Henry Rawlinson

Henry Rawlinson (1810-1895), English Assyriologist and diplomat, born in Chadlington, Oxfordshire. Between 1827 and 1849 he served in the army of the East India Company and held various governmental posts in other parts of Asia. He returned to England in 1849 with a valuable collection of antiquities for the British Museum. Rawlinson was knighted in 1855. Three years later he was elected to Parliament. He deciphered and interpreted Persian cuneiform writing, greatly expanding European knowledge of the history and ancient languages of Persia. Rawlinson wrote A Commentary on the Cuneiform Inscriptions of Babylon and Assyria (1850).