Le Nord : revue internationale des Pays de Nord - 01.06.1941, Blaðsíða 143

IRANIAN RESEARCH IN THE NORTH
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Denmark, his restless search for new problems took him into
other fields than those of Iranian studies, and the memories of
the physical and mental hardships he had undergone during his
travels caused him, according to himself, to feel a certain aversion
to everything connected with Asiatic studies. Incidentally Rask
made an important contribution, in his above mentioned Avesta
treatise, to the solution of another of the great problems with
which the Iranologists of his time were confronted, viz. the
deciphering of the Old Persian inscriptions of the Achaemenian
Kings. The earliest preparatory work on this subject had been
done by the learned bishop of Zealand in Denmark, Fr. Miinter,
who as early as 1802 had called attention to certain important
peculiarities about the writing which proved useful in subsequent
attempts to decipher it. The key to the inscriptions was found
in 1808 by the German scholar Grotefend, by means of a com-
bination which was a stroke of genius in its simplicity, but much
still remained to be done. Rask demonstrated the meaning of
several important signs, which threw a clearer light on the struc-
ture and affinities of the language. In the subsequent work of
deciphering these historically important inscriptions from the hey-
day of the Persian Empire, other Scandinavian scholars also
played a part. The Norwegian Lassen, who was professor at
Bonn, was the first clearly to demonstrate the system of the
writing, and the Dane Westergaard (1815—78) distinguished
himself by deciphering the parallel text which was written in the
Elamitic language. From his extensive travels in the East (1841—
44), he brought back new copies of important inscriptions,
together with valuable additions to the Copenhagen collections
of Avestan and Pahlavi MSS. — The deciphering of the Old
Persian inscriptions also made possible the reading of the Baby-
lonian parallel text, and this in its turn became the corner stone
of the whole science of Assyriology with all its daughter sciences,
which have gradually thrown open to us the whole world of
the ancient civilizations of the Near East.
Most Iranologists have come to this field of research via
Indological or Semitic studies. This also applies to Lassen and
Westergaard, who were both of them originally Sanscritists, and
Lassen continued till his death to consider India his chief sphere
°f study. In his principal work, “Indische Altertumskunde”
(1847—61), which he planned and carried out on a generous