Sir Henry RawlinsonBorn 11 Apr 1810; died 5 Mar 1895 at age 84.Henry Creswicke Rawlinson was an English archaeologist who, as an army officer, became interested in antiquities after his assignment to reorganize the Persian army. He accomplished the translation of the Old Persian portion of the trilingual mutillingual cuneiform inscription of Darius I on the hillside at Bisitun, Iran. This success provided the key to the deciphering, by himself and others, of Mesopotamian cuneiform script. It was soon learned that the cuneiform system had been used by many different groups and for writing a variety of languages. Semetic speaking Babylonians and Assyrians used the cuneiform for hundreds of years. Rawlinson's work was the result of a breakthrough of many discoveries and provided great insight of human history. |
