An important advance was made when it was once determined, that the writing was a mixture of signs used both as words and as syllables, and that the language on the Assyrian monuments belonged to the group known as Semitic.

The cognate languages--chiefly Hebrew and Arabic--formed a help towards determining the meaning of the words read and an explanation of the morphological features they presented.

For all that, the task was one of stupendous proportions, and many were the obstacles that had to be overcome, before the principles underlying the cuneiform writing were determined, and the decipherment placed on a firm and scientific basis.

This is not the place to enter upon a detailed illustration of the method adopted by ingenious scholars,--notably Edward Hincks, Isidor Loewenstern, Henry Rawlinson, Jules Oppert,--to whose united efforts the solution of the great problems involved is due;[12] and it would also take too much space, since in order to make this method clear, it would be necessary to set forth the key discovered by Grotefend for reading the Old Persian inscriptions.

Suffice it to say that the guarantee for the soundness of the conclusions reached by scholars is furnished by the consideration, that it was from small and most modest beginnings that the decipherment began.