A Memoir of Major-General Sir Henry Creswicke Rawlinson

Sir Henry Creswicke Rawlinson, (born April 11, 1810, Chadlington, Oxfordshire, Eng.—died March 5, 1895, London), British army officer and Orientalist who deciphered the Old Persian portion of the trilingual cuneiform inscription of Darius I the Great at Bīsitūn, Iran. His success provided the key to the deciphering, by himself and others, of Mesopotamian cuneiform script, a feat that greatly expanded knowledge of the ancient Middle East. In 1827 Rawlinson went to India as a British East India Co