It was more than sixty years before any farther contribution was made to the knowledge of Persepolis. In 1761, however, the King of Denmark, Frederic V., fitted out an expedition chiefly for the purpose of exploring Arabia. Five commissioners were nominated, to each of whom a special branch of inquiry was assigned. Among them was Carston Niebuhr, the father of the writer whose historical works agitated the early part of last century. They left Copenhagen in January of that year, and reached Constantinople after an adventurous voyage. From thence they went to Egypt, and finally to Yeman, where they arrived in 1763. Here three out of the five explorers died, and the two survivors left for Bombay in 1764. Soon afterwards another died, and Niebuhr, the sole survivor, determined to return home, and to take Persia and the Euphrates Valley on his way. He received many courtesies from the English merchants settled at Bushire and Shiraz, especially from Mr. Hercules, the agent of the East India Company, in whose house he lived at Shiraz. Through his influence Niebuhr went on to Persepolis, furnished with the best introductions to the chiefs of the neighbouring villages. He arrived on the 13th of March, 1765, and remained till the 3rd of April. He afterwards returned for two days to compare his sketches with the original. He wrote in German, and the French translation appeared in 1780.[81]
The magnificent views of Persepolis given to the world by Chardin, and the very useful plan drawn to scale by Kaempfer, had already afforded ample material for forming a tolerably accurate conception of the general aspect of the ruins. Little remained now to be done except to work for the archæologist, to whom the minutest attention to detail was the first necessity. Niebuhr, unfortunately, cannot claim to have accomplished this difficult task, so far at least as his drawings are concerned. He has, however, contributed ten plates of illustrations of considerable artistic merit. Following the example of Kaempfer, he begins with a ground plan on which the various edifices are distinctly indicated by letters. This is followed by a general view looking towards the west; three plates are devoted to the sculptured stairs; one to the mysterious animals on the porch that continued so long a stumbling-block; the Palaces of Darius and Xerxes each occupy a plate, and two others portray the seated figures in the Hall of the Hundred Columns. He was so satisfied with this achievement that he thought even the student would have no need of any farther assistance from the artist’s pencil.[82] This is, however, so far from the case, that even the general reader has some cause to complain.[83] Niebuhr has conveyed an entirely false conception of the appearance of the sculptured terrace by the omission of the broken line of sculpture, of which one half still remains above the other two. He has also had the temerity to represent the figures as though they were perfect, though he states in the text that the larger number on one side are so mutilated that they are without their heads.[84] It would be impossible in his drawings to distinguish the different nationalities; it is difficult even to detect the ‘Kaffir,’ as he calls the famed Ethiopian.[85]
On the other hand, the description he has given of the ruins has the merit of being more concise than that of Chardin, and we follow him throughout with clearness. He was disposed to accept the theory that the edifice was originally a temple, the seat of an ecclesiastical chief, comparable to the Roman Pontiff, who had gradually passed into a secular prince. He did not doubt that it finally became the residence of the Achaemenian Kings, and was the edifice destroyed by Alexander.
It is not necessary to refer to many of his criticisms. He had little hesitation in deciding that the animals on the Porch were griffins (licornes), and that a double griffin ornamented the capital of the columns. Besides griffins, he fancied he discerned women among the bas-reliefs, especially in the Palace of Xerxes.[86] He, however, made the important observation that in the Columnar Edifice or Hall of Xerxes the columns of the central cluster are four feet lower than those at the side, and that there are the remains of four walls that seem to indicate an entrance from the north. He did not consider that the evidence was sufficient to conclude, as was generally done, that this edifice must have been necessarily open at the top; on the contrary, he suggests the possibility that the central group of columns supported a second stage, and the side colonnades a terrace.[87] He thought it probable that the whole assemblage of columns—seventy-two in number—had originally formed one immense building, which would have exceeded in size the Hall of the Hundred Columns. With regard to the latter, he had no doubt that it also had been roofed, and he observed numerous fragments of columns both in the great hall and in the portico. Della Valle had long ago traced the bases of thirty-six columns in the Palace of Xerxes; Niebuhr now adds the observation that there are four in each of the side rooms. He was also the first to observe the third tomb to the south of the others near Persepolis that has been left incomplete.[88]
But his principal merit lies in the great service he has rendered towards the solution of the mystery of the cuneiform letters. It is true he neglected to furnish a complete copy of all the inscriptions, which, with the time at his disposal, he might perhaps have accomplished; but the contributions he did make are of great value.
(1) He copied the inscription on the west end of the sculptured terrace, 25 lines, known as Inscription A.
(2) The six-line inscription in three tablets over the king in the Palace of Darius: B, C, D.
(3) The corresponding inscription in the Palace of Xerxes: E, F, G.
(4) He also copied the large inscriptions in four tablets on the outside south wall of the platform: H, I, K, and L. They each fill twenty-four lines, and an idea of the size of the letters may be formed from the fact that the original covers a space twenty-six feet long by six feet high.
Of these Le Bruyn had already copied the A inscription in the drawing he gives of the stairs, the six-line inscription of Darius (B, C, D), and a line of the inscription of Xerxes from the royal robe; while Kaempfer copied one tablet (L) of the inscription on the south terrace.[89] The others now appear for the first time. It has already been observed that Kaempfer was the first to draw the characters with a bold and steady hand; in this he has been followed by Niebuhr, so that his copies differ in no respect from those produced in the present day. The few remarks he has made upon the subject are of peculiar value and very materially assisted later scholars. He was the first to observe that the inscriptions are written in three different ‘alphabets,’ and that these always recurred together.[90] So slow is the progress of discovery, however, that he never seems to have advanced to what might appear to be the obvious conclusion that the three tablets are repetitions of the same text in different languages. He noted that the ‘alphabet’ in one of the tablets of the series was comparatively simple, and consisted of no more than forty-two different signs.[91] These he copied out, and they appear in Plate 23. He thus limited the first step in decipherment to the interpretation of a comparatively small number of signs. Till then the greatest confusion was produced by the appearance of detached portions of inscriptions, selected indifferently from all the three kinds of writing, a process that inspired the fear that the number of signs to be mastered was practically unlimited. Having clearly detected each separate letter from among the number of confused signs in a line of inscription, he farther assisted the student by marking off each separate letter by a full stop or colon in the copies he made of the inscriptions themselves.[92] From the division of the signs into letters he does not seem to have made the next step and apprehended the division of the lines into words by the diagonal wedges in the Persian column. He, however, directed attention to two different copies of the same inscription, where in one the letters that end the third line are in the other the first that occur in the fourth line; he pointed out that this practically settled the direction in which the writing should be read.[93] He also showed that the lines supposed by Chardin to be written from top to bottom are not in reality upright, but should be placed on their side, and when horizontal the letters correspond to those already known.[94]
Before leaving the neighbourhood of Persepolis, Niebuhr visited Istakhr and Naksh-i-Rustam, but he did not go on to Murgab. At Istakhr he saw two columns still standing, and he noted the massive blocks of the gateway.[95] He made no attempt to enter any of the tombs, which he says could not be done ‘without the risk of losing one’s life.’ That risk, such as it was, was, however, undertaken in the following year by Mr. Hercules, who had provided himself with tools in the case of necessity; but he found that some earlier visitor had pierced a hole through the top, and that there was nothing but dust remaining. Niebuhr has not noticed the inscription on the Tomb of Darius; but his accurate copies of the Pehlevi made at this spot and at Naksh-i-Rejeb opposite were the first that enabled Silvestre de Sacy to translate that language.
We shall see in a future chapter that before the close of the century the writings of Le Bruyn and Niebuhr had attracted a fair share of attention among European scholars; and the copies they had made of the inscriptions became the object of sedulous study, especially in the North. In Göttingen, the interest excited by the description of the ruins of Persepolis gave rise to an extremely heated controversy between Heeren and Herder. The former, in an early edition of the ‘Historical Researches,’ maintained that they were of Achaemenian origin. Persepolis, he says, ‘as the residence and place of sepulture of the Persian kings, was considered in the light of a sanctuary, and held to be the chief place in the kingdom.’ Herder, on the other hand, contended for its Jamshid origin, and supported his opinion in a series of very acrid ‘Persepolitan Letters.’[96] The question was of more importance than might at first sight appear, for upon its decision depended the royal names that should be looked for in the inscriptions. George Grotefend, a student in the University, who made the first successful attempt to decipher them in 1802, adopted the opinion of Heeren, and his investigations were largely based upon the conviction that the names of Darius and Xerxes could not fail to be found hidden in the cuneiform characters.
Meanwhile the new century opened with a continuance of the explorations, and one of the most fruitful discoveries was the inscription of Cyrus found by Morier at Murgab. For some time previous the disturbed state of the country had led to a complete suspension of diplomatic relations between Persia and European countries. Foreigners, who had been so cordially welcomed by Shah Abbas became almost unknown. Englishmen were gazed upon in the streets of the capital as ‘monsters of an unknown genus,’ and thought to be Chinese.[97] At length Captain (afterwards Sir John) Malcolm was sent by the Indian Government to solicit an alliance for common action against the Afghans. The French, however, viewed this friendly alliance with jealousy, and in 1805 they sent M. Jaubert, a well-known Orientalist, to detach the Shah from the English alliance.[98] The French envoy was successful; a Persian mission visited France, and concluded a treaty with Napoleon, in May 1807; an embassy under General Gardanne followed. These intrigues were, however, immediately met by a special mission from England, headed by Sir Harford Jones; and James Morier was appointed secretary. Morier was descended from a Huguenot family who, after leaving France, settled first in Switzerland and afterwards in Smyrna, where they engaged in business. Here James was born, about 1780. Not long after, his father came to England, became a naturalised subject, and sent his sons to Harrow. A reverse of fortune compelled him to return to Smyrna, where James again resided till about 1800. His father was appointed Consul at Constantinople in 1804, and died there of the plague in 1817. He had, however, the good fortune to secure appointments for three of his sons in the diplomatic service, and a commission in the navy for a fourth. Morier reached Bushire at the end of 1808, but upon this occasion he only spent a few months in the country. He returned in 1810, once more filling the position of secretary to an embassy of which Sir Gore Ouseley was chief. Ouseley brought his brother William with him in the capacity of private secretary and Mr. Gordon, a brother of Lord Aberdeen, was also attached to the mission. While the party was detained at Shiraz, in 1811, they scattered in pursuit of archæological discovery. Morier revisited Persepolis; Sir W. Ouseley went to Fasa, which was then considered to be the ancient Pasargadae; while Gordon undertook the dangerous journey to Susa.[99] Morier remained in Persia for six years, devoting himself to study; and he has secured a lasting fame as author of ‘Hajji Baba.’ Upon the occasion of his first visit in 1809, he spent only two days at Persepolis, and he added nothing to the knowledge already existing with reference to it. He, however, went to Naksh-i-Rustam, and his friend Captain Sutherland succeeded, as Mr. Hercules had done before, in entering the tomb farthest to the left.[100] He afterwards continued his journey along the valley of the Polvar, ‘between mountains whose brown and arid sides presented nothing to cheer or enliven the way.’ When he had travelled, as he supposed, about forty miles, and was still some two miles from Murgab, he turned from the direct route to view the ruins known in the country as ‘Mesjid Madre Suleiman,’ or Tomb of the Mother of Solomon. He observed the three pilasters of what is now termed the Palace of Cyrus, and conjectured at once that they belonged to a Hall, ‘the interior of which was decorated with columns.’ They were surmounted by a short inscription, of which he made a copy. He next observed a ‘building of a form so extraordinary that the people of the country often call it the court of the deevis or devil.’ He gives an excellent drawing of the well-known tomb, and adds: ‘if the position of the place had corresponded with the site of Passagardae as well as the form of this structure accords with the description of the Tomb of Cyrus, I should have been tempted to assign to the present building so illustrious an origin.’ He shows that the plain in which it stands was once the site of a great city, ‘as is proved by the ruins with which it is strewed’; the cuneiform inscriptions indicate that it was of the same ‘general antiquity’ as Persepolis; the two structures correspond in description, and in fact the only evidence on the other side is the absence of the inscription which Aristobulus declares he saw upon it. The place had been visited twice before, once by Barbaro in the fifteenth century, and again by Mandelslo in 1638. Mandelslo, indeed, gives an admirable drawing of it, which later artists have scarcely excelled. But till it was seen by the imaginative Morier no one had suggested that it was the Tomb of Cyrus. The opinion was readily accepted by Grotefend,[101] and it guided him to no small extent in the decipherment of the name of Cyrus in the inscription brought from the immediate vicinity.[102] When, however, Morier paid his second visit to Murgab in 1811, he was so overawed by the ponderous learning of his travelling companion Ouseley, that he tacitly allowed the subject to drop. On this occasion he succeeded in gaining access to the interior, but found nothing worthy of mention. He also noticed for the first time a very remarkable bas-relief of a winged human figure, and over it a repetition of the inscription he had already copied.[103]
Kaempfer had set the example of collecting specimens, and we fear the gentlemen of the embassy were only too ready to follow in his steps. They even went so far as to bring stone-cutters with them, provided with the requisite tools to carry their design into effect. We afterwards hear rather ominously of ‘the specimens in the possession of Sir Gore Ouseley and Lord Aberdeen.’[104] Morier published in 1812 the account of his ‘First Journey,’ containing the famous Cyrus inscription, and in 1818 the account of his ‘Second Journey’ followed. These works were well received, and can still be read with interest, but the fame of the author rests on his ‘Hajji Baba,’ which appeared in 1824.
Ouseley, who accompanied the embassy, was a very learned Orientalist, who was perhaps somewhat oppressed by the weight of his own accomplishments.[105] He was born in Ireland, in 1771, and after serving for a time in the army, he retired in 1794, and devoted himself wholly to his favourite pursuits. He became a thorough Persian scholar, and the author of many books bearing on Persian history and antiquities. He was therefore well qualified to accompany the embassy, and it was a source of keen pleasure to him to visit the country under such advantageous circumstances.
We have said that he turned aside from Shiraz to visit Fasa or Pasa, in the hope of finding the tomb of Cyrus; but, like Della Valle, he discovered nothing except a venerable cypress tree, which ‘is said to have been for above one thousand years the boast and ornament of the place.’[106] He finally came to the conclusion that Pasargadae and Persepolis were one and the same place, and firmly opposed the claim put forward by Morier on behalf of Murgab. Ouseley seems to have spent five days in all among the ruins of Persepolis, and he made excellent use of his time. He added another to the increasing number of general views (Pl. 40), and contributed a few small sketches of various parts of the building (Pl. 41). He rendered considerable service by the accurate copy he made of the cuneiform inscription round the window frames of the Palace of Darius. He found it repeated no less than eighteen times, and by a careful collation he was able to present a complete reading of the mutilated text.[107] He finally dispelled the erroneous idea that it was to be read from the top downwards; and he pointed out that certain of the characters found on bricks and gems from Babylon are never to be seen at Persepolis.[108] His description of the ruins is painstaking, but the subject was now almost exhausted. He agrees with Niebuhr that the Hall of Xerxes was roofed, and also that it may have supported another stage. He went farther and suggested the comparison with the façade of the tombs, an idea which Fergusson afterwards turned to excellent account.[109] But the chief value of his narrative consists in the full account he gives of Murgab and the illustrations that accompany it. Mandelslo and Morier had, as we have seen, both sketched the tomb; Ouseley adds a third sketch and by no means the best; but his other drawings are quite new, and from them the reader gains his first impressions of the plain of Murgab. They afford excellent views of the principal remains—the terrace, the square building, the palace, the caravansary, and the winged figure. He gives a satisfactory account of each, and when he comes to the palace, we find it described simply as ‘a cluster of pillars and pilasters.’ Notwithstanding all his prepossessions, he could not fail to be struck by the strange likeness of the Murgab tomb to the description given of the tomb of Cyrus, and he adds: ‘I should not have hesitated to believe it the tomb of Cyrus had the discovery of it rewarded my researches in the vicinity of Pasa or Fasa, or if, as Mr. Morier says, its position had corresponded with the site of Passagardae.’ As it was, he even ventured to express the opinion that it was a building of ‘doubtful antiquity.’[110] He visited it just an hour after Morier had made his sacrilegious entry; the startled female custodian had meanwhile returned, locked up the sacred shrine, and fled; so he was unable to satisfy his curiosity by a near inspection. He copied the Cyrus inscription from a solitary monolith to the north of the palace, and there were thus three independent versions of the same inscription taken from three different parts of the ruins.[111] The copy made by Ouseley was sent to the Director of the Imperial Library at St. Petersburg and through him it fell under the notice of Grotefend. Ouseley succeeded in making a magnificent collection of Persian manuscripts, especially relating to history and geography. His later years were spent in France, and he died at Boulogne, in 1842.[112]
Two hundred years had now elapsed since Gouvea called attention to the ruins of Persepolis. A considerable amount of literature had accumulated on the subject, and large numbers of plans and drawings of the principal objects were taken, which materially assisted the student. On looking back over these, however, it was curious to observe how widely the descriptions differed from each other, and how irreconcilable were the various views of the same monument. The explanation was not far to seek. Most of the travellers could only spare a few days from more pressing occupations to devote to the work. They were afterwards compelled to complete from memory the hasty sketches they had made on the spot, and although many of them display considerable skill in the use of their pencil, only a few had any professional knowledge of drawing. They were, moreover, all alike at the mercy of the engraver, and some thought they had good reason to complain of the treatment they received at his hands. But there was another cause that led to inevitable discrepancies. Few of them aimed to produce the minute accuracy of a photograph, or could resist the temptation of idealising the work before them: on the one hand, Le Bruyn exaggerated the ruin wrought by time; on the other, Niebuhr repaired its ravages. According to the one, the sculptured staircase is a confused mass of mutilated figures; according to the other, it appears as perfect as when first completed by the sculptor. Nor was it only in the drawings that inaccuracies were to be detected. The measuring tape itself seemed to yield different results in different hands. It was impossible to find agreement even as to the number of steps in the great staircase. According to one, there were only ninety-five (Herbert); according to another, one hundred and thirteen (Kaempfer); and other accounts ranged between these two extremes.
It was with the professed object of giving a final and authoritative representation that would satisfy the curiosity of the minute student that Sir Robert Ker Porter undertook to go over the old ground once more. He was an accomplished artist and he consequently possessed qualifications many of his predecessors were without. He arrived at Murgab on June 12, 1818, and left Persepolis on July 1, so that he was not more than eighteen days engaged in the study of the numerous antiquities in the neighbourhood. At the conclusion of his stay, he congratulates himself upon finding that: ‘I had drawn nearly every bas-relief of consequence, had taken a faithful plan of the place, and copied several of the cuneiform inscriptions.’[113] His industry during the time must certainly have been extraordinary. He surveyed the sites of Murgab and Persepolis, and made two ground-plans of both places. The former was now made for the first time, but the latter had been taken as early as the days of Kaempfer. He took two drawings of Murgab, four of the Achaemenian remains at Naksh-i-Rustam, six of the Sassanian sculptures, and two of the same period at Naksh-i-Rejeb. In addition to this he made twenty-four drawings of the monuments of Persepolis—some of them upon a large scale—and copied inscriptions that occupy four plates: that is to say, he accomplished in eighteen days work that now fills forty-two plates of engravings. This is certainly wonderful, but if he had executed less than one-quarter, the result would perhaps have been more satisfactory. In addition to the drawings, he measured the various buildings and the more important objects in each; and took notes for his very elaborate description of the dress, the arms, and other minute details of the various figures in the numerous bas-reliefs. Herbert had long ago expressed the opinion that ‘a ready Lymmer in three moneths space can hardly (to do it well) depict out all her excellences,’ and certainly the twelve days (from June 22 to July 1), which were all that Porter actually spent at Persepolis, were wholly inadequate for the purpose. In looking through Porter’s drawings, we find indeed ample evidence of haste, and of the absence of that minute accuracy which it was his special object to achieve. Yet his book is still perhaps the best that exists upon the subject in English. The drawings of his competitors are certainly not more accurate, and his careful and minute descriptions are quite unrivalled. His merit lies in the thorough investigations he made upon the ground itself, in the painstaking and, upon the whole, accurate measurements he took of each monument, and in the clear and explanatory account he has given of the various subjects depicted on the bas-reliefs. The care with which his investigations were made was rewarded by the discovery of the remains of the second edifice at Murgab, which had escaped the notice of Morier and Ouseley. His visit to Naksh-i-Rustam resulted in the earliest drawings we possess upon an adequate scale of the façade of a tomb, and it was completed by a ground plan of the interior.[114] He expressed his conviction that the third tomb with the long cuneiform inscription was in all probability that of Darius, an opinion afterwards proved to be correct.[115] The long debate as to the nature of the enigmatical animals on the Great Porch at Persepolis was still undecided. Even Mr. Morier adhered to the notion that they were horses, but Porter’s keen eye at once identified them with the bull, which subsequent discoveries at Nineveh has confirmed.[116] He also showed that the capital of the columns was composed of two half bulls, but he does not seem to have recorded that they are elsewhere varied by half griffins.[117]
Porter had no doubt that the Takht-i-Jamshid represented the ruins of the palaces of Persepolis, although the subject had not yet passed beyond the region of controversy. He inclines, however, to the compromise favoured by Niebuhr, and dwells upon the pontifical character of the sovereign, especially after the death of Zoroaster, when, he says, Darius assumed the title of Archimagus. He accepted Morier’s suggestion that Murgab was the site of Pasargadae and its principal monument the tomb of Cyrus.[118] He had a thorough belief in the decipherment of Grotefend. He not only accepted his recognition of the names of Darius and Xerxes, but he followed him when he traced their descent from Jamshid. That hero was, he thought, none other than Shem, whom sacred writ planted in that very region of Persia, and possibly Persepolis bore his name from the very earliest ages.[119] Porter did not himself advance our knowledge of the inscriptions. He copied the inscription at Murgab, but that had been previously done by Morier and Ouseley, and, as he candidly remarks, he ‘found that we all differed in some of the lines from each other.’[120] He also copied a portion of the inscription (A) on the sculptured staircase, of which Niebuhr had already given a satisfactory rendering;[121] and finally he took the trouble to execute an extremely imperfect copy of the four tablets of inscriptions on the south wall, which had also been much better done by Niebuhr.[122]
Notwithstanding its many defects, his book continued for thirty years to be the chief authority on the subject.[123] Heeren popularised the general result in the fourth edition of his ‘Researches’ (1824), and it thus became equally well known to German readers. Texier complained, in 1842, that there was absolutely no book in French upon the subject, and he had to refer to Porter for his information.[124] It was not till after the publication of the elaborate works of Texier and Flandin, which did not appear till 1849-51, that Porter was in any way superseded. Even then the form in which the great French authorities are published has rendered them inaccessible except to students in a great public library. The general reader would have remained in complete ignorance of the results but for the opportune publication, in 1851, of Fergusson on the ‘Palaces of Persepolis,’ and Vaux on ‘Nineveh and Persepolis.’
Within this long period, the area of discovery widened. Hamadan was identified with Ecbatana by D’Anville and Rennell, and it soon became an object of curiosity. The city stands 6,000 feet above the level of the sea, in a plain at the foot of Mount Elvend (the Orontes), and is surrounded by vineyards, orchards and gardens. Morier visited it in 1813, and discovered in the outskirts of the city a base of a small column of the identical order found at Persepolis, and near it he observed a large irregular terrace, perhaps the foundation of the Palace. Rawlinson afterwards detected five or six other bases of the same type. Three years before Morier’s visit, Kinneir had observed an inscription some seven miles distant, carved on the surface of the rock on a steep declivity of Mount Elvend.[125] ‘It consists,’ says Morier, ‘of two tablets, each divided into three longitudinal compartments, inscribed with the arrow-headed character of Persepolis. These inscriptions are called by the Persians Genj-nameh, or “Tales of a Treasure.”’[126] When Porter passed through Hamadan, he also went in search of the mysterious stone which he heard bore unintelligible writing. After a fruitless ascent of one of the highest peaks of Mount Elvend, he was fortunate enough in the course of his descent to come across the object of his expedition. The stone, he says, consists of ‘an immense block of red granite of fine texture,’ and the inscription is in excellent preservation. The natives believe that whoever succeeds in deciphering it will find a key that will enable him to discover a large treasure in the mountain, and hence the name they give it. Porter only reached it when the day was far advanced, and he had not time to make a copy.[127] Bellino, of whom we shall hear later, made another attempt, in 1820, but unfortunately he was attacked by fever at Hamadan, and died without accomplishing his object.[128] At length Mr. Stewart and M. Vidal, the consular dragoman at Aleppo, obtained copies about 1827, and communicated them to M. Schulz, who was then at Van. Professor Schulz of Hesse had been commissioned by the French Foreign Minister to undertake a scientific journey to the East, and he reached Van in July 1827, where he made copies of no less than forty-two cuneiform inscriptions. Long afterwards they were found to be written chiefly in the old Armenian language; but one was in the three varieties adopted by the Achaemenian kings. It was engraved on a large square tablet escarped on the precipitous face of the rock about sixty feet above the ground. It was divided into three columns, each column consisting of twenty-seven lines. Unfortunately, Schulz was murdered in 1829, and his papers ultimately found their way into the hands of M. Lajard of Paris, by whom they were sent to M. St. Martin for publication.[129] St. Martin, as we shall see, had early busied himself with cuneiform inscriptions, but in consequence of his early death, the papers of Schulz fell into the possession of the very eminent Orientalist Burnouf, by whom they were used with singular ability. The inscriptions found at Mount Elvend and at Van[130] became the subject of his ‘Mémoire sur deux Inscriptions,’ which appeared in 1836, and which marked the first great advance in cuneiform decipherment that had taken place since the memorable effort of Grotefend thirty-four years before.
Till the publication of Burnouf’s essay in 1836, the task of decipherment had made but small progress, and so far as we are aware, no copy of a Persian inscription had yet been published that had been taken by anyone with the smallest knowledge of the meaning of the characters. Mr. Rich, the British Resident at Bagdad, was, however, a zealous student of Grotefend, and in constant correspondence with him. He kept him supplied with copies of the few inscriptions that were then brought to light from the ruined mounds of Mosul and Hillah. His German secretary Bellino, who was also much interested in cuneiform discoveries, generally acted as the medium of communication; and Grotefend’s later pamphlets are full of recognition of the services he had received from both scholars. Rich was a man of very unusual attainments.[131] When still quite a boy, he mastered several Oriental languages, and in later years, amid the pressure of official life he never lost his interest in these subjects. He collected large numbers of Oriental manuscripts, and his mind was filled with the lore they contained. His house at Bagdad became the rendezvous of all the more eminent travellers who passed that way in the early years of the century. His hospitality acquired a reputation not inferior to that of Père Raphael at Ispahan during the latter half of the sixteenth century. Rich was equally ready to place his vast stores of Oriental knowledge at the disposal of his guests, and his official position enabled him to afford them substantial assistance. It was peculiarly fortunate that so eminent a man should have held that office at a time when public interest was first awakened to the archæology of the ancient cities of the East. He was himself able to render important services in this field of inquiry, and he made a collection of antiquities, afterwards acquired by the British Museum, which, though limited, as it is said, to a single small case, was still unequalled then in Europe, and was the beginning of the vast collection that now fills the Babylonian and Assyrian rooms. In the summer of 1821, he found himself at Bushire on official business, and well-nigh overpowered by the excessive heat. He accordingly decided to make a short trip to Shiraz, where a friend, who had just returned, gave him the refreshing intelligence that ‘the climate even then, in July, was so cold that one was obliged to put on a fur jacket and actually suffered from cold.’[132] Mr. Rich had, however, no cause to complain of the cold. The usual temperature, he found, was 90° at the hottest time, but it fell during the nights to 71°, which he considered ‘deliciously cool without being chilly.’[133] It was impossible for him to be so near Persepolis without gratifying his curiosity. ‘My expectation,’ he says, ‘was greatly excited. Chardin, when I was a mere child, had inspired me with a great desire to see these ruins.’ He was, however, merely travelling for health; and he had no intention of undertaking the onerous duties of an itinerant antiquarian. There was indeed no longer any necessity. ‘The ruins have been so accurately described, measured, and delineated by our friend Porter that nothing remains to be done; and I can abandon myself entirely to the luxury of imagination, of which the line, compass and pencil, and the intolerable labour they bring on, are eminently destructive.’[134]
On August 17, 1821, he enjoyed the first view of the ruins from his resting place, a mile distant, and with unusual philosophy he repressed his curiosity and continued his march to Murgab. ‘I took,’ he writes, ‘a capricious kind of pleasure in not going to them, and forcing myself to be contented with this general survey.’ He passed the little nook of Naksh-i-Rejeb and the ruins of Istakhr, and at length encamped before the ‘Meshed i Mader i Suliman.’ It will be recollected that the learning of Ouseley had decisively negatived the sagacious intuition of the more brilliant Morier, and the subsequent discovery of the name of Cyrus on the inscriptions at Murgab was as yet far from being accepted as decisive of the matter. The true site of the tomb of Cyrus was therefore still in dispute, and Rich could only venture to write that he ‘began to think that this in reality must be the tomb.’[135] He hoped, however, to be able to contribute something to the settlement of the question, but when he left he confessed, after all, that he was still unconvinced.[136] He, however, made another copy of the now celebrated inscription. After a stay of only one day, Rich retraced his steps towards Persepolis, and pitched his tent on the top of the great staircase, beneath the shadow of the Entrance Porch.
His resolution to abstain from antiquarian labour entirely broke down in presence of the inscriptions. He employed workmen to clear away the rubbish which in some places concealed them, and he disclosed for the first time the inscription on the south stairs leading to the Palace of Darius,[137] and the one opposite on the façade of the stairs of the Palace of Ochus. ‘I was actually diligent enough,’ he writes, ‘to fall to work at copying the inscriptions; and during the six days we remained at Persepolis I copied all the inscriptions except one. I have found much to corroborate Grotefend’s system, and have admired his sagacity. The labour I have gone through will greatly assist him.’[138] Indeed the result of his industry, combined with that of his predecessors, was to leave little more to be done by the copyist at Persepolis. The inscriptions over the animals on the Porch, and the long inscription at Naksh-i-Rustam seem indeed to be the only ones that remained.
1. He copied the three tablets of inscriptions of Xerxes on the Anta of the Palace of Darius, which had been imperfectly done by Le Bruyn (Table 131).[139]
2. The three tablets of inscriptions of Xerxes on the Anta in his palace—now first taken.[140]
3. The three tables of inscriptions of Xerxes, consisting of four lines over the king’s head on the east portal of his palace.[141] This is the same inscription as Niebuhr had copied from the north portal (his E, F, G).
4. Fragmentary inscriptions of Xerxes found in his palace.[142]
5. The three inscriptions of Xerxes on the south stairs of the Palace of Darius[143]—now first taken.
6. The central inscription of Artaxerxes Ochus on stairs to Palace of Ochus[144]—now first taken.
7. His Seyid copied the three tablets of the inscription of Xerxes over the colossal animals on the east walls of the Porch.[145] Mr. Rich was unfortunately unable on account of giddiness to remain at a height; and on this account he deputed the task to his Seyid, who had some experience of the cuneiform letters found at Babylon. This inscription was now first taken, but the copy turned out to be practically useless; and the first adequate rendering was made by Westergaard.
Coming from Babylon, where all the inscriptions he had seen were unilingual, he was much struck by the repetition of each inscription at Persepolis in three distinct modes of writing. ‘Every inscription in Persepolis,’ he says, ‘even the bits on the robes of the king, are in the three kinds. When an inscription is round a door or window, the first species is on the top, the second on the left hand running up, the third on the right, running down. I speak as looking at the door.’ ‘If one under the other, the first (or Zend) is always in the upper tablet; if side by side over a figure, it is the one over the head of the king; if on his robes, it is on the front fold; if on the face of a platform, it is in the centre, with the figures on each side facing towards it.’ ‘The other two species always preserve their order: the third (or Babylonian) in the place of least consideration.’[146] He called special attention to the inscriptions upon the tomb at Naksh-i-Rustam. ‘They are,’ he said, ‘the longest of all the cuneiform inscriptions I have ever seen. In fact, there is a prodigious quantity of writing upon them, but so small and so high up and so much worn that I should think it impossible to copy them.’[147] He was neither surprised nor disappointed by his visit, but the impression left was not one of unmixed admiration. The general view presented by the ruins he declared to be grand; the colonnade to be fine, and the execution and finish very beautiful; but he thought the portals at the landing place were much too narrow, all the doors too narrow and the windows too small, yet ‘formed of blocks that would build a mole.’ There is no correspondence between the object and the means, which gives to many parts of these remains, at least as they now appear, rather a heavy, crowded and crushed effect, ‘proceeding from the disproportionate application of vast materials, which is, after all, a foolish ambition.’[148]
Shortly after leaving Persepolis, he was struck down by cholera, and his death at the early age of thirty-five removed a man exceptionally qualified to render important service to his country and to learning. It had been his intention to send his valuable copies of the inscriptions to Grotefend, who was probably less qualified than Rich imagined to make a satisfactory use of them. As it was, they were not published till 1839, when the progress of cuneiform studies had deprived them of much of their importance.
Soon after the publication of Rich’s book, in 1839, the Danish scholar Westergaard visited Persepolis, and completed the transcription of the whole of the inscriptions. He was, as we shall see, fully qualified for the task by his technical knowledge of the subject. Only two new inscriptions, however, remained for him to copy: the one on the Porch that Rich was unable to reach (Inscr. D), and the great inscription on the tomb at Naksh-i-Rustam, which proved it to have been the sepulchre of Darius (Inscr. NR).
Only one Persian inscription of first-rate importance now remained to reward the zeal of the copyist. This was the famous one engraved in an almost inaccessible position upon the rock of Behistun. It is situated on the road from Hamadan to Kermanshah, about twenty miles before reaching the latter place. The rock forms an abrupt termination to a long range of barren hills, and presents a most remarkable appearance, rising in perpendicular form to the height of 1,700 feet. As it lies on the direct route to Media by the Holwan Pass, it was well known from the earliest times. According to Greek legend the hill was dedicated to Zeus; and Semiramis, on the occasion of an expedition against the Medes, caused a portion of the face of the rock to be polished and her own effigy to be carved upon it, surrounded by a hundred of her guards. She added an inscription in Assyrian characters, commemorating her triumphant march.[149] Whether any inscription of the kind ever existed is doubtful, but if so, all traces of it have disappeared. The inscription that has been recovered appears to have been executed in the fifth or sixth year of the reign of Darius; and it gives a lengthy record of the suppression of the revolts with which his reign opened. It occupies a surface of about 150 feet in length by 100 feet in height.[150] The tablets rest upon a narrow ledge of the rock, 300 feet from the ground, and the engraver could only have executed his task from a scaffolding erected for the purpose. Major Rawlinson tells us that the mere preparation of the surface of the rock must have occupied months. Where a flaw occurred, a piece was inlaid by embedding it in molten lead, and this tedious work was so carefully executed that it can only be detected by close scrutiny. After the letters were engraved, the whole received a coat of silicious varnish, in order to impart clearness of outline and to protect the surface against the action of the weather. ‘The varnish,’ he says, ‘is of infinitely greater hardness than the limestone beneath it.’[151] Notwithstanding all this elaborate preparation, many fissures have been made in the rock by the percolation of water, and the writing is defaced in many places. The inscriptions are grouped round a central tablet decorated with sculpture. The principal figure is Darius the King. He has one foot placed on the prostrate form of a vanquished foe; behind him are two attendants, and in front stand nine captives chained together. The last of the series is evidently a later addition made after the original work was accomplished; and he is distinguished from the rest by the peculiarity of his pointed cap. Close to each figure is a short inscription, giving the name and a relation of the evil deeds of the individual; by which means they are identified with the leaders of the rebellion. The prostrate form is no less a personage than Gaumates, the Magian. Above is the winged figure which is now known to be a representation of Ormuzd himself.[152] Rawlinson considers the execution of the figures as inferior to that of the bas-reliefs at Persepolis. ‘The effigies of Darius and his attendants alone exhibit that grace of outline and studied finish of detail which may place them at all upon an equality with the Persepolitan sculptures.’ The figure of the King is six feet in height, but the others are of diminutive stature, designed no doubt to mark their inferiority of position.[153] The artist seems to have even taken the trouble to represent them as repulsive in appearance. This part of the work is covered by no less than thirty-three short inscriptions—eleven in Persian, twelve in Median or, as it is now called, Susian, and ten in Babylonian. To the left of the sculptured tablet, and upon the same level, in a position exceptionally difficult of access, are two large tablets in the Babylonian style. To the right are four tablets—two in Susian and two in Babylonian—which were added later, and refer to the events connected with the figure with the pointed cap. This portion is so much defaced that it is difficult to do more than conjecture its meaning. It seems, however, to relate to a revolt in Susiana which, according to M. Oppert, occurred before the twelfth year of the reign of Darius.[154] Its chief was captured and hanged upon a cross. The main body of the inscription lies below the sculptured tablet. Immediately beneath it are four columns in Persian, each twelve feet high, and containing ninety-six lines of cuneiform writing; and a fifth, half that length, relating to the events of the more recent rebellion. To the left, below the large Babylonian inscription, are three columns in Susian. It is calculated that the whole contains nearly a thousand lines of cuneiform writing, of which no less than 416 are in Persian. It is said to comprise ten times as many words as all the rest of the shorter texts put together.[155]
The French traveller Otter seems to have been the first to call attention to Behistun, about the year 1734, and it is also noticed in the travels of Olivier.[156] Kinneir passed it in 1810, and he describes ‘a group of figures in the form of a procession sufficiently perfect to show that they are of the same age and character as those of Persepolis.’[157] In 1818, Porter at length succeeded in getting sufficiently near to sketch the figures.[158] He confirms Kinneir’s conjecture as to their resemblance to those at Persepolis; and he recognises the winged figure as ‘the floating intelligence in his circle and car of sunbeams, so often remarked on the sculptures of Naksh-i-Rustam and Persepolis.’ He remarked that there was a cuneiform inscription above the head of each figure and below ‘eight deep and closely written columns in the same character.’ Notwithstanding the facility Porter had already acquired in copying inscriptions at Persepolis, he was at too great a distance from these to make the attempt. He calculated it would require a month to complete the task, and adds that ‘at no time can it ever be attempted without great personal risk.’
The extremely inaccessible position of the inscriptions long baffled the zeal of explorers. M. Flandin, as we shall see, though specially commissioned by the French Government to examine Persian antiquities, retreated in dismay from the perilous task, which was left as usual to the private enterprise of an Englishman to accomplish. So long indeed as the history of cuneiform decipherment is remembered, the name of Henry Creswicke Rawlinson will continue to be associated with Behistun. He was not only the first to surmount the very considerable physical difficulties of approaching the inscriptions, but he succeeded, while in a position that was highly inconvenient, if not positively dangerous, in making so accurate a copy that few errors or omissions of importance were afterwards detected. The first copy appears to have been made entirely with the pen—the process of taking paper casts being employed on a later occasion—and it was a task that called for the display of extraordinary patience and most scrupulous care. He had to transcribe, or more properly to draw, vast numbers of signs of multitudinous and fantastic shapes, without at that time having the smallest clue to their meaning—a knowledge that would have served to check the accuracy of his work as he went along. Soon afterwards indeed he became the most skilful of decipherers. He cannot indeed claim to have been the first to solve the difficulties of the Persian alphabet; but his translation of the Behistun inscription was by far the greatest contribution ever made to a knowledge of that language; and he rendered scarcely less remarkable service in unravelling the mysteries of the third, or Babylonian, column.
Rawlinson was born at Chadlington Park, Oxfordshire, in 1810.[159] His family was recognised for centuries among the principal country gentry of Lancashire; but his father sold his ancestral estate and settled in Oxfordshire. He enjoyed the supreme distinction of winning the Derby in 1841 with Coronation, an achievement that no doubt afforded him scarcely less pleasure than the triumphs of his two illustrious sons, Henry and George.
Henry was the seventh child of a family of eleven. He was educated at Ealing School, which at that time enjoyed a great reputation, and had recently numbered the two Newmans among its pupils. Here he acquired a sound knowledge of the classical languages, so that in after life he could master the contents of almost any Latin or Greek prose author with facility. Indeed when he left he was first in Greek and second in Latin of the whole school. He grew to be six feet high, broad-chested, strong limbed, with steady head and nerve. He was fond of field sports, a taste which he had every opportunity of indulging at Chadlington and which he retained throughout the whole of his busy life. At sixteen he obtained a nomination to the Indian Service, and after six months spent in the study of Oriental languages under a private tutor at Blackheath, he sailed for India, where he arrived in October 1827. He had the good fortune to go out in the same ship with Sir John Malcolm, who had just been appointed Governor of Bombay. He devoted himself to the acquisition of the native languages and Persian, and also to various studies, particularly that of history. On the voyage out he edited the paper that was started for the amusement of the passengers, and this early connection with the press he afterwards continued, so that at the age of nineteen we find him contributing articles and short poems to the Bombay newspapers. But he never forgot that he was a soldier, and that it was no less part of his duty to cultivate physical activity. He accordingly passed much time in hunting and shooting, and in various athletic games, and one of his great achievements was an extraordinary ride that might now incur the humanitarian censure of a less strenuous age. In 1833, when still a lieutenant, he was one of eight officers selected to proceed to Persia to assist in training the army of the Shah. They landed at Bushire, where they were delayed for some months by the heavy snow on the mountains between that port and Shiraz. Rawlinson’s interest in archæological subjects was already awakened, and he took the first opportunity of visiting Shapoor and Persepolis, and making numerous sketches of both places. He was stationed at Tabriz during the summer of 1834, and with characteristic energy he endeavoured to reach the top of Mount Ararat, but he was prevented by the great depth of snow. In the following spring (1835) he was nominated by the Shah to act as Military Adviser to the King’s brother, who was Governor of Kurdistan and resided at Kermanshah. On his way he visited Hamadan, and copied the cuneiform inscription at Mount Elvend (April 1835). At Kermanshah he was within twenty miles of Behistun, which, as his biographer observes, ‘has been in the Providence of God the great means by which the ancient Persian, Assyrian, and Babylonian languages have been recovered, and a chapter of the world’s history that had been almost wholly lost once more made known to mankind.’ He passed his leisure time during 1835-37 in transcribing as much of the inscriptions as he could reach, and in the endeavour to fathom their meaning. Sometimes he ascended and descended the slippery rock three or four times a day ‘without the aid of rope or ladder or any assistance whatever.’ The difficulties are, he modestly says, ‘such as any person with ordinary nerves may successfully encounter.’[160] Towards the close of the year 1835, he paid a short visit to Bagdad, to place himself under the care of Dr. Ross; and he there became acquainted with Colonel Taylor, whom he was afterwards destined to succeed as British Resident. In the early spring, he led a native force of three thousand men through the mountains of Luristan, and took the opportunity of visiting Dizful, Suza, and Shuster. By that time his interest was fully aroused in cuneiform studies, and he no doubt heard from Colonel Taylor of the efforts that had been made in Europe to interpret the inscriptions. The vagueness of his information upon the subject is evident from the prominence he accords to the abortive speculations of St. Martin. We find him, in March 1836, lamenting over the destruction of the famous black stone of Susa, for he had hoped by its means to ‘verify or disprove the attempts which have been made by St. Martin and others to decipher the arrow-head characters.’[161] His mind was also occupied with geographical subjects, in which he afterwards attained to great distinction. He wrote to his brother for particulars of the expedition of Heraclius, and thought he had solved the mystery of the two rivers at Susa, which was probably the same as that afterwards announced by Mr. Loftus. He began to look forward to his three years’ leave of absence, which he hoped to spend in ‘a nice cheap lodging’ at Oxford or Cambridge ‘for the sake of consulting the classical and Oriental works which are there alone procurable.’ Meanwhile he had ordered out books from England, and for the present he found life tolerable enough. ‘I am,’ he says, ‘in a country abounding with game and antiquities, so that with my gun in hand I perambulate the vicinity of Shuster, and fill at the same time my bag with partridges and my pocket-book with memoranda.’ It was not till the autumn of that year (1836), during a short visit to Teheran, that he became acquainted with the alphabets of Grotefend and St. Martin, and learned the progress that had been made by them in Germany and France.
He returned to his post at Kermanshah for the winter of 1836-7, and once more directed his attention to the inscriptions at Behistun. During all this period he continued to be practically the governor of the extensive province of Kermanshah and the commander of a large portion of the army stationed in it. In the summer of 1837, he was relieved of these duties, and received a mark of the Shah’s favour by being appointed Custodian of the Arsenal of Teheran. He passed that winter (1837-8) in the capital, and when the British Envoy, Sir J. McNeill, accompanied the army of the Shah to Herat, he found himself left in ‘quasi political charge.’ Soon afterwards, the progress of political events led to the withdrawal of the Mission from Persia, and Rawlinson found himself at Bagdad towards the close of the year 1838, where he remained till October 1839.
While at Kermanshah (1835-7) he was able to make a nearly correct transcript of the entire first column of the Persian text, together with the opening paragraph of the second, ten paragraphs of the third column and four of the detached inscriptions, amounting altogether to two hundred lines, or one half of the whole inscription.[162]
The outbreak of the Afghan war, in 1839, summoned him to a very different sphere of activity. He was recalled to Bombay in October of that year, and in January 1840, he was ordered to Candahar, where he filled the important office of Political Agent throughout the whole of that trying period. It was due in a measure to his energy and prudence, acting in combination with the military talent of General Nott, that the town was saved, and a portion of the disaster at Kabul retrieved. The evacuation of Candahar took place in August 1842, and by the end of the year Rawlinson was back in India. He had been present at three battles and on each occasion was honourably mentioned in despatches; in addition to these services, he accompanied the General as aide-de-camp during the hard fighting on the march to Cabul and the Sutlej. An accidental meeting on board a steamer with Lord Ellenborough, who was then the Governor-General, ripened into friendship, and procured for the young officer an offer of the ‘Residency in Nepaul’ or of ‘the Central India Agency’; but these were declined. Rawlinson had set his heart on completing his cuneiform studies, which had now been suspended by three years of adventure; and although these appointments were of much greater dignity and emolument, he eagerly seized upon the opportunity of returning to Bagdad as ‘Political Agent in Turkish Arabia,’ in succession to Colonel Taylor. Here he arrived in December, 1843, to ‘work out the Babylonian puzzle’ and to spend ‘twelve weary years of his life doing penance in order to attain a great literary object.’[163]
As soon as he could spare time, in the early summer of 1844, he returned to Behistun, accompanied by Mr. Hester and Captain Jones, R. N.[164] It will be remembered that up to that time he had only secured two hundred lines of the Persian column, or about one half of the whole. A week of continuous work now enabled him to transcribe the whole of the Persian, the whole of the Susian, and the whole of the detached Babylonian epigraphs. The Babylonian version of the Great Inscription was still found to be inaccessible without more elaborate appliances, and it was abandoned for the present. He spent the year 1845 in completing a Memoir on the subject, which he had begun to prepare in 1839, before the outbreak of the war. The new materials he had just collected rendered it advisable to rewrite the whole work, though the translation he had attempted of the earlier portion remained substantially unaltered. This task involved transcribing four hundred lines of cuneiform, which was a work of no ordinary labour in that climate and among many other conflicting claims upon his time. He began as soon as possible to transmit instalments of his Memoir to England; and in May 1846 we learn by the Report of the Asiatic Society that ‘the extraordinary discoveries of Major Rawlinson are now passing through the press and will be shortly published.’
Meanwhile the great discoveries of Botha and Layard had transferred the interest of scholars from the Persian to the Babylonian column, for the latter was seen to bear a close analogy to the inscriptions coming to light with such startling rapidity on the banks of the Tigris. It was evident that the possession of the long inscription at Behistun would greatly increase the knowledge of this language; it covered no less than a hundred and ten lines, and the Persian version, which was by this time practically understood, would materially assist the translation. Accordingly, in September 1847, Rawlinson returned to Behistun with ladders, planks, ropes, and various other contrivances. But his chief dependence was upon a wild Kurdish boy, who squeezed himself up a cleft in the rock and drove in a wooden peg. To this he fastened a rope, and endeavoured to swing himself across the inscription to a cleft on the other side. This he failed to accomplish on account of the projection of the rock. ‘It then only remained for him to cross over to the cleft by hanging on with his toes and fingers to the slight inequalities on the bare face of the precipice; and in this he succeeded, passing over a distance of twenty feet of almost smooth perpendicular rock in a manner which to a looker-on appeared quite miraculous.’[165] He then drove a second peg, and the rope connecting the two enabled him to swing right across. To it he attached a ladder like a painter’s cradle, and then, under Rawlinson’s direction, he took paper casts of the whole Babylonian text. The work occupied ten days, but unfortunately the inscription was found to be sadly mutilated. ‘The left half, or perhaps a larger portion even, of the tablet is entirely destroyed, and we have thus the mere endings of the lines throughout the entire length of the whole inscription.’[166] On his return to Bagdad, he applied himself to the difficult task of deciphering and translating his new acquisition. In this investigation he could as yet derive no assistance from other scholars. Those who were beginning to study Assyrian in Europe, of whom Dr. Hincks and M. de Saulcy were the most notable, had not as yet made farther progress than himself. He devoted the whole of 1848 and part of 1849 to this laborious pursuit, and at the same time added Hebrew to the number of his accomplishments. His ‘Second Memoir’ was, however, completed in time to despatch to London in 1849, and he prepared to return himself in order to superintend its publication. The ‘Memoir on the Babylonian Translation of the Great Inscription at Behistun’ finally appeared in the fourteenth volume of the ‘Journal of the Asiatic Society,’ 1851.
Rawlinson had made the rock of Behistun his own; and although many complaints were heard of the delay that occurred before he could give the results to the world, no one attempted to undergo the dangers he had faced in order to dispute his title to possession. It is to him, therefore, that we owe the recovery of this Memorial of Darius. It afforded a few not very important additions to history, and it was valuable by confirming the veracity and accuracy of Herodotus, which some writers were still disposed to impeach. But its chief importance lay in the length of the text, which for the first time presented sufficient materials to enable the student to acquire a competent knowledge of the old Persian language. Once in possession of this key, he could apply it to the solution of the more difficult problems afforded by the other two columns, and in this manner three ancient and forgotten languages were restored to knowledge.