Rawlinson, SIR HENRY CRESWICKE, Bart., orientalist and diplomatist, was born at Chadlington in Oxfordshire, 11th April 1810, and entered the East India Company's army in 1827. In 1833 he proceeded to Persia to assist in organising the Persian army. During the six years he spent in that country he began to study the cuneiform inscriptions, and made a translation of Darius' famous Behistun inscription, which he published in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society. After he left Persia he held command of Kandahar during the troublous times of 1840-42 (see AFGHANISTAN); he was appointed political agent at Bagdad in 1844, and consul-general there in 1851. He showed great bravery in the field, and remarkable skill and resource in diplomacy. In 1856, now made K.C.B., he was appointed director of the East India Company. In 1858-59 he was again in Persia as British minister; and was successively member (1868) and vice-president (1876) of the Council of India. In 1865-68 he sat in parliament for Frome. He held the presidency of the Royal Geographical Society (1871), to whose Proceedings he contributed valuable papers, a trusteeship of the British Museum (1879), and a directorship of the Royal Asiatic Society. He was made a baronet in 1891; and he died 5th March 1895. The 'father of Assyriology,' he wrote A Commentary on the Cuneiform Inscriptions of Babylon and Assyria (1850), Outline of the History of Assyria (1852), The Cuneiform Inscriptions of Western Asia (with Norris and George Smith, 5 vols. 1861-70), and England and Russia (2d ed. 1875). See the Life by his brother (1898).
That brother, GEORGE RAWLINSON, orientalist and historian, was born at Chadlington in Oxfordshire in 1812, took a first-class in classics from Trinity College, Oxford, in 1838, and was elected a Fellow of Exeter College in 1840. In 1859 he preached as Bampton Lecturer on Historical Evidences of the Truth of the Scripture Records, and two years later was chosen Camden professor of Ancient History. In 1872 he was made a canon of Canterbury. His historical publications cover nearly the entire history of the ancient Orient. The series opens with the standard edition of Herodotus (4 vols. 1858-60; 3d ed. 1876), which was followed by The Five Great Monarchies of the Ancient Eastern World (4 vols. 1862-67), The Sixth Great Oriental Monarchy of Parthia (1873), The Seventh or Sassanian Empire (1876), History of Ancient Egypt (1881), and History of Phœnicia (1889). The same ground is also covered in part in the smaller popular works, Egypt and Babylon from Scripture and Profane Sources (1884), Manual of Ancient History (1869), Religions of the Ancient World (1882), &c. Besides these, he has written several books of biblical exposition and religious criticism, as Contrasts of Christianity with the Heathen and Jewish Systems (1861), a series of sermons preached before the university of Oxford; Esther, Ezra, Nehemiah, &c., for The Speaker's Commentary; Exodus with a commentary (1882-83); Moses, his Life and Times (1887); Kings of Israel and Judah (1889); Isaac and Jacob (1890); brief essays contributed to Present Day Tracts; and the article PHÆNICIA in the present work.