Armenian linguistics. DE ROBERT. Etude philologique sur les Inscriptions Cuneiformes de l'Armenie.

Rare first edition. The work is an ambitious attempt to decipher the language of the cuneiform inscriptions coming from Lake Van by Louis de Robert. The work was an important undertaking in the field of comparative Semitic philology and was published in 1876 as Etude philologique sur les inscripció cunéiformes de l'Arménie (Paris: E. Leroux). The Urdu-Venetian or Chaldean language as it was known in the nineteenth century is attested by inscriptions in the Van region in East Anatolia that date back to the first half of the first millennium BC. The language was spoken by the inhabitants of the kingdom of Urartu and was written with a simplified form of neoassist cuneiform letters. Lake Van inscriptions were first discovered by German Friedrich Eduard Schulz in 1826. Since 1850, following the decipherment of Henry Rawlinson of the Assyrian cuneiform, some failed attempts were made to decipher the inscriptions of Lake Van.