Philology Grotefend was best known during his lifetime as a
Latin and
Italian philologist, though the attention he paid to his own language is shown by his
Anfangsgründe der deutschen Poesie, published in 1815, and his foundation of a society for investigating the German tongue in 1817. In 1823/1824 he published his revised edition of
Helfrich Bernhard Wenck's
Latin grammar, in two volumes, followed by a smaller grammar for the use of schools in 1826; in 1835–1838 a systematic attempt to explain the fragmentary remains of the
Umbrian dialect, entitled
Rudimenta linguae Umbricae ex inscriptionibus antiquis enodata (in eight parts); and in 1839 a work of similar character upon
Oscan (
Rudimenta linguae Oscae). In the same year his son
Carl Ludwig Grotefend published a memoir on the coins of
Bactria, under the name of
Die Münzen der griechischen, parthischen und indoskythischen Könige von Baktrien und den Ländern am Indus. He soon, however, returned to his favourite subject, and brought out a work in five parts,
Zur Geographie und Geschichte von Alt-Italien (1840–1842). Previously, in 1836, he had written a preface to
Friedrich Wagenfeld's translation of the
Sanchoniathon of
Philo of Byblos, which was alleged to have been discovered in the preceding year in the Portuguese convent of Santa Maria de Merinhão.
Old Persian cuneiform But it was in the East rather than in the West that Grotefend did his greatest work. The
Old Persian cuneiform inscriptions of
Persia had for some time been attracting attention in Europe; exact copies of them had been published by
Jean Chardin in 1711, the
Dutch artist
Cornelis de Bruijn and the German traveller
Carsten Niebuhr, who lost his eyesight over the work; and Grotefend's friend,
Tychsen of Rostock, believed that he had ascertained the characters in the column, now known to be Persian, to be alphabetic. At this point Grotefend took up the matter. Having a taste for puzzles, he made a bet with drinking friends around 1800 that he could decipher at least part of the Persepolis inscriptions. His first discovery was communicated to the Royal Society of Göttingen in 1802, but his findings were dismissed by these academics. His work was denied official publication, but Tychsen published a review of Grotefend's work in the literary gazette of Göttingen in September 1802, which presented the argument made by Grotefend. In 1815, Grotefend was only able to give an account of his theories in the work of his friend Heeren on ancient history. His article appeared as an appendix in Heeren's book on historical research and was entitled
"On the Interpretation of the Arrow-headed Characters, particularly of the Inscriptions at Persepolis".
Decipherment method Grotefend had focused on two
Achaemenid royal inscriptions from
Persepolis, called the "
Niebuhr inscriptions", which seemed to have broadly similar content except for the name of the rulers. File:Niebuhr inscription 1.jpg|Niebuhr inscription 1. Now known to mean "Darius the Great King, King of Kings, King of countries, son of Hystaspes, an Achaemenian, who built this Palace". File:Niebuhr inscription 2.jpg|Niebuhr inscription 2. Now known to mean "Xerxes the Great King, King of Kings, son of Darius the King, an Achaemenian". In 1802,
Friedrich Münter had realized that recurring groups of characters must be the word for "king" (, now known to be pronounced . He also understood from Münter that each word was separated from the next by a slash sign (). Grotefend extended this work by realizing, based on the known inscriptions of much later rulers (the
Pahlavi inscriptions of the
Sassanid kings), that a king's name is often followed by "great king, king of kings" and the name of the king's father. File:Niebuhr inscription 1 with word for King.jpg|Niebuhr inscription 1, with the words "King" () highlighted. File:Niebuhr inscription 2 with word for King.jpg|Niebuhr inscription 2, with the words "King" highlighted. ". Grotefend identified correctly only eight letters among the thirty signs he had collated. Looking at similarities in character sequences, he made the hypothesis that the father of the ruler in one inscription would possibly appear as the first name in the other inscription: the first word in Niebuhr 1 () indeed corresponded to the 6th word in Niebuhr 2. rather than the actual Old Persian
vi-i-sha-ta-a-sa-pa. The Egyptian inscription on the vase was in the name of King
Xerxes I, and Champollion, together with the orientalist
Antoine-Jean Saint-Martin, was able to confirm that the corresponding words in the cuneiform script were indeed the words which Grotefend had identified as meaning "king" and "Xerxes" through guesswork. This time, academics took note, particularly
Eugène Burnouf and
Rasmus Christian Rask, who would expand on Grotefend's work and further advance the decipherment of cuneiforms.
Later publications In 1837 Grotefend published his
Neue Beiträge zur Erläuterung der persepolitanischen Keilschrift. Three years later appeared his
Neue Beiträge zur Erläuterung der babylonischen Keilschrift. His discovery may be summed up as follows: • that the Persian inscriptions contain three different forms of cuneiform writing and so the decipherment of the one would give the key to the decipherment of the others • that the characters of the Persian column are alphabetic and not syllabic • confirmed
Niebuhr's observation that they must be read from left to right • that the alphabet consists of forty letters, including signs for long and short vowels • that the Persepolitan inscriptions are written in
Avestan (though that is today distinguished from Old Persian) and must be ascribed to the age of the Achaemenian princes • that a specific frequent word could refer to the Persian word for "king" • that the inscriptions satisfy the two following schemes: A) X king, great king of king, son of Y king; B) Y king, great king of king, son of Z; • that the presence of the two schemes A) and B) gives an opportunity to identify the people involved; it is necessary that X was a Persian king, his father was a Persian king too,
but his grandfather was
not king • according to this idea, Grotefend identified X for
Xerxes, Y for
Darius and Z with
Hystaspes. A basis had now been laid for the interpretation of the Persian inscriptions. However, Grotefend misconstrued several important characters. Significant work remained to be done to complete the decipherment. Building on Grotefend's insights, the task was performed by
Eugène Burnouf,
Christian Lassen and
Sir Henry Rawlinson. ==Later instances==