The Unlocking of Ancient Civilizations Paul R. Bauman, D.D. PART II.
in his excellent book has stated well the facts concerning the unlocking of the Babylonian language: "There lay supposed old civiliza tions of the Mesopotamian Valley buried out of the sight of man for thousands of years. Its former in habitants were unknown. Its mighty empires were apparently blotted from the pages of history. Its rela tions with outside nations are known only through hints here and there. In fact, it was only a shadow, with the Old Testament alone to point to a possible greatness. But what now? This achievement in the translation of the cuneiform inscriptions gives us at one stroke a whole valley full of thrifty cities, well-organized gov ernments, conquering armies, and world-wide rulers. They are all made to step out upon the stage and play their most important role in the drama of ancient nations.’” With regard to the value of the Be histun inscription, Price continues, “This new philological achievement was the greatest ever made in the field of language or archaeology. It was as great a discovery in the field of ancient philology and history as that of the telegraph or telephone in the commercial world.’” Two il lustrations will show that such a sweeping statement is not greatly ex aggerated.
rpHE civilization which more than -*- any other, made contact with Old Testament history, unquestionably was that of Babylonia. All that has been recorded, down to the days of Abraham, finds^ its setting in this re gion. Centuries later, the children of Israel were carried away captive into Babylon, where they remained for a considerable period of time. Un til recently, apart from the Bible, there was no written history of this land which existed four hundred years before Christ. For more than a thousand years, all knowledge ot the Babylonian language was lost, and, with the rise of modem criti cism, it became popular to question, and even to deny, the accuracy of many statements in the Biblical rec ord. It is not difficult, therefore, to appreciate the tremendous value of a discovery which would unlock the secrets of the ancient Babylonian language and civilization. Not many years after the discov ery and decipherment of the Rosetta Stone', a young British Army officer, Henry C. Rawlinson, was sent to Per sia. There in 1835, among the Za gros Mountains, he discovered on A rocky cliff, high above the level of the plain, a strange inscription. It was written in three languages, the Old Persian, the Babylonian, and the Susian, and had been placed there by Darius as a chronicle of his own achievement about 500 years before Christ. Rawlinson recognized the value of this inscription and de termined to copy k . The work was accomplished with considerable difficulty, inasmuch as Darius had placed his record on the smooth per pendicular face of the mountain, more than 300 feet above the level of the ground. The inscription it self measured about 25 by 50 feet. There was immediately beneath it a narrow 14-inch path, badly eroded. After four years of painstaking la bor, sometimes from a ladder held in place by an assistant, and at other times from a cradle which had been swung from the top of the cliff 1400
feet above him, Rawlinson obtained copies and squeezes of the entire in scription. Then the task of decipher ment began. In the year 1846, just
The Behistun Inscription 100 years ago, Rawlinson published a full translation of the Persian text. By 1851, he had mastered 112 lines of the more difficult Babylonian portion, and the Behistun inscription became the key to the Babylonian language and civilization, just as the Rosetta Stone was the key to the Egyptian. The two discoveries bear several striking similarities which are worth noting. Like the Rosetta Stone, the key to the Egyptian language, the Behistun inscription was written in three languages. In both cases, what was written in one language was written in all three. In both, one language became the key to the other two, and the two inscriptions opened avenues affecting the whole of Old Testament research. Dr. I. M. Price
Babylonian Flood Tablet T H E K I N G ' S B U S I N E S S
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