By 1851, Hincks and Rawlinson could read 200 Babylonian signs. They were  soon joined by two other decipherers: young German-born scholar Julius Oppert, and versatile British Orientalist William Henry Fox Talbot. In 1857 the four men met in London and took part in a famous experiment to test the accuracy of their decipherments. Edwin Norris, the secretary of the Royal Asiatic Society, gave each of them a copy of a recently discovered inscription from the reign of the Assyrian emperor Tiglath-Pileser I.  A jury of experts was empanelled to examine the resulting translations  and assess their accuracy. In all essential points the translations  produced by the four scholars were found to be in close agreement with  one another. There were of course some slight discrepancies. The  inexperienced Talbot had made a number of mistakes, and Oppert’s  translation contained a few doubtful passages which the jury politely  ascribed to his unfamiliarity with the English language. But Hincks’ and  Rawlinson’s versions corresponded remarkably closely in many respects.  The jury declared itself satisfied, and the decipherment of Akkadian  cuneiform was adjudged a fait accompli.
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