1765: Carsten Niebuhr — The Decisive Step Toward Deciphering CuneiformIn

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1765: Carsten Niebuhr — The Decisive Step Toward Deciphering CuneiformIn 

March 1765, as the only surviving member of the Danish scientific expedition to Arabia and neighboring regions, the German-born Danish traveler, mathematician, cartographer, and orientalist Carsten Niebuhr arrived at the ruins of Persepolis in Persia.Over the course of approximately three weeks (24 days according to some accounts), he made exceptionally careful and accurate copies of the famous trilingual Achaemenid cuneiform inscriptions found in the palaces:

• Old Persian (the simplest script — approximately 42 signs)
• Elamite (more complex — roughly 130 signs)
• Babylonian (the most elaborate — over 700 signs)

Niebuhr was the first to clearly recognize and document that these were three entirely distinct scripts. He labeled them Class I, Class II, and Class III. He correctly noted that all three are written left to right and identified the presence of a word divider in the form of an oblique wedge (slanting stroke).His highly precise copies were published in 1778 in the second volume of his major work:
Reisebeschreibung nach Arabien und andern umliegenden Ländern
(“Travel Description of Arabia and Other Adjacent Countries”).Prior to Niebuhr’s publication, most European scholars viewed the Persepolis wedge-shaped signs either as purely decorative ornaments or as meaningless “scribbles” without linguistic content. Niebuhr provided the first reliable, scholarly reproductions — the crucial primary material for all future decipherment efforts:

• In 1802, Georg Friedrich Grotefend relied directly on Niebuhr’s copies to achieve the first major breakthrough: he deciphered parts of the Old Persian text and successfully identified the royal names Darius (Dārayava(h)uš) and Xerxes (Xšayaṛšā).
• Niebuhr’s accurate documentation also played an indirect but vital role in later comparisons with the Behistun inscription, enabling Henry Rawlinson and others to complete the full decipherment of cuneiform between the 1830s and 1850s.

Carsten Niebuhr laid the essential foundation for the decipherment of cuneiform writing and the emergence of modern Assyriology.Thanks to the exceptional accuracy of his copies, the enigmatic inscriptions of Persepolis were transformed from mysterious curiosities into a trustworthy historical source. His contribution remains one of the most important milestones in the history of ancient Near Eastern studies.(Next milestone in the presentation: Grotefend 1802 or Rawlinson & the Behistun inscription 1830s–1840s)