Ancient civilizations had three different writing systems. The oldest, best known, and most difficult to read is called hieroglyphics, meaning "sacred writing." The language has two main characteristics, objects are portrayed as pictures, but the picture signs also have phonetic sounds. Thus, the hieroglyphs can be used as words and written in an alphabet. Hieroglyphic remained in use for 3500 years, with the latest inscription dated 304 AD The hieratic form was used by the priests, while the demotic form was used in everyday documents and government texts. Hieroglyphics was not deciphered until the early 19 th century through the discovery of the Rosetta Stone in 1799 near the town of Rosetta in Egypt. This stone contained identical texts in hieroglyphic, demotic, and Greek. Since a Frenchman named Jean-Francois Champollion knew Greek, he was able to decipher the hieroglyphic inscriptions on the Rosetta Stone.
Another ancient language was cuneiform which originated in southern Mesopotamia by the Sumerians. It was later used by the Babylonians and the Assyrians and even spread into Egypt where it competed with hieroglyphics. Cuneiform was based on pictographs, but soon the pictures developed into straight line symbols which lost their resemblance to the original objects. To write cuneiform one used a stylus to make impressions in clay tablets. Originally there were 600 signs that represented syllables and sounds. These later became an alphabet of some 36 characters. Scholars weren't able to decipher the cuneiform system until the late 1700's. Inscriptions were found on the side of a huge rock in western Iran called the Behistun Rock; the cliff measured 300 feet (91 meters) long, and it contained inscriptions written in Persian, Babylonian, and Elamite languages. The text describes the accomplishments in 500 BC of the Persian king Darius I. Sir Henry Rawlinson, an English diplomat, began his translations in the 1800's which helped scholars decipher the cuneiform inscriptions on the Behistun Rock.
The huge Behistun Rock, located out in the desert of western Iran, reminds us of Jesus who declared Himself a number of times to be a Rock. "Mighty Rock in a weary land, Cooling shade on the burning sand, Faithful guide for the pilgrim band" (Vernon J. Charlesworth, 1880). Yes, Jesus is a mighty Rock and a faithful guide. He was the Rock which followed Israel in the wilderness; He is the Rock of our salvation; He is the "Rock of Ages; His words, rightly interpreted, will be a guide to deciphering the riddle of the great controversy; He is God's Behistun Rock.
