba,” “bi” or “bu.” He claimed that he had successfully demonstrated that the sign for “a” was only used at the beginning of a word, or before a consonant, or before another vowel, and that in every other case it was included in the consonant sign. Thus in the inscription No I. in the second line the signs should be read VA-ZA-RA-KA. This was a most important discovery, and may be said to have revolutionized the study of these long puzzling texts.
During the entire time of this slow process of decipherment, from the first essays of Grotefend in 1802 until the publication of Lassen’s book in 1836, there were more sceptics than believers in the results of the deciphering process. Indeed the history of all forms of decipherment of unknown languages shows that scepticism concerning them is far more prevalent than credulity or even a too ready acceptance. There was need for a man of another people, of different training and a fresh and unbiased mind, to put the capstone upon the decipherment, and he was already at work when Lassen’s important researches appeared.
Major (afterward Sir) Henry Rawlinson had gone out to India, in the service of the East India Company, while still a boy. There he had learned Persian and several of the Indian vernaculars. That was not the sort of training that had prepared Grotefend, Burnouf or Lassen, but it was the kind that the early travellers and copyists had enjoyed. In 1833 young Rawlinson went to Persia, to work with other British officers in the reorganization of the Persian army. While engaged in this service his attention was drawn to the ancient Persian cuneiform inscriptions. In 1835 he copied with great care the texts at Hamadan, and began their decipherment. Of all the eager work which had been going on in Europe he knew little. It is no longer possible to ascertain when he gained his first information of Grotefend’s work, for Norris, the secretary of the Royal Asiatic Society, has left us no record of when he began to send notices of the German’s work. Whenever it was, there seems to be no doubt that Rawlinson worked independently for a time. His method was strikingly like Grotefend’s. He had copied two trilingual inscriptions, and recognized at once that he had three languages before him. In 1839 (Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, x. pp. 5, 6) he thus wrote of his method: “When I proceeded ... to compare and interline the two inscriptions (or rather the Persian columns of the two inscriptions, for, as the compartments exhibiting the inscription in the Persian language occupied the principal place in the tablets, and were engraved in the least complicated of the three classes of cuneiform writing, they were naturally first submitted to examination) I found that the characters coincided throughout, except in certain particular groups, and it was only reasonable to suppose that the grounds which were thus brought out and individualized must represent proper names. I further remarked that there were but three of these distinct groups in the two inscriptions; for the group which occupied the second place in one inscription, and which, from its position, suggested the idea of its representing the name of the father of the king who was there commemorated, corresponded with the group which occupied the first place in the other inscription, and thus not only served determinately to connect the two inscriptions together, but, assuming the groups to represent proper names, appeared also to indicate a genealogical succession. The natural inference was that in these three groups of characters I had obtained the proper names belonging to three consecutive generations of the Persian monarchy; and it so happened that the first three names of Hystaspes, Darius and Xerxes, which I applied at hazard to the three groups, according to the succession, proved to answer in all respects satisfactorily and were, in fact, the true identification.”
Rawlinson’s next work was the copying of the great inscription of Darius on the rocks at Behistun (q.v.). He had first seen it in 1835, and as it was high up on the rocky face, and apparently inaccessible, he had studied it by means of a field-glass. He was not able to copy the whole of the Persian text, but in 1837, when he was more skilled in the script, he secured more of it. In the next year he forwarded to the Royal Asiatic Society of London his translation of the first two paragraphs of the Persian text, containing the name, titles and genealogy of Darius. This was little less than atour de force, for it must be remembered that this had been accomplished without the knowledge of other ancient languages which his European competitors had enjoyed. The translation, received in London on the 14th of March, made a sensation, and a transcript sent in April to the Asiatic Society of Paris secured him an honorary membership in that distinguished body. He was now known, and many made haste to send him copies of everything important which had been published in Europe. The works of Burnouf, Niebuhr, le Brun and Porter came to his hands, and with such assistance he made rapid progress, and in the winter of 1838-1839 his alphabet of ancient Persian was almost complete. In 1839 he was in Bagdad, his work written out and almost ready for publication. But he delayed, hoping for more light, and revising sign by sign with exhaustless patience. He expected to publish his preliminary memoir in the spring of 1840, when he was suddenly sent to Afghanistan as political agent at Kandahar. Here he was too busily engaged in war administration to attend to his favourite studies, which were not renewed until 1843 when he returned to Bagdad. There he received fresh copies and corrections of the Persepolis inscriptions which had been made by Westergaard, and later made a journey to Behistun to perfect his own copies of the texts which had formed the basis of his own first study. At last, after many delays and discouragements, he published, in 1846, in theJournal of the Royal Asiatic Society, his memoir, or series of memoirs, on the ancient Persian inscriptions, in which for the first time he gave a nearly complete translation of the Persian text of Behistun. In this one publication Rawlinson attained imperishable fame in Oriental research. His work had been carried on under greater difficulties than those in the path of his European colleagues, but he had surpassed them all in the making of an intelligible and connected translation of a long inscription. He had indeed not done it without assistance from the work of Burnouf, Grotefend and Lassen, but when all allowance is made for these influences his fame is not diminished nor the extent of his services curtailed. His method was adopted before he knew of Lassen’s work. That two men of such different training and of such opposite types of mind should have lighted upon the same method, and by it have attained the same results, confirmed in the eyes of many the truth of the decipherment.
The work of the decipherment of the old Persian texts was now complete for all practical purposes. But in 1846 there appeared a paper read before the Royal Irish Academy by the Rev. Edward Hincks of Killyleagh, County Down, Ireland, whose keen criticisms of Lassen’s work, and original contributions to the definite settlement of syllabic values, may be regarded as closing the period of decipherment of Persian cuneiform writing.
The next problem in the study of cuneiform was the decipherment of the second language in each of the trilingual groups. The first essay in this difficult task was made in 1844 by Niels Louis Westergaard. His method was very similar to that used by Grotefend in the decipherment of Persian. He selected the names of Darius, Hystaspes, Persians and others, and compared them with their equivalents in the Persian texts. By this means he learned a number of signs, and sought by their use in other words to spell out syllables or words whose meanings were then ascertained by conjecture or by comparison. He estimated the number of characters at eighty-two or eighty-seven, and judged the writing to be partly alphabetic and partly syllabic. The language he called Median, and classified it in “the Scythian, rather than in the Japhetic family.” The results of Westergaard were subjected to incisive criticism by Hincks, who made a distinct gain in the problem. It next passed to the hands of de Saulcy, who was able to see further than either. But the matter moved with difficulty because the copied texts were not accurate. By the generosity of Sir Henry Rawlinson his superb copies of the Behistun text, second column, were placed in the hands of Mr Edwin Norris, who was able in 1852 to present a paper to the Royal Asiatic Society deciphering nearly all of it. Mordtmann followed him, naming the language Susian, which was met with general acceptance and was not displaced by the name Amardian, suggested by A. H. Sayce in two papers which otherwise made important contributions to the subject. With his contributions the problem of decipherment of Susian may be considered as closed. The latter workers could only be builders on foundations already laid.
The decipherment of the third of the three languages found at Persepolis and Behistun followed quickly on the success with Susian. The first worker was Isadore Löwenstern, who made out the words for “king” and “great” and the sign for the plural, but little more. The first really great advance was made by Hincks in 1846 and 1847. In these he determined successfully the values of several signs, settled the numerals, and was apparently on the high-road toward the translation of an entire Assyrian text. He was, however, too cautious to proceed so far, and the credit of first translating a short Assyrian text belongs to Longpérier, who in 1847 published the following as the translation of an entire text: “Glorious is Sargon, the great king, the (...) king, king of kings, king of the land of Assyria.”It was nearly all correct, but it advanced our knowledge but slightly because it did not give the forms of the words—because (to put it in another way) he was not able to transliterate the Assyrian words. This was the great problem. In the Persian texts there were but forty-four signs, but in the third column of the Persepolis texts Grotefend had counted one hundred and thirty different characters, and estimated that in all the Babylonian texts known to him there were about three hundred different signs, while Botta discovered six hundred and forty-two in the texts found by him at Khorsabad. That was enough to make the stoutest heart quail, for a meaning must be found for every one of these signs. There could not be so many syllables, and it was, therefore, quite plain that the Babylonian language must have been written in part at least in ideograms. But in 1851 Rawlinson published one hundred and twelve lines of the Babylonian column from Behistun, accompanied by an interlinear transcription into Roman characters, and a translation into Latin. That paper, added to Hinck’s still more acute detail studies, brought to an end the preliminary decipherment of Babylonian. There were still enormous difficulties to be surmounted in the full appreciation of the complicated script, but these would be solved by the combined labours of many workers.
The cuneiform script had its origin in Babylonia and its inventors were a people whom we call the Sumerians. Before the Semitic Babylonians conquered the land it was inhabited by a people of unknown origin variouslyOrigin.classified, by different scholars, with the Ural-altaic or even with the Indo-European family, or as having blood relationship with both. This people is known to us from thousands of cuneiform inscriptions written entirely in their language, though our chief knowledge of them was for a long time derived from Sumerian inscriptions with interlinear translations in Assyrian. Their language is called Sumerian (li-ša-an Su-me-ri) by the Assyrians (Br. Mus. 81-7-27, 130), and its characteristics are being slowly developed by the elaborate study of the immense literature which has come down to us. In 1884 Halévy denied the existence of the Sumerian language, and claimed that it was merely a cabalistic script invented by the priests of the Semites. His early success has not been sustained, and the vast majority of scholars have ceased to doubt the existence of the language.
The Sumerians developed their script from a rude picture-writing, some early forms of which have come down to us. In course of time they used the pictures to represent sounds, apart from ideas. They wrote first on stone, and when clay was adopted soon found that straight lines in soft clay when made by a single pressure of the stylus tend to become wedges, and the pictures therefore lost their character and came to be mere conventional groups of wedges. Some of these wedge-shaped signs are of such character that we are still able to recognize or re-construct the original picture from which they came. The Assyrian sign, which means heaven, appears in early texts in the formin which its star-like form is quite evident (star = heaven) and from which the linear formmay be not improbably pre-supposed. A number of other cases were enumerated by the Assyrians themselves (seeCuneiform Texts from Bab. Tab. in Brit. Museum, vol. v., 1898), and there can be no reasonable doubt that this is the origin of the script.
The number of the original picture-signs cannot have been great, but the development of new signs never ceased till the cuneiform script passed wholly from use. The simplest form of development was doubling, to express pluralityDevelopment and characteristics.or intensity. After this came the working of two signs into one; thus“water,” when placed in“mouth” gave the new sign“to drink,” and many others. Other signs were formed by the addition of four lines, either vertically or horizontally, to intensify the original meaning. Thus, for instance, the old linear signmeans dwelling, but with four additional signs, thus, it means “great house.” This sign gradually changed in form until it came to be. This method of development was called by the Sumeriansgunu, and signs thus formed are now commonly called by us,gunusigns. They number hundreds and must be reckoned with in our study of the script development, though perhaps recent scholars have somewhat exaggerated their importance. The process of development is obscure and must always remain so.
The script as finally developed and used by the Assyrians is cumbrous and complicated, and very ill adapted to the sounds of the Semitic alphabet. It has (1) simple syllables, consisting of one vowel and a consonant, or a vowel by itself, thus“a,”ab,ib,ub,ba,bi,bu. In addition to these the Assyrian had also (2) compound syllables, such asbit,bal, and (3) ideograms, or signs which express an entire word, such asbeltu, lady,abu, father. The difficulty of reading this script is enormously increased by the fact that many signs are polyphonous,i.e.they may have more than one syllabic value and also be used as an ideogram. Thus the signhas the ideographic values ofmatu, land,shadu, mountain,kashadu, to conquer,napachu, to arise (of the sun), and also the syllabic valueskur,mad,mat,shad,shat,lat,nad,nat,kinandgin. This method of writing must lead to ambiguity, and this difficulty is helped somewhat by (4) determinatives, which are signs intended to indicate the class to which the word belongs. Thus, theis placed before names of persons, and(the ideogram formatu, country, andshadu, mountain) is placed before names of countries and mountains, and(ilu, god) before the names of gods.
The cuneiform writing, begun by the Sumerians in a period so remote that it is idle to speculate concerning it, had a long and very extensive history. It was first adopted by the Semitic Babylonians, and as we have seen wasHistory.modified, developed, nay almost made over. Their inscriptions are written in it fromcirca4500B.C.to the 1st centuryB.C.From their hands it passed to the Assyrians, who simplified some characters and conventionalized many more, and used the script during the entire period of their national existence from 1500B.C.to 607B.C.From the Babylonian by a slow process of evolution the much simplified Persian script was developed, and with the Babylonian is also to be connected the Susian, less complicated than the Babylonian, but less simple than the Persian. The Chaldians (not Chaldaeans), who lived about Lake Van, also adopted the cuneiform script with values of their own, and expressed a considerable literature in it. The discovery in 1887 of the Tell-el-Amarna tablets in upper Egypt showed that the same script was in use in the 15th centuryB.C., from Elam to the Mediterranean and from Armenia to the Persian Gulf for purposes of correspondence. There is good reason to expect the discovery of its use by yet other peoples. It was one of the most widely used of all the forms of ancient writing.