y on the right; indeed, the last line sometimes ended
at a considerable distance from the right-hand extremity of the
inscription.

The clue to the decipherment of the inscriptions was first discovered by
the successful guess of a German scholar, Grotefend. Grotefend noticed
that the inscriptions generally began with three or four words, one of
which varied, while the others remained unchanged. The variable word had
three forms, though the same form always appeared on the same monument.
Grotefend, therefore, conjectured that this word represented the name of a
king, the words which followed it being the royal titles. One of the
supposed names appeared much oftener than the others, and as it was too
short for Artaxerxes and too long for Cyrus, it was evident that it must
stand either for Darius or for Xerxes. A study of the classical authors
showed Grotefend that certain of the monuments on which it was found had
been constructed by Darius, and he accordingly gave to the characters
composing it the values required for spelling "Darius" in its old Persian
form. In this way he succeeded in obtaining conjectural values for six
cuneiform letters. He now turned to the second royal name, which also
appeared on several monuments, and was of much the same length as that of
Darius. This could only be Xerxes; but if so, the fifth letter composing
it (_r_) would necessarily be the same as the third letter in the name of
Darius. This proved to be the case, and thus afforded the best possible
evidence that the German scholar was on the right track.

The third name, which was much longer than the other two, differed from
the second chiefly at the beginning, the latter part of it resembling the
name of Xerxes. Clearly, therefore, it could be nothing else than
Artaxerxes, and that it actually was so, was rendered certain by the fact
that the second character composing it was that which had the value of
_r_.

Grotefend now possessed a small alphabet, and with this he proceeded to
read the word which always followed the royal name, and therefore probably
meant "king." He found that it closely resembled the word which signified
"king" in Zend, the old language of the Eastern Persians, which was spoken
in one part of Persia at the same time that Old Persian, the language of
the Achaemenian princes, was spoken in another. There could, consequently,
be no further room for doubt that he had really solved the great problem,
and discovered the