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Georg Friedrich Grotefend (9 June 1775 – 15 December 1853) was a German epigraphist and philologist. He is known mostly for his contributions toward the decipherment of cuneiform. Georg Friedrich Grotefend had a son, named Carl Ludwig Grotefend, who played a key role in the decipherment of the Indian Kharoshthi script on the coinage of the Indo-Greek kings, around the same time as
James Prinsep James Prinsep FRS (20 August 1799 – 22 April 1840) was an English scholar, orientalist and antiquary. He was the founding editor of the ''Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal'' and is best remembered for deciphering the Kharosthi and B ...
, publishing ''Die unbekannte Schrift der Baktrischen Münzen'' ("The unknown script of the Bactrian coins") in 1836.


Life

He was born at Hann. Münden and died in Hanover. He was educated partly in his native town, partly at Ilfeld, where he remained till 1795, when he entered the University of Göttingen, and there became the friend of
Heyne Heyne is a German surname. Notable people with the surname include: *Benjamin Heyne (1770–1819), botanist, naturalist, and surgeon *Christian Gottlob Heyne (1729–1812), German classical scholar and archaeologist * Dirk Heyne (born 1957), German ...
, Tychsen and Heeren. Heyne's recommendation procured for him an assistant mastership in the Göttingen gymnasium in 1797. While there he published his work ''De pasigraphia sive scriptura universali'' (1799), which led to his appointment in 1803 as prorector of the gymnasium of Frankfurt, and shortly afterwards as conrector. In 1821 he became director of the gymnasium at Hanover, a post which he retained until his retirement in 1849. One year before retiring he received a medal commemorating his 50th anniversary of working at the gymnasium. This medal made by the local engraver Heinrich Friedrich Brehmer links Grotefends jubilee with the 500th anniversary of the school he taught at. Both occasions were celebrated on 2nd of February 1848.


Work


Philology

Grotefend was best known during his lifetime as a Latin and Italian philologist, though the attention he paid to his own language is shown by his ''Anfangsgründe der deutschen Poesie'', published in 1815, and his foundation of a society for investigating the German tongue in 1817. In 1823/1824 he published his revised edition of Helfrich Bernhard Wenck's ''Latin grammar'', in two volumes, followed by a smaller grammar for the use of schools in 1826; in 1835–1838 a systematic attempt to explain the fragmentary remains of the
Umbrian dialect Umbrian is an extinct Italic language formerly spoken by the Umbri in the ancient Italian region of Umbria. Within the Italic languages it is closely related to the Oscan group and is therefore associated with it in the group of Osco-Umbrian lan ...
, entitled ''Rudimenta linguae Umbricae ex inscriptionibus antiquis enodata'' (in eight parts); and in 1839 a work of similar character upon Oscan (''Rudimenta linguae Oscae''). In the same year his son Carl Ludwig Grotefend published a memoir on the coins of
Bactria Bactria (; Bactrian: , ), or Bactriana, was an ancient region in Central Asia in Amu Darya's middle stream, stretching north of the Hindu Kush, west of the Pamirs and south of the Gissar range, covering the northern part of Afghanistan, southwe ...
, under the name of ''Die Münzen der griechischen, parthischen und indoskythischen Könige von Baktrien und den Ländern am Indus''. He soon, however, returned to his favourite subject, and brought out a work in five parts, ''Zur Geographie und Geschichte von Alt-Italien'' (1840–1842). Previously, in 1836, he had written a preface to Friedrich Wagenfeld's translation of the '' Sanchoniathon'' of
Philo of Byblos Philo of Byblos ( grc, Φίλων Βύβλιος, ''Phílōn Býblios''; la, Philo Byblius;  – 141), also known as Herennius Philon, was an antiquarian writer of grammatical, lexical and historical works in Greek. He is chiefly known for ...
, which was alleged to have been discovered in the preceding year in the Portuguese convent of Santa Maria de Merinhão.


Old Persian cuneiform

But it was in the East rather than in the West that Grotefend did his greatest work. The
Old Persian cuneiform Old Persian cuneiform is a semi-alphabetic cuneiform script that was the primary script for Old Persian. Texts written in this cuneiform have been found in Iran (Persepolis, Susa, Hamadan, Kharg Island), Armenia, Romania (Gherla), Turkey ( Van Fo ...
inscriptions of Persia had for some time been attracting attention in Europe; exact copies of them had been published by Jean Chardin in 1711,Kent, R. G.: "Old Persian: Grammar Texts Lexicon", page 9. American Oriental Society, 1950. the Dutch artist Cornelis de Bruijn and the German traveller Niebuhr, who lost his eyesight over the work; and Grotefend's friend, Tychsen of Rostock, believed that he had ascertained the characters in the column, now known to be Persian, to be alphabetic. At this point Grotefend took the matter up. Having a taste for puzzles, he made a bet with drinking friends around 1800 that he could decipher at least part of the Persepolis inscriptions. His first discovery was communicated to the Royal Society of Göttingen in 1802, Sayce, Rev. A. H., Professor of Assyriology, Oxford
"The Archaeology of the Cuneiform Inscriptions"
Second Edition-revised, 1908, Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, London, Brighton, New York; at pages 10-1
Not in copyright
/ref> but his findings were dismissed by these academics. His work was denied official publication, but Tychsen published a review of Grotefend's work in the literary gazette of Göttingen in September 1802, which presented the argument made by Grotenfend. In 1815, Grotefend was only able to give an account of his theories in the work of his friend Heeren on ancient history. His article appeared as an appendix in Heeren's book on historical research and was entitled ''"On the Interpretation of the Arrow-headed Characters, particularly of the Inscriptions at Persepolis"''.


Decipherment method

Grotefend had focused on two inscriptions from Persepolis, called the " Niebuhr inscriptions", which seemed to have broadly similar content except for the name of the rulers. File:Niebuhr inscription 1.jpg, Niebuhr inscription 1. Now known to mean "Darius the Great King, King of Kings, King of countries, son of Hystaspes, an Achaemenian, who built this Palace". File:Niebuhr inscription 2.jpg, Niebuhr inscription 2: Now known to mean "Xerxes the Great King, King of Kings, son of Darius the King, an Achaemenian". In 1802,
Friedrich Münter Friedrich Christian Carl Heinrich Münter (14 October 1761 – 9 April 1830) was a German-Danish scholar, theologian, and Bishop of Zealand from 1808 until his death. His name has also been recorded as Friederich Münter. In addition to his posi ...
had realized that recurring groups of characters must be the word for "king" (, now known to be pronounced . He also understood from Münter that each word was separated from the next by a slash sign (). Grotefend extended this work by realizing, based on the known inscriptions of much later rulers (the Pahlavi inscriptions of the Sassanid kings), that a king's name is often followed by "great king, king of kings" and the name of the king's father.Kent, R. G.: "Old Persian: Grammar Texts Lexicon", page 10. American Oriental Society, 1950. This understanding of the structure of monumental inscriptions in Old Persian was based on the work of Anquetil-Duperron, who had studied Old Persian through the Zoroastrian Avestas in India, and Antoine Isaac Silvestre de Sacy, who had decrypted the monumental Pahlavi inscriptions of the Sassanid kings. File:Niebuhr inscription 1 with word for King.jpg, Niebuhr inscription 1, with the words "King" () highlighted. File:Niebuhr inscription 2 with word for King.jpg, Niebuhr inscription 2, with the words "King" highlighted. Looking at similarities in character sequences, he made the hypothesis that the father of the ruler in one inscription would possibly appear as the first name in the other inscription: the first word in Niebuhr 1 () indeed corresponded to the 6th word in Niebuhr 2. Looking at the length of the character sequences, and comparing with the names and genealogy of the Achaemenid kings as known from the Greeks, also taking into account the fact that the father of one of the rulers in the inscriptions didn't have the attribute "king", he made the correct guess that this could be no other than
Darius the Great Darius I ( peo, 𐎭𐎠𐎼𐎹𐎺𐎢𐏁 ; grc-gre, Δαρεῖος ; – 486 BCE), commonly known as Darius the Great, was a Persian ruler who served as the third King of Kings of the Achaemenid Empire, reigning from 522 BCE until his d ...
, his father
Hystaspes Vishtaspa ( ae, wiktionary:𐬬𐬌𐬱𐬙𐬁𐬯𐬞𐬀, 𐬬𐬌𐬱𐬙𐬁𐬯𐬞𐬀 ; peo, wikt:𐎻𐏁𐎫𐎠𐎿𐎱, 𐎻𐏁𐎫𐎠𐎿𐎱, ), Hellenization, hellenized as Hystáspes (, ), may refer to: * Vishtaspa (floruit, fl. ...
who was not a king, and his son the famous Xerxes. In Persian history around the time period the inscriptions were expected to be made, there were only two instances where a ruler came to power without being a previous king's son. They were
Darius the Great Darius I ( peo, 𐎭𐎠𐎼𐎹𐎺𐎢𐏁 ; grc-gre, Δαρεῖος ; – 486 BCE), commonly known as Darius the Great, was a Persian ruler who served as the third King of Kings of the Achaemenid Empire, reigning from 522 BCE until his d ...
and
Cyrus the Great Cyrus II of Persia (; peo, 𐎤𐎢𐎽𐎢𐏁 ), commonly known as Cyrus the Great, was the founder of the Achaemenid Empire, the first Persian empire. Schmitt Achaemenid dynasty (i. The clan and dynasty) Under his rule, the empire embraced ...
, both of whom became emperor by revolt. The deciding factors between these two choices were the names of their fathers and sons. Darius's father was Hystaspes and his son was Xerxes, while Cyrus' father was Cambyses I and his son was
Cambyses II Cambyses II ( peo, 𐎣𐎲𐎢𐎪𐎡𐎹 ''Kabūjiya'') was the second King of Kings of the Achaemenid Empire from 530 to 522 BC. He was the son and successor of Cyrus the Great () and his mother was Cassandane. Before his accession, Cambyses ...
. Within the text, the father and son of the king had different groups of symbols for names so Grotefend assumed that the king must have been Darius. These connections allowed Grotefend to figure out the cuneiform characters that are part of Darius, Darius's father Hystaspes, and Darius's son Xerxes. He equated the letters with the name ''d-a-r-h-e-u-sh'' for
Darius Darius may refer to: Persian royalty ;Kings of the Achaemenid Empire * Darius I (the Great, 550 to 487 BC) * Darius II (423 to 404 BC) * Darius III (Codomannus, 380 to 330 BC) ;Crown princes * Darius (son of Xerxes I), crown prince of Persia, ma ...
. This identification was correct, although the actual Persian spelling was ''da-a-ra-ya-va-u-sha'', but this was unknown at the time. Grotefend similarly equated the sequence with ''kh-sh-h-e-r-sh-e'' for Xerxes, which again was right, but the actual Old Persian transcription was ''kha-sha-ya-a-ra-sha-a''. Finally, he matched the sequence of the father who was not a king with
Hystaspes Vishtaspa ( ae, wiktionary:𐬬𐬌𐬱𐬙𐬁𐬯𐬞𐬀, 𐬬𐬌𐬱𐬙𐬁𐬯𐬞𐬀 ; peo, wikt:𐎻𐏁𐎫𐎠𐎿𐎱, 𐎻𐏁𐎫𐎠𐎿𐎱, ), Hellenization, hellenized as Hystáspes (, ), may refer to: * Vishtaspa (floruit, fl. ...
, but again with the supposed Persian reading of ''g-o-sh-t-a-s-p'', rather than the actual Old Persian ''vi-i-sha-ta-a-sa-pa''. By this method, Grotefend had correctly identified each king in the inscriptions, but his identification of the phonetical value of individual letters was still quite defective, for want of a better understanding of the Old Persian language itself. Grotefend identified correctly the phonetical value of only eight letters among the thirty signs he had collated. However groundbreaking, this inductive method failed to convince academics, and the official recognition of his work was denied for nearly a generation.


Vindication

It was only in 1823 that Grotefend's discovery was confirmed, when the French archaeologist Champollion, who had just deciphered Egyptian hieroglyphs, was able to read the Egyptian dedication of a quadrilingual hieroglyph-cuneiform inscription on an alabaster vase in the Cabinet des Médailles, the " Caylus vase". The Egyptian inscription on the vase was in the name of King Xerxes I, and Champollion, together with the orientalist Antoine-Jean Saint-Martin, was able to confirm that the corresponding words in the cuneiform script were indeed the words which Grotefend had identified as meaning "king" and "Xerxes" through guesswork.Pages 10-14, note 1 on page 13 The findings were published by Saint-Martin in ''Extrait d'un mémoire relatif aux antiques inscriptions de Persépolis lu à l'Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres'', thereby vindicating the pioneering work of Grotefend.


Later publications

In 1837 Grotefend published his ''Neue Beiträge zur Erläuterung der persepolitanischen Keilschrift''. Three years later appeared his ''Neue Beiträge zur Erläuterung der babylonischen Keilschrift''. His discovery may be summed up as follows: #that the Persian inscriptions contain three different forms of cuneiform writing, so that the decipherment of the one would give the key to the decipherment of the others #that the characters of the Persian column are alphabetic and not syllabic #confirmed Niebuhr's observation that they must be read from left to right #that the alphabet consists of forty letters, including signs for long and short vowels #that the Persepolitan inscriptions are written in
Avestan Avestan (), or historically Zend, is an umbrella term for two Old Iranian languages: Old Avestan (spoken in the 2nd millennium BCE) and Younger Avestan (spoken in the 1st millennium BCE). They are known only from their conjoined use as the scrip ...
(though today this is distinguished from Old Persian), and must be ascribed to the age of the Achaemenian princes #that a specific frequent word could refer to the Persian word for "king" #that the inscriptions satisfy the two following schemes: A) X king, great king of king, son of Y king; B) Y king, great king of king, son of Z; #that the presence of the two schemes A) and B) gives an opportunity to identify the people involved; it is necessary that X was a Persian king, his father was a Persian king too, ''but'' his grandfather was ''not'' king #according to this idea Grotefend was able to identify X for Xerxes, Y for
Darius Darius may refer to: Persian royalty ;Kings of the Achaemenid Empire * Darius I (the Great, 550 to 487 BC) * Darius II (423 to 404 BC) * Darius III (Codomannus, 380 to 330 BC) ;Crown princes * Darius (son of Xerxes I), crown prince of Persia, ma ...
and Z with
Hystaspes Vishtaspa ( ae, wiktionary:𐬬𐬌𐬱𐬙𐬁𐬯𐬞𐬀, 𐬬𐬌𐬱𐬙𐬁𐬯𐬞𐬀 ; peo, wikt:𐎻𐏁𐎫𐎠𐎿𐎱, 𐎻𐏁𐎫𐎠𐎿𐎱, ), Hellenization, hellenized as Hystáspes (, ), may refer to: * Vishtaspa (floruit, fl. ...
. A basis had now been laid for the interpretation of the Persian inscriptions. However, Grotefend misconstrued several important characters. Significant work remained to be done to complete the decipherment. Building on Grotefend's insights, this task was performed by Eugène Burnouf,
Christian Lassen Christian Lassen (22 October 1800 – 8 May 1876) was a Norwegian-born, German orientalist and Indologist. He was a professor of Old Indian language and literature at the University of Bonn. Biography He was born at Bergen, Norway where he atte ...
and Sir Henry Rawlinson.


Later instances

A decipherment method broadly similar to that of Grotefend was used by
CNRS The French National Centre for Scientific Research (french: link=no, Centre national de la recherche scientifique, CNRS) is the French state research organisation and is the largest fundamental science agency in Europe. In 2016, it employed 31,637 ...
researcher François Desset in 2018-2020, to advance the decipherment of Linear Elamite.


See also

*
Friedrich August Grotefend Friedrich August Grotefend (12 December 1798 in Ilefeld to 28 February 1836 in Göttingen) was a German philologist. Grotefend was a relative of Georg Friedrich Grotefend, who deciphered the cuneiform writing. Biography Grotefend studied theology ...
, German philologist and relative of Georg Friedrich * Champollion


Notes


References

*


External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Grotefend 1775 births 1853 deaths University of Göttingen alumni German philologists Cuneiform Old Persian language