From Publishers Weekly
What François Champollion was to Egyptian hieroglyphics, Henry Rawlinson was to Babylonian cuneiform. In 1833 Rawlinson was a brash, courageous and talented young British military officer and amateur philologist posted in Persia. He eagerly—and at great personal risk—devoted himself to the first comprehensive study of the famed cuneiform inscriptions at Bisitun, which covered a remote cliff face as large as a football field, having been commissioned circa 515 B.C. by Darius I of Persia as a personal monument. Over the course of 30 years, punctuated by a breathless succession of military campaigns, political intrigue and instability during which he earned honor and fame, Rawlinson pursued with dogged serenity the deciphering of the cuneiform pictographs. He benefited from the similarly dedicated efforts of a small fraternity of like-minded scholars(though competitive rivalries would embitter the fraternity). Adkins, a British author of several books on archeology and antiquity, admits this biography is limited. Rawlinson the man never comes to life. What must have been a fascinating and even passionate pursuit is only dimly illuminated. Dedicated philologists may rejoice, but for readers seeking a more human story, the man who solved the enigma of cuneiform remains undeciphered. 16 pages of b&w photos not seen by PW, 3 maps. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.


From Booklist
The subject of this biography, Henry Rawlinson (1810-95), made some of the first translations of cuneiform script. When he first vowed to solve the script's mysteries, it was known only from inscriptions hewn in cliffs. Nineveh, with its library of clay tablets, had yet to be unearthed. Appropriately enough, Adkins starts her biography with Rawlinson clinging to a Persian precipice, an Indiana Jones-like predicament from which he escaped with his prize: a copy of a cuneiform memorial chiseled at the command of Darius I. Adkins relates other scrapes Rawlinson survived as a military and diplomatic officer of Britain's East India Company, but she homes in on the progress of his scholarly work and the acclaim it brought him. Clearly enunciating the challenges of translating cuneiform, such as the complexities of its several hundred symbols and its use in several different ancient languages, Adkins also provides accounts of Rawlinson's relationships with associates and rivals. An able portrait of a seminal figure in archaeological history. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Book Description
From 1827 Henry Rawlinson, fearless soldier, sportsman and imperial adventurer of the first rank, spent twenty-five years in India, Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan in the service of the East India Company. During this time he survived the dangers of disease and warfare, including the disastrous First Anglo-Afghan War. A gifted linguist, fascinated by history and exploration, he became obsessed with cuneiform, the world's earliest writing. An immense inscription high on a sheer rock face at Bisitun in the mountains of western Iran, carved on the orders of King Darius the Great of Persia over 2,000 years ago, was the key to understanding the many cuneiform scripts and languages. Only Rawlinson had the physical and intellectual skills, courage, self-motivation and opportunity to make the perilous ascent and copy the monument.

Here, Lesley Adkins relates the story of Rawlinson's life and how he triumphed in deciphering the lost languages of Persia and Babylonia, overcoming his brilliant but bitter rival, Edward Hincks. While based in Baghdad, Rawlinson became involved in the very first excavations of the ancient mounds of Mesopotamia, from Nineveh to Babylon, an area that had been fought over by so many powerful empires. His decipherment of the inscriptions resurrected unsuspected civilizations, revealing intriguing details of everyday life and forgotten historical events. By proving to the astonished Victorian public that people and places in the Old Testament really existed (and, furthermore, that documents and chronicles had survived from well before the writing of the Bible), Rawlinson became a celebrity and assured his own place in history.



About the Author
Lesley Adkins, an archaeologist and Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London, is the author of several reference books as well as The Keys of Egypt: The Race to Read the Hieroglyphs, the account of the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs. She lives in Devon, England, and is married to Roy Adkins, also an archaeologist and writer.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

"Beginning in 1827, Henry Rawlinson, fearless soldier, sportsman, and imperial adventurer of the first rank, spent twenty-five years in India, Iran, Iraq, and Afghanistan in the service of the East India Company. During this time he survived the dangers of disease and warfare, including the disastrous First Anglo-Afghan War. A gifted linguist and fascinated by history and exploration, he became obsessed with cuneiform, the world's earliest writing. An immense inscription high on a sheer rock face at Bisitun in the mountains of western Iran, carved on the orders of King Darius the Great of Persia over two thousand years ago, was the key to understanding the many cuneiform scripts and languages. Only Rawlinson had the physical and intellectual skills, courage, self-motivation, and opportunity to make the perilous ascent and copy the monument." In Empires of the Plain, Lesley Adkins relates the story of Rawlinson's life and how he triumphed in deciphering the lost languages of Persia and Babylonia, overcoming his brilliant but bitter rival, Edward Hincks. While based in Baghdad, Rawlinson became involved in the very first excavations of the ancient mounds of Mesopotamia, from Nineveh to Babylon - the great flood plain of the Tigris and the Euphrates Rivers that had been fought over by so many civilizations, revealing intriguing details of everyday life and forgotten historical events. By proving to the astonished Victorian public that people and places in the Old Testament really existed (and that documents and chronicles had survived from well before the writing of the Bible), Rawlinson became a celebrity and assured his own place in history.

SYNOPSIS

British archaeologist Adkins follows British scholar Rawlinson (1810-95) on his fieldwork in Mesopotamia and his decipherment of the sixth-century BC cuneiform inscriptions at Bisitun and the Babylonian language that they represented. His achievements were a breakthrough that allowed others to decipher other cuneiform scripts used for many languages over a period of 3,000 years. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

What Francois Champollion was to Egyptian hieroglyphics, Henry Rawlinson was to Babylonian cuneiform. In 1833 Rawlinson was a brash, courageous and talented young British military officer and amateur philologist posted in Persia. He eagerly-and at great personal risk-devoted himself to the first comprehensive study of the famed cuneiform inscriptions at Bisitun, which covered a remote cliff face as large as a football field, having been commissioned circa 515 B.C. by Darius I of Persia as a personal monument. Over the course of 30 years, punctuated by a breathless succession of military campaigns, political intrigue and instability during which he earned honor and fame, Rawlinson pursued with dogged serenity the deciphering of the cuneiform pictographs. He benefited from the similarly dedicated efforts of a small fraternity of like-minded scholars(though competitive rivalries would embitter the fraternity). Adkins, a British author of several books on archeology and antiquity, admits this biography is limited. Rawlinson the man never comes to life. What must have been a fascinating and even passionate pursuit is only dimly illuminated. Dedicated philologists may rejoice, but for readers seeking a more human story, the man who solved the enigma of cuneiform remains undeciphered. 16 pages of b&w photos not seen by PW, 3 maps. Agent, Stuart Krichevsky. (Dec. 13) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

The deciphering of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic writing is a relatively well-known achievement, but the decoding of cuneiform writing is far less known and all the more remarkable because it was made possible by a trilingual inscription including no known language. Adkins, who has authored numerous archaeology books, explores the early life of Sir Henry Creswicke Rawlinson (1810-95), whom the great Sumerologist Samuel Noah Kramer called one of cuneiform's holy triad (with Irish Assyriologist Edward Hincks and French philologist Jules Oppert). In 1827, Rawlinson went to India as a young soldier with the British East India Company, where he learned Hindi, Sanskrit, and Persian. His experiences in the Anglo-Afghan War, Persia, and Iraq under Ottoman rule all resonate with today's headlines. While in Persia, Rawlinson first encountered the Bisitun inscriptions. Using his knowledge of Sanskrit and Persian, he began to crack the cuneiform code, a quest already taken up by other scholars in Britain, France, and Germany; the international race was on! Adkins brings to life the intellectual rivalries by quoting journals and letters. Recommended for public and academic libraries. (Illustrations not seen.)-Edward K. Werner, St. Lucie Cty. Lib. Syst., Ft. Pierce, FL Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

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