He mentions the column in the plain three hundred paces from the

platform, perfect except the capital. From this spot across to

Naksh-i-Rustam ruins may be seen scattered over the whole plain and it

was here he thought the city of Persepolis had stood, with the Temple to

the east and the Tombs to the west. It reached northwards between the

hills where fallen columns, pieces of architraves and bas-reliefs might

be observed, and he was told that there were traces of ruins within a

circuit of ten leagues.

Chehel Minar is honeycombed by subterranean passages, possibly drains

or aqueducts, and Chardin explored several of them. He found one of

sufficient height to walk through upright, and he advanced nearly a

mile, when he was forced to return. The people of the country told him

it extended for six leagues and leads to subterranean tombs. A similar

passage connects the temple with Naksh-i-Rustam.

Chardin noted many inscriptions among the ruins, sometimes even upon

the robes of the figures.[60] He observes that the strange characters

are sometimes three inches in height, and there can be no doubt that

some of them, especially the capitals, were gilt. This was in fact the

opinion of several of the early travellers, such as Mandelslo and Daulier

Deslandes; while Herbert saw gilding on the bas-reliefs themselves.

The writing is composed of only two kinds of characters: one resembles

an oblique triangle, the other a pyramid. The first has ‘la pointe ou

angulaire, ou en bas ou en travers.’ The second may assume six postures:

‘when perpendicular, the pointed end may be either top or bottom; when

horizontal, either to left or right; when diagonal, it may point either

way.’ It may be read not only from left to right, but also from top to

bottom like Chinese. Some consider the writing is purely hieroglyphical,

but Chardin thinks it is a true writing like our own—but it will be

impossible ever to tell whether it has vowels, or anything else about

it. In order to illustrate his opinion concerning the various directions

in which the characters might be read, he made a copy of the inscription

that runs round the window of the Palace of Darius. This is the first

complete inscription ever copied, and unfortunately it contributed much

to impede the progress of decipherment.[61] Although consisting of only

one line, it is in three different scripts, and its inspection served at

once to confirm the opinion of Chardin that the wedges might be turned

in any direction—for to the left of the window we see the thick end of

the wedge at the bottom; on the right of the window it is in the reverse

position; while on the top it is turned to the left. It was long before

it was discovered that this inscription was to be read, like the legend

running round a coin—the line to the left being written running up; and

the line to the right running down; so that in reality the wedge always

preserves the same direction.

He visited Naksh-i-Rustam, and was the first to give an account of the

Inscriptions on the second tomb. The one above consists, he says, of

fifteen lines; the other near the cornice and the door is shorter. He

induced his valet, by an offer of three crowns, to explore the interior,

and he was probably the first European who ever accomplished the task. He

was encountered at the narrow entrance by an immense flight of pigeons,

at first mistaken for demons, who were terrified by his intrusion and

hastened to make their escape. He reported that the cave measured forty

paces in a straight line from the entrance and thirty on either side.

Facing the entrance he noticed the lids of three sarcophagi upon the

ground, and to right and left were four tombs each six feet long.[62]

The general impression left upon his mind by the contemplation of

Persepolis was that the ruins were the most magnificent he had ever

seen.[63] Although not without fault, they are, taken as a whole,

characterised by excellent taste and worthy of admiration for the amount

of labour that lies concealed as well as for that which is displayed. He

attributed the destruction of the building more to the religious zeal of

the Mohamedans than to time. Istakhr early became the seat of a Viceroy

of the Khalifs, and since then the work of demolition has never ceased.

Even Shah Abbas adorned his palace at Ispahan with some of its marbles,

and others found their way to Shiraz. Not long before Chardin’s visit the

governor of that place gave orders that sixty men should be employed in

systematic destruction directed chiefly against the human figures; but

fortunately his orders were not fully carried into execution.

The year after the appearance of Chardin’s account of Persepolis

Engelbert Kaempfer published his Travels, (1712) which include a

description of the same monument.[64] He was a German physician who went

to Persia in 1684 in the capacity of secretary to the Swedish Envoy, and

he subsequently remained as surgeon to the Dutch fleet stationed in the

Persian Gulf. His visit to Persepolis occurred twelve years later than

that of Chardin, but unfortunately he was not accompanied by a skilful

artist (1686). He treats us to five drawings of Persepolis and three of

Naksh-i-Rustam. The former include two general views of the Platform,

one taken from the west and the other from the east: the Porch, the

sculptured stairs and the great door of the Hall of the Hundred Columns.

They are quite unworthy to be compared either in design or execution with

those of Chardin. But if it were not for the exceptional excellence of

the latter, we should feel more grateful to Kaempfer and his successor

Le Bruyn. As it is, Kaempfer’s drawing of the sculptured stairs almost

carries us back to the archaic period of art represented by Herbert,

and may best be described as grotesque. He is more successful in the

treatment of the façade of a tomb at Naksh-i-Rustam. He has, however,

merits peculiar to himself. The first attempt to draw the platform to

scale was made by Chardin; but Kaempfer improved upon this example by

marking the position and outline of the principal ruins upon it; and has

thus afforded the student invaluable assistance to guide him through the

intricacies of all future descriptions. He has added to its clearness by

numbering each of the ruins: a system he has also followed in his general

view.

But of still greater importance was the attention he directed to the

Inscriptions. It is to him we owe the designation of ‘cuneiform’ from the

wedge-like appearance of the signs that compose the groups—a name they

have since retained. He considered that the writing was ideographic, as

in the Chinese; it was unknown elsewhere, but here it was found cut into

the doors, windows, statues and walls, and it was certainly contemporary

with the construction of the edifice. He was told that the hollow

formed by the excision was formerly filled in with gold, which had been

removed by the cupidity of subsequent ages, though he fancied he could

still detect traces of it in some places. He was particularly struck

by the appearance of an inscription on the south wall of the Terrace.

It occupied a slab no less than ten paces in length, and was divided

into four tablets, each containing twenty-four lines. He copied the one

on his right hand as carefully as the difficulties of the situation

would permit; he was unfortunately prevented from copying the others,

but he observed that the characters in them varied to a certain extent.

The inscription he gave was afterwards known as the ‘L of Niebuhr,’

and belongs to the third or Babylonian system of writing.[65] He has

transcribed the whole of the twenty-four lines, and it was by far the

longest text that had ever yet been published to the world. Although the

copy is defective when compared with the perfection that has since been

achieved, yet as a first attempt upon so large a scale it deserves high

commendation. He also gives the trilingual inscription round a window in

the Palace of Darius, but in this he had been anticipated by Chardin.[66]

He is careful also to direct the reader’s attention to the position of

inscriptions in other parts of the ruins. He mentions the inscription

over the animals in the Porch (of which, however, we had already heard

from Chardin), but he also fixes the position of the inscription

in twenty-four lines on the sculptured stairs;[67] of the three

inscriptions on the south stairs of the Palace of Darius;[68] of the

three inscriptions, each of six lines, over the bas-relief on the great

doors of the same edifice,[69] and of the three inscriptions, each of

four lines, in the corresponding position in the Palace of Xerxes.[70]

Kaempfer favoured the opinion then most generally accepted that the

building was a temple rather than a palace, and he considered that the

columns were designed to support a roof.[71] He gives the earliest

description we have of the central edifice, and he explains clearly the

nature of the building. It consists, he says, of the remains of three

massive doors and the bases of two columns and although these ruins are

few in number he declares they are superb.[72]

He remarked that two months would be scarcely long enough to sketch the

principal objects, and he could only spare three days.

Nearly twenty years later the ruins were visited by another traveller

who had more time at his disposal. Corneille le Bruyn arrived early in

November 1704 and occupied himself for three months in sketching and

measuring the various edifices.[73] Unfortunately, the result is scarcely

equal to the effort. His book, which was published at Amsterdam in 1718,

contains eight plates of Persepolis; but they are greatly inferior to

those of Chardin and are executed on too small a scale to assist the

student in following the diffuse and confused description given in the

text. Two plates are devoted to four general views taken from different

points. In these the buildings are indicated by letters, which refer the

reader to the text, and they enable him to apprehend some of the more

obscure statements made by the writer. One plate is devoted to views of

the great stairs and entrance portico. Two others reproduce the figures

on the sculptured stairs. Though inferior to the same views given by

Chardin, they are immeasurably superior to the one by Kaempfer and fall

little short of those subsequently executed by Niebuhr. The remaining

plates contain a number of small vignettes, which convey but a poor

impression of the objects they are designed to represent. Le Bruyn has,

however, devoted one of the plates to Inscriptions and this is the most

important work he has achieved in connection with this subject. He has

copied five separate inscriptions, four of which were now published for

the first time. (1) The Inscription on the Sculptured Stairs.[74] (2) The

Inscription on the pilaster in the Portico of the Palace of Darius.[75]

It is in three tablets, each tablet containing from thirteen to fifteen

lines. (3) The Inscription seen over the King in the same palace.[76] It

is also in three tablets, each containing six lines. (4) The Inscription

in the folds of the royal robe—of which seven lines are given.[77] (5)

Finally, he has reproduced the window Inscription already published by

Chardin and Kaempfer, but instead of representing it as it occurs round

a window, he has placed the three lines under one another in parallel

lines.[78] By this simple change of position he has shown the fallacy of

the theory that the lines at the sides may be read from top to bottom:

or that the wedge can occur with the point upwards. Le Bruyn is a more

accurate copyist than Kaempfer, and in some respects he even excels

Ouseley, a hundred years later. With Le Bruyn the cuneiforms assume the

bold and regular appearance with which we are now familiar, although he

confuses many of the letters by too great compression.

Le Bruyn appears to have been one of the first travellers to attempt

to make a collection of these antiquities to send home to Europe. The

extreme hardness of the stone severely taxed the strength of his tools,

and it was with considerable difficulty that he secured a piece from a

window covered with cuneiform characters, and some other smaller objects.

These he despatched through the agent of the Dutch East India Company to

the Burgomaster of Amsterdam. So far as we know, the only other specimens

of cuneiforms that had hitherto been seen in Europe were those picked up

by Della Valle on the site of Babylon and sent to the Kircherian Museum.

He was not very happy in some of his criticisms. He described the animals

on the Entrance Portico as having a likeness to the Sphinx with the body

of a horse and the feet of a lion. He imagined that the animal attacked

by the lion on the sculptured stairs was a horse or even an ass. The

object that separates the various groups in the same place he describes

as a vase. He considered the capital surmounting the columns was the

figure of a kneeling camel. He is about the only competent observer,

with the exception of Niebuhr, who discerned female figures among the

sculptures.[79] He appears to say that there are no less than forty-six

of these in the Palace of Darius alone: among them are the King’s

attendants bearing the fly-chaser and parasol. He estimates the total

of human figures among the ruins at 1300; and, judging by the number of

bases, he considered there were originally not less than two hundred

and five columns.[80] He gives the measurements of the buildings, the

size and number of the figures with a detail that becomes irksome and

bewildering. The reader often regrets that he did not make better use of

his pen and pencil, and spare him some of the results of the measuring

tape. He is by no means too lavish of his praise. He censured the figures

as stiff and devoid of animation; the nude he found represented without

anatomical skill and the draperies without taste. He admits, however,

that the ornamentations, when they occur, are beautiful. He was of

opinion that all the stone for the construction of the various edifices

came from the neighbouring mountains, where he observed all the various

shades found at Persepolis. He had the good sense to reject the foolish

theory supported by Chardin as to the Jamshid origin of the ruins; and he

could see no evidence that they had ever been used as a temple. On the

contrary, he considered that they had been a palace, and his conviction

that the columns had originally supported a roof lessens the difficulty

of accepting that view. He argues with some force and great diffuseness

that it could only have been the Palace of the Achaemenides destroyed

by Alexander: an opinion confirmed by later investigation, and one

that greatly facilitated the attempt made by Grotefend to decipher the

inscriptions.

CHAPTER II

NIEBUHR TO DE MORGAN. A.D. 1765-1897

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.

We have now come to the time when the enterprise of individual travellers

was about to be superseded by commissioners sent by foreign Governments

to collect information in an official capacity. We cannot say that the

general reader has cause to be thankful. We now part company with the

modest volume that could be purchased and handled with comparative ease.

In its place we have massive folios, which an enterprising student may

indeed find in the ‘large room’ of the British Museum, but which are

beyond the power of a private library to acquire. No one untainted by

African gold could contemplate their possession, and indeed it would

be necessary to build an addition to an ordinary house to find them

accommodation. They are not adapted for study, for they tax too severely

the physical endurance of the reader. The writer who is employed to fill

in the blanks between the magnificent illustrations, is probably sensible

of this, and one of them, M. Flandin, afterwards republished his text in

a more convenient form. These vast folios are designed, we should think,

mainly for the glorification of the Government who has paid for them,

and for the benefit of the various mechanical persons employed in their

fabrication. Sumptuously bound in red morocco, with richly gilt edges,

they serve only to be rolled into the room of a palace in order that the

pretty pictures that adorn them may be idly scanned amid the chatter of a

tea-table.

The first of these great compilations that comes under our notice was

made by Charles Texier, who had already gained fame and experience by

his ‘Description de l’Asie Mineure,’ published between 1838-48. He was

a Government Inspector of Public Works, and he subsequently became

Professor of Archæology at the Collège de France (1840). He obtained

a grant of 160,000 francs to enable him to publish his book, a sum

afterwards reduced to 100,000. He does not seem to have regarded this

measure with as much satisfaction as the reader, for he was compelled

upon this occasion to restrict his publication to only two folios; and

he complains that he had to suppress a considerable portion of his vast

collections. In 1839 he set out for Persia, and the account of his

travels was published by instalments between the years 1842 and 1852. In

1849 very few of the plates referring to Persepolis had appeared, and

no text,[167] but Fergusson was able to use a considerable part of the

drawings, in 1850, for his ‘Nineveh and Persepolis.’

Texier set out upon his enterprise, as Porter had done before, with a

desire to aim at the most scrupulous accuracy; but his fatal passion for

‘restorations’ has made sad havoc of his moral aspirations.

He began the Persian portion of his work at Van, and travelled steadily

round to Persepolis. Like Flandin, who followed closely on his track,

he was prevented by the disturbed state of the country from visiting

Susa. He devoted two days (January 12-14, 1840) to Murgab, and gives

six drawings. He was fully convinced that the famous tomb was that of

Cyrus, though the winged figure may be only ‘a prince or magus in the

attitude of devotion.’[168] He confessed he could make nothing of the

general disposition of ‘the Palace’; it consists, as he candidly admits,

of ‘a certain number of pillars, of which the relations cannot be easily

established; a large column and remains of walls.’ The second palace

noticed by Porter seems to have escaped his observation. Persepolis

occupied him for about ten days, and resulted in twenty-four drawings.

His general views have nothing of the artistic merit afterwards displayed

by Flandin, and they are probably in no degree more accurate. He observed

from the _débris_ at the bottom of the outside wall of the Terrace that

it had been originally ornamented by a parapet; and he considered there

were distinct traces of a triple wall of defence on the hill at the back,

which may in some degree account for the description given by Diodorus.

He thought that nearly all the buildings had been left incomplete, an

opinion that has since gained ground. He maintained that the central

group in the Columnar Edifice was intended to be enclosed by a wall and

roofed; and he suggested that the design on the tombs, with a stage

above, was a correct representation of the architecture of the palaces,

a view afterwards supported by the authority of Sir James Fergusson. He

was fully convinced that the bas-reliefs had been originally coloured;

and one of the chief objects of his journey was to collect evidence on

this point. It is singular to find that the writer completely ignores the

results already achieved in decipherment, and that he still describes the

Palaces of Darius and Xerxes as the Hareem and the Baths: an eccentricity

into which M. Flandin also falls. Texier excels in measurements; they

agree substantially with those of Flandin and Coste, and differ by about

ten per cent. from those of Porter.[169] The work of Texier was from

the first almost completely superseded by that of Flandin, who passed

over the same ground only a few months later (October 1840) and who, as

we have said, has wisely republished his narrative in a comparatively

portable form.

When the English mission to which Rawlinson was attached withdrew from

Persia, the Shah made overtures to Louis Philippe with a view to replace

the English by military instructors from France.[170] The French king

judged this a favourable opportunity to reopen diplomatic relations with

Persia, and he accordingly despatched the Count de Sarcey on a mission to

the Shah. The ambassador was accompanied by a numerous staff, each member

being charged with the investigation of a particular subject. The embassy

assumed the character of an exploring expedition quite as much as that of

a political mission. One attaché was required to make a special study

of the geology, another of the arts, a third of the industry, as if the

country had been hitherto wholly unexplored by Europeans. The proposed

adventure excited much interest, and the two Academies of Inscriptions

and Beaux Arts solicited permission to send representatives. This was

duly accorded, and MM. Flandin and Coste were elected by the suffrage

of the members of the Academies: the one in the capacity of artist, the

other in that of architect.

M. Coste was already familiar with the East, and was known by a work

on the Arabian monuments of Cairo. M. Flandin was apparently unused

to the inconveniences of Oriental travel, and his book presents us

with a harrowing picture of the sufferings he endured. It is indeed

wonderful that he survived his cook, whom he describes as a ‘véritable

empoisonneur,’ or the numerous lacerations of soul he underwent as,

one by one, his friends returned to the shade of the boulevards and

left him behind a prey to the tortures of the Persian sun. Still more

wonderful that he should have escaped alive from so many perils. At one

time, he and his horse roll together into a trench from which there

seemed no visible escape; at another, the enthusiastic artist is seen

scrambling up the rock of Behistun with bleeding feet and hands to find

his toil and peril fruitless, and to accomplish a descent backwards by

a ‘véritable gymnastique de lézard’;[171] or again his excitable temper

involves him in personal encounters with the natives, in which blows are

freely exchanged on both sides, and on one occasion he received a stab

with a poniard. These adventures, however amusing to himself and his

readers, unfortunately involved his antagonists in shocking punishments

by flogging, which the courtesy of the Persian officials thought it

necessary to inflict, although Flandin is not always free from the blame

of having been the first to give provocation.

The embassy left Toulon on October 30, 1839, but it was not till the

following June that the two artists settled down before the rock of

Behistun, where they found numerous traces of ruins in the plain on

both sides of the river, which indicate the former existence of a very

considerable town; but there was nothing that pointed to an earlier date

than the Greek and Sassanian periods. The only exception is the cuneiform

inscription on the rock itself. Three years before, Major Rawlinson had

succeeded, as we have said, in obtaining paper casts of about two hundred

lines of this inscription. M. Flandin does not seem to have been aware of

this achievement, otherwise he would have been less willing to declare

that it is impossible to approach. After having ‘done all that was

possible,’ the two travellers went on to Kermanshah. M. Coste proceeded

to Sar-i-Pul-i-Zohab, where he copied a bas-relief, which was afterwards

found to be of Medic origin; and Flandin was left alone to accomplish the

task of copying the Sassanian inscriptions at Takht-i-Bostan.[172] After

eighteen days of solitude, he returned once more to Behistun in a more

resolute frame of mind. Upon this occasion he brought ladders to assist

him to scale the rock; but these turned out to be too short. He declared

that without a scaffolding made expressly for the purpose, it would be

impossible to accomplish his object, and even then he foresaw great

difficulties in its erection. As it was, he was without rope, or wood, or

workmen. He, however, made one last effort, and succeeded at some risk

in scrambling up to the ledge at the base of the tablet. He found the

inscriptions were even then beyond his reach, and it was impossible to

recede a sufficient distance to obtain a tolerable view. He ascertained

that they consisted of seven columns, each of ninety-nine lines, and

that there were also tablets above the figures.[173] It must be admitted

that the result was extremely unsatisfactory, considering the official

position of the explorer. He abandoned the enterprise and left the

honour to Major Rawlinson, who, as soon as political events permitted,

revisited the scene and completed the task he had already begun. Flandin

and Coste returned to Ispahan in August, and after a period of rest they

proceeded, early in October, to Murgab. Here they remained for two days.

M. Flandin hesitates to accept the identification of the ruins with those

of Pasargadae, and prefers Fasa: an impression which, however, wears

off later, when he had visited that place.[174] He describes the ruins

of the principal palace at Murgab to consist of three pillars and a

column. ‘There are,’ he adds, ‘no means of obtaining sufficient data to

reconstruct the plan. Nothing is to be found except the foundations of

columns and pillars, which lead to the belief that it was formerly the

site of some important structure.’ Not more satisfactory is his notice

of the Terrace, which, he says, is the remains of an edifice of which it

is impossible to recognise the character. These descriptions scarcely

prepare us for the very elaborate plans that appear in the plates, upon

which the modern ideas of the place are chiefly based.[175] From Murgab

they proceeded to Naksh-i-Rustam, where they again allowed themselves to

be baffled by difficulties that they should certainly not have treated

as insuperable. They observed the long inscription on one of the tombs,

which they made no effort to copy, because it happened to be in a

position which they considered inaccessible. They reconciled themselves

to the omission the more easily on account of its mutilated condition,

which they thought would defy the perseverance of the decipherer;

otherwise indeed it might be found to record ‘the life of the illustrious

dead intombed within.’[176] Less than two years after they had left,

this very inscription was copied by the Dane Westergaard; and in 1843,

or seven years before Flandin published his book, it had been deciphered

by Lassen, who found that it declared the tomb on which it was inscribed

to be that of Darius Hystaspes. From their quarters at Husseinabad they

visited various objects of archæological interest, and made drawings and

plans of them. They finally removed their camp to Persepolis on October

25, and remained there to December 8. During that period of forty-three

days they made upwards of a hundred magnificent drawings of the place,

which will always remain a striking proof of the industry no less than

the talent of the two artists. The plates include highly-finished

pictures of the Terrace and surrounding country taken from various points

of view; admirable drawings of the different buildings, and of all the

numerous bas-reliefs they contain; ground plans of the platform and of

each of the principal edifices; besides copies of all the inscriptions.

The work is farther enlivened by a few pictures of Persepolis before it

fell into decay, restored according to the imagination of the ingenious

artists. The scale upon which this work is executed may be judged

from the number of plates devoted to the more important objects. The

sculptured staircase fills no less than twenty-two; the Palace of Xerxes

and the Hall of the Hundred Columns occupy twelve each; while sixteen

plates are appropriated to inscriptions.

There can be no doubt of the high artistic merit of these drawings;

but it must have been impossible within the time to complete them upon

the spot; and they have no doubt suffered in accuracy by subsequent

elaboration. Sir James Fergusson indeed goes so far as to declare that

they cannot be relied upon to decide any matter requiring minute accuracy

of detail, and he points out several ‘of their many mistakes.’[177] It

may be doubted also how far their plans and measurements are absolutely

trustworthy. There is certainly the most surprising and singular contrast

between the doubt and hesitation expressed in the text and the confidence

and minute execution displayed in the plates.[178] The surveys indeed

may be due chiefly to M. Coste: and it is possible he may not have

communicated all the results of his investigations to his volatile

companion. While the latter despairs of detecting the plan of the edifice

at Murgab, or those of the Palaces of Darius and Ochus at Persepolis, we

find all three set down with the utmost precision upon the plans; and

while the one traveller declares that all the tombs at Naksh-i-Rustam

contain accommodation for an equal number of bodies,[179] M. Coste

was quietly making the plans that refute this statement. It cannot be

admitted that the combined work possesses any exceptional authority, or

that it suffices to set at rest the many doubtful points that have arisen

with reference to these ruins. So far from its having superseded the more

careful labours of Porter, it is entirely deficient in the minute and

accurate verbal description in which that writer excels.

The copies of the inscriptions made by the two explorers have received

the praise of M. Burnouf, and they are certainly wonderful productions,

especially when it is considered that neither appears to have had the

smallest knowledge of the cuneiform writing. If they had been able to

face the perils of Behistun or the difficulties of Naksh-i-Rustam, they

might still have anticipated the work of Rawlinson and Westergaard.

At Persepolis itself there was little that was now left for them to

accomplish. They appear to have been the first in point of time to make

a serviceable copy of the inscriptions over the Porch; Rich, it will

be recollected, was forced to abandon them to his Seyid, who failed in

the attempt. But this inscription was first published by Westergaard,

although his copy was made two years after that of Flandin. Flandin

seems, however, to have been the first to publish the inscription of

Artaxerxes Ochus from the west stairs of the Palace of Darius; but the

same inscription occurs also on the Palace of Ochus, and this was already

well known through the copy made by Rich. MM. Flandin and Coste have

not therefore made any contribution to our knowledge of the cuneiform

inscriptions. They, however, carried on somewhat extensive excavations.

They employed labourers to clear away the rubbish that had accumulated

in the palaces and which obscured the lower portion of the bas-reliefs.

By this means they brought to light a Sassanian relief at Naksh-i-Rustam

which had hitherto been unobserved, and which they found to be covered

with a Pehlevi inscription.[180] At Persepolis they claim to have

discovered eight entirely new bas-reliefs, besides disclosing the lower

portion of many others.[181] They dug up the statue of a bull near the

east stairs of the Palace of Xerxes, the only monument _en ronde_ which

has been found among the ruins.[182] They disclosed the head of a bull

among the _débris_ of the Porch, and finally set at rest the long debated

question as to the nature of the colossal animals. They completed the

portraiture of the guards on the façade of the sculptured staircase,

by raising the fallen masonry.[183] They were the first to clear away

the rubbish that had collected in the Palace of Darius, and to disclose

the bases of the columns that had supported the roof.[184] They settled

the nature of the monster with which the king is seen to struggle, by

unearthing its tail, which proved to be that of a scorpion.[185] They

were the first also to show the correct position and number of the

columns in the Portico of the Palace of Xerxes. They were also the

first to show the former existence of columns in the South-Eastern

Edifice.[186] Fragments of columns strewn on the ground within the Hall

of the Hundred Columns had been remarked by Kaempfer and by Niebuhr;

but they do not seem to have been observed by Flandin and Coste. It was

due to their laborious excavations that it was ascertained, after six

and a half feet of rubbish had been cleared away, that the edifice had

originally contained ten rows of columns of ten in each in the centre,

and two rows of eight in the Portico.[187]

In the beginning of the year 1841, they found themselves at Fasa, and

speedily recognised that it could not compete with Murgab as the

representative of Pasargadae. On their return to Shiraz, they ascertained

that Baron de Bode, an attaché to the Russian embassy, had just left

for Susa. When at Kermanshah, in the preceding summer, they abandoned

an attempt to reach that place from the south through the defiles of

Luristan. Such an enterprise would probably not have been very easy even

to travellers much better suited to deal with the turbulent tribes; and

it would most likely have proved fatal to one of M. Flandin’s excitable

temperament. But now an opportunity offered to follow close upon the

steps of a traveller protected by the authority of a diplomatic mission,

and along a route that circumstances rendered at that time exceptionally

secure.[188] M. Flandin finds some difficulty in excusing his neglect to

perform a journey which his commission seemed to demand. He tells us that

his purse had begun to feel the strain of eight months’ travel, although

we find it was still sufficient to support the cost of another year in

safer and pleasanter quarters.[189] Having abandoned this project, they

returned for a few days to Persepolis, in order to obtain a few plaster

casts of the more striking bas-reliefs. They reached Teheran on March

20, where they met Baron de Bode, who had just returned from Susa. The

inspection of the antiquities he had collected ‘in that country, the

object of our regrets,’ must have excited some mortifying reflections;

though they gladly inferred from the drawings that the place ‘offered

in reality little of interest.’[190] The excavations of Mr. Loftus, ten

years later, dispelled this flattering illusion. After a month spent

in the enjoyment of royal favour, they left Teheran (April 24), and

proceeded by Tabriz and Urmia to Bagdad, which they reached in July.

M. Flandin bade farewell to Persian territory after a free interchange

of blows with the people of the frontier village.[191] From Bagdad he

paid hurried visits to Hillah and Mosul; and left early in September for

Aleppo and Beyrout, where he embarked for France on December 1, 1841.

He revisited the East in 1843, in order to sketch the monuments

discovered by M. Botta at Khorsabad. In consequence of this employment,

the publication of the results of the Persian journey was greatly

delayed. The ‘Voyage en Perse’ was not even written till 1850, and it did

not appear till the following year.[192] The folio edition with plates

bears no date. A portion of the plates was used by Mr. Fergusson in 1850,

for his book on the Palaces of Nineveh and Persepolis, but they were

not available the year before.[193] They brought home two hundred and

fifty-four drawings and thirty-five copies of inscriptions, most of which

they profess to have executed on the spot;[194] and the collection forms

an extremely valuable addition to our knowledge of the antiquities of

Persia. M. Flandin was strongly of opinion that no individual enterprise

could hope to compete with the minuteness of research and the untiring

industry of an official like himself, who was charged with a Government

mission, and invested with the confidence of two academical bodies.[195]

A Government can indeed afford to publish a book no one can afford to

buy, but it seems unable to imbue its commissioners with the energy so

frequently displayed by private individuals. The lamentable failure of

Messrs. Flandin and Coste before the rock of Behistun and the tomb of

Darius; besides the serenity with which they abandoned even an attempt

to reach Susa, afford sufficient evidence of this. M. Coste is scarcely

even mentioned in the ‘Voyage’; but we see enough of M. Flandin to

recognise that he did not possess the qualities that make a successful

explorer. His narrative is interrupted and disfigured by puerile details

of personal adventure in which he evinces a complete absence of the

coolness, the nerve and the tact requisite for his task. He magnifies to

absurd proportions the risks to which he is exposed; he is constantly

involved in humiliating personal encounters with the people of the

country, in which he displays vastly more temper than courage. The reader

might be tempted to regard these conflicts with some complacency, if it

were not for the excruciating punishment with which the politeness of the

Persian authorities thought fit to visit his assailants.[196]

Very little more now remained to be done to illustrate all that is

necessary to know of these Persian ruins. The inscriptions had been

successfully recovered and many times copied. The Persian text had

been fully translated, and only a few obscure passages awaited farther

elucidation. Still the most careful accounts were found to conflict

on many points, and neither Porter nor his successors had removed the

discrepancies and contradictions that had been so long remarked.

After the lapse of many years, it was determined to appeal to the new

art of photography, in order to obtain a degree of accuracy that could

not be achieved by the pencil. The first to make the attempt was a

Mr. Ellis, but his negatives were entirely destroyed in the course of

the rough journey to the sea. At length Herr Stolze made another and

very successful effort.[197] He was attached to a German scientific

expedition, sent out to the East in 1874, under the direction of Dr.

Andreas, to observe the transit of Venus. Stolze spent some time

travelling over Persia, and visited among other places Persepolis and

Fasa in the winter of 1874; but his real work began in June 1878, a

season of the year when the heat is excessive, and when the process

of developing the negatives within a closed box involved actual

suffering. Notwithstanding these disadvantages he took upwards of three

hundred plates between the date of his arrival on June 16 and his

departure on July 3. He found the vertical sun of summer better suited

for photographing the inscriptions than the bas-reliefs, especially

those situated in the deep shade of the doorways. One of his greatest

achievements was the photogrammetric plan of Persepolis, which surpasses

any previous attempt to arrive at an accurate survey. It is said that no

fewer than three hundred and fifty plates were used in the construction

of the three metrical plans at the end of his second volume.[198]

After a few days spent at Murgab, he hastened back to cooler quarters.

His negatives were so carefully packed that they all reached Europe in

safety. Unfortunately, one case was opened at the London Custom House,

and the plates were replaced so loosely by the bungling official that

a few were cracked; but even these have been pieced together without

retaining much trace of their ill usage. In the course of his travels he

took no fewer than fourteen hundred negatives, and in the spring of 1879

he had the satisfaction to find himself at Berlin with his treasures. In

September 1881, he submitted a few of the completed photographs to the

Fifth Oriental Congress, and they sanctioned the publication of those

relating to the Achaemenian and Sassanian periods. The result was the

appearance, in 1882, of ‘Die Achaemenidischen Denkmäler von Persepolis,’

photographed by Stolze and edited by Noeldeke; and two more ponderous and

magnificent folios were thus added to the growing mass of inaccessible

lore. Persepolis alone occupies ninety-nine plates, and the scale on

which the work is executed may be judged from the devotion of twenty-one

views to the Palace of Darius, eighteen to the Palace of Xerxes, twelve

to the Hall of the Hundred Columns, and twelve to the Hall of Xerxes.

Nine plates (106-14) are devoted to Naksh-i-Rustam and eleven (127-37)

to Murgab. It is doubtful how far the photographic process will assist

the student of the inscriptions. Noeldeke fears it will be of little

value as regards the Pehlevi; and certainly little can be made out of the

cuneiform except by the constant and painful use of a powerful magnifying

glass. They may, however, be occasionally useful to decide disputed

points: as, for example, the photograph of the inscription on the Anta

of the Palace of Darius proves that the transcription of Westergaard

is correct, and that of Rich wrong (Plate XIII.). Another photograph

shows that the error in one of Niebuhr’s copies is due to a defect in

the original.[199] Elsewhere Niebuhr is shown to be even more careful

than Westergaard.[200] The photographs of the monuments and bas-reliefs

meet with a very varying measure of success. Some are so blurred and

indistinct that it is fortunate that they are each labelled in German,

French and English; otherwise we might doubt whether they are correctly

described.[201] Comparative success is reached more frequently, and

excellence occasionally. It is particularly unfortunate that the great

sculptured staircase has not been taken on a sufficiently large scale

to bring out the figures with distinctness (Pl. 77 ff.); Noeldeke is,

however, of opinion that it is the best view of them taken since Ouseley,

thus passing over both Porter and the two French artists, Texier and

Flandin. Among the most valuable views from Murgab are the two plates

showing the Tomb of Cyrus (Pl. 128-9). The series closes with what might

pass for a snowy mountain in Switzerland, but which is explained to be

fragments of a bas-relief at Pasargadae (Pl. 137). Noeldeke, like Texier,

fully believes in the destruction of some of the buildings by fire, and

he also considers that few of them were ever thoroughly completed; indeed

he attributes to that cause the absence of all traces of walls round

the Hall of Xerxes, or of a roof. He thinks there never were any more

columns than can now be identified, and that some even of these were left

unfinished. The same applies to the Entrance Porch; possibly the gates

on the North and South sides (which are supposed to have been part of

the general design) were never erected; nor the second pair of columns.

At the instigation of Dr. Andreas, a trench was dug into the Central

Mound, which had long been the object of so many conjectures, with the

disappointing result that it was found to contain nothing but cuttings

discarded by the masons.

Three years later, in 1881, these ruins were visited by M. Dieulafoy

and his wife, Madame Dieulafoy, who notwithstanding the disabilities of

her sex, has been appointed a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour and an

Officer of the Academy. The journey has resulted in the production of two

vast works: one an elaborate treatise on ‘L’Art antique de la Perse,’

in five volumes, petit in-folio, 1884, by Monsieur Dieulafoy; and a

single volume of massive proportions descriptive of their travels by the

valiant and industrious lady.[202] M. Dieulafoy is one of the best known

writers in France on architecture, and his opinions, though at times as

fanciful as those of M. Flandin, are always worthy of respect. Madame

Dieulafoy displayed marvellous pluck in the course of her adventures,

and extraordinary expansiveness in their relation. When the span of life

is lengthened to that enjoyed by the patriarchs, there will be time to

study her works at leisure. One other traveller should be named who has

given an admirable account of Persepolis, and, if detached from its

cumbrous surroundings, one more adapted to the pressure of modern times.

Lord Curzon visited Persia in 1889-90 and he has devoted a chapter of

his Travels (chap. xxi. vol. ii.) to the subject. It is by far the best

description we know, and affords all the information that need be sought.

He frequently calls attention to the extraordinary contradictions to be

found in the various writings on the subject, which, from the days of

Porter, it has been the constant aim of successive travellers to remove.

In mere matters of opinion there is, of course, no prospect of reaching

unanimity in this or in any other subject. Whether the great halls were

walled and roofed, or protected only by falling curtains; whether the

palaces were ever occupied as residences or reserved only for state

ceremonial, and a host of other disputed questions, will remain points of

controversy. Each successive traveller with pretensions to originality

to establish will continue to put forward new theories, and he will

illustrate the beauty of his imagination by elaborate drawings of his

conjectural restorations. These are inevitable failings of humanity and

must be treated with toleration; but it is different when mere questions

of fact are involved. After three centuries of travellers to Persepolis,

we have still to reiterate the desire of Fergusson that some one may yet

be found ‘who will go there with his eyes open, which does not seem yet

to have been the case.’[203] Although the sun itself has been summoned

to share in the task, even still there is a conflict of evidence as to

the number of windows in the Hall of the Hundred Columns, as to the

number and position of the columns in the Palace of Darius, and many

other points too tedious to mention. There may indeed be more important

questions in the world awaiting solution than even the exact construction

of a Persepolitan palace, but it is irritating to find, notwithstanding

our painful quest, that Truth evades our grasp in this as in weightier

matters.

Persepolis was fully known and its inscriptions translated before any

attempt was made to explore the site of Susa. Major Rennell was among the

first to identify it with Shus, about fifteen miles S.W. of Dizful.[204]

The place was visited in 1810 by Captains Kinneir and Monteith, who

were attached to the mission of Sir John Malcolm.[205] The former

describes the ruins as lying about seven or eight miles to the west of

Dizful and not unlike those of Babylon. He describes it as consisting

of a succession of mounds covered with fragments of bricks and coloured

tiles extending over nearly twelve miles. Two mounds attracted special

attention. The first rises to a height of a hundred feet and is about

a mile in circumference. At its base is the reputed Tomb of Daniel, a

building that appears comparatively modern. The other mound is not quite

so high, but it is nearly two miles in circumference. They are composed

of a mixture of brick and clay, with irregular layers of brick and mortar

five or six feet thick to serve as a prop. Large blocks of marble covered

with hieroglyphics were reported to be occasionally discovered by the

Arabs.[206] One of these—the famous ‘black stone’—was seen by Captain

Monteith near the Tomb of Daniel, where it had recently been rolled down

from the summit of the Citadel Hill. It was not more than twenty-two

inches long and twelve broad, but it had a cuneiform inscription on one

side, and various sacred emblems represented upon the other. He made

a sketch of it and might then have purchased it at a moderate price;

but, though not large, it was found impossible at that time to remove

it. Shortly afterwards two other Englishmen—the unfortunate Grant and

Fotheringham—offered seventy pounds for it, but their intention to take

it with them on their return was frustrated by their murder.[207] The

value set upon it by the foreigners raised it in the estimation of the

natives to such a height that the subsequent effort of Mr. Gordon to get

possession of it utterly failed (1812).[208] It was already invested

with the mysterious virtue of a talisman, and its loss, it was thought,

would involve the country in disaster. To secure its retention resort was

had to the singular expedient of blowing it into a hundred fragments by

gunpowder. The destruction, however, was not complete, and the fragments

were afterwards carefully collected, and secretly built into a pillar in

the Tomb of Daniel, where they now are. In 1836 Rawlinson was able to

pass two days amid the ruins in the course of his march from Zohab to

Shuster. His visit, he thought, had enabled him to ‘unravel the mystery

of the two rivers Eulaeus and Choaspes.’ He heard that the ‘black stone’

had been blown to pieces, but he was evidently not informed that the

fragments were collected and were then in the Tomb of Daniel. He was

rewarded, however, by the discovery of a broken obelisk with ‘a very

perfect inscription of thirty-three lines,’ which was afterwards found to

be written in Old Susian.[209] Five years later, Mr. Layard penetrated

into the tomb disguised in Arab dress, and was told by a dervish that the

precious inscription was buried there. In the outer court he was shown

one or two small capitals and other vestiges of columns that had fallen

from the mound; and also the fragment of a slab with a few cuneiform

characters almost obliterated. The mound appeared to him little inferior

in size to the Mujelibi, and he found and copied an inscription from a

marble slab nine feet long by two feet six inches broad.[210] It was

during this visit to Persia that he went to Malamir, in the valley of the

Upper Karun, south-east of Susa, where he copied two long inscriptions,

in a dialect of the Susian, one of thirty-six lines and the other

of twenty-four, and made drawings of the singular bas-reliefs which

accompany them.[211]

The first information of importance concerning Susa comes, however, from

Mr. Loftus. He was attached as geologist to Sir W. F. Williams’s mission

for the delimitation of the Turkish and Persian frontier, between 1849

and 1852. His first visit to Susa was made in May 1850. The ruins, he

says, cover an area of about 3½ miles in circumference, within which four

separate mounds are distinctly marked. The loftiest he estimated at about

2,850 feet round the summit, and it had evidently been the citadel.[212]

To the north is a larger mound at a lower elevation, and here it was

that he was rewarded by the discovery of the ancient palace. To the east

of these is another, which he calls the Great Platform; it covers sixty

acres, and does not exceed seventy feet in height. Beyond it, still

farther eastward, may be discerned some remains that indicate the place

where the city itself stood (No. 4 on plan).

The excavations were begun in 1851 and at first without decisive result.

Three trenches were ‘dug into the citadel mound to the depth of nineteen

feet, but failed to discover anything except portions of a brick

pavement, fragments of moulded composition-bricks stamped with cuneiform

and covered with green glaze.’[213]

It was not till the following year that Mr. Loftus succeeded in

excavating a building almost exactly similar to the Columnar Edifice at

Persepolis. He determined the position of twenty-one bases of the central

group; two bases in each row of the eastern colonnade, and three of the

western. On the north he found three bases, all in the inner row, and

it is still doubtful if there ever was a second row on this side.[214]

He ascertained that the building consisted, as at Persepolis, of a

central square of thirty-six columns, surrounded on three sides by a

colonnade, and we are indebted to him for the measurements. His opinion

is that the central group was roofed, but not enclosed by a wall, and

the space between it and the colonnades was open.[215] He searched in

vain for the traces of walls such as Fergusson suggested had existed

at Persepolis; and was the more convinced that none had ever existed

because he found distinct traces of foundations elsewhere. He brought

to light a trilingual inscription, repeated four times on the bases of

the columns, which were found to have been written by Artaxerxes Mnemon

(Inscr. S). They are of more than usual interest, for the King traces

his genealogy back to Hystaspes, and confirms thereby the statement of

Herodotus. He states also that he built the hall, or, as he calls it, the

Apadana, on the site of an earlier edifice erected by the great Darius,

and afterwards destroyed by fire during the reign of Artaxerxes I. He

likewise invokes Mithra and Anahita for the first time side by side with

Ormuzd as tutelary deities. Another evidence of degeneracy is seen in the

corruption of the language, which exhibits several grammatical solecisms.

Another short trilingual legend of the same king was found round a

column in a different part of the mound, and several detached bricks and

vases with the names of Darius and Xerxes, but no other trilinguals of

importance. On the other hand, the long inscription in thirty-three lines

found by Rawlinson on the Citadel Hill, and the two inscriptions found

by Layard at Malamir, gave rise to fresh difficulties. It was recognised

that the writing was different from any yet known; and the perplexity

was heightened when it was farther observed that they differed from one

another. Here, then, were two new methods of writing, and possibly two

new languages added to those already in hand; and there seemed to be no

end to the task imposed on the cuneiform student. For some time little

effort was made to grapple with these new problems. The script found on

the Citadel Hill received the provisional name of ‘Old Susian,’ and many

other specimens of it gradually accumulated. Subsequent investigations

have shown that the writing and language found at Susa and Malamir are

related to those in the second column of the trilingual inscriptions.

It is now ascertained that the Old Susian is the most ancient form; and

that the script and language of the second column descends from it,

through the medium of the script and language found at Malamir. The

Old Susian inscriptions were translated by Oppert in 1876, and those

of Malamir by Professor Sayce in 1885. These documents were generally

referred to kings contemporary with Sargon and Sennacherib, though others

subsequently found were attributed to the fourteenth century B.C. Still

later discoveries have proved that the Old Susian was in use at least as

early as B.C. 3000. The origin of the ‘New Susian’ of the second column

has thus been carried back to a great antiquity; and the existence of a

very ancient population in Elam, speaking a Scythic language has been

established. The relation between the Scythic of Elam and the Scythic of

Southern Babylonia has not yet, we believe, been universally admitted.

There are powerful interests at work to dwarf or deny the extension and

influence of the Turanian races, both in Elam and in Babylonia, and till

these have been surmounted, it will be difficult to estimate correctly

the exact state of the evidence.

It was not till thirty-three years had elapsed from the date of Mr.

Loftus’s discoveries that Susa was again visited. Upon this occasion

(1885) the enterprising traveller was M. Dieulafoy, whom we have already

mentioned, and it is to these two travellers that we owe nearly all

we know of its Achaemenian remains. Mr. Loftus must always enjoy the

honour of being the first to reconstruct the Columnar Hall, and it was

he also through whom the two inscriptions of Artaxerxes Mnemon became

first known. M. Dieulafoy, on the other hand, has largely increased our

knowledge of Persian art by the discovery of the enamelled friezes. The

service he has rendered towards the reconstruction of the buildings is

more problematical, for a large portion of it depends upon the justness

of the imaginative faculty, which is never a very sure guide in such

matters. He found three or four bases in the central cluster of the

Hall not previously excavated by Loftus; but they add nothing to our

knowledge of its construction, which the earlier traveller had already

fully determined. M. Dieulafoy’s most successful work was achieved on

the occasion of his second visit to Susa, in 1885. At first it was

difficult to collect workmen, but a few deserters from the army were

attracted, when it became known that the pay offered was about equal to

that of their colonel. Before the end of the month nearly three hundred

men were collected, and excavations were energetically pursued upon

each of the three hills. A double-headed bull, broken into convenient

fragments, was found in the eastern colonnade of the great Hall, and the

pavement of a terrace on the south was reached.[216] At length (March

21), large quantities of bricks and enamelled tiles were found which,

when put together, formed various devices, men and animals of gigantic

size, triangles of alternate blue, green and white, palm leaves and other

decorative designs, evidently parts of a frieze.[217] The brilliant

colours were marvellously preserved from having lain so long face

downwards. Soon after, the base of a column, signed by Artaxerxes Mnemon,

was found in the larger mound. Meanwhile Madame Dieulafoy supervised the

collection of the enamels, and as they were pieced together the floor

of her tent was gradually enlivened by the apparition of a magnificent

lion set in blue turquoise.[218] Numerous repetitions of the same device

were found, indicating a procession of these majestic animals. A few

cuneiform letters were also met, tinted with blue. The enamels had

clearly fallen from a great height, and had formed the decoration of the

upper portion of a wall. It was evident also that the building they came

from had been preceded by a still more ancient edifice to which some of

the bricks had belonged.[219] Almost as interesting was the discovery

close to their camp on the south side of the Apadana of the parapet of a

staircase richly ornamented with yellow and blue lotus flowers, set in a

rich green foundation.[220] The excavations conducted at two points of

the Citadel Hill had as yet proved unproductive. They had occupied fifty

men constantly for two months, and had only resulted in the discovery

of a few bricks with Susian texts, and some fragments of cut stone. Not

much more success had rewarded their attack upon the large mound to

the east. Here little was found except immense walls of crude brick and

the remains of a cemetery of Parthian times. Farther search had now,

however, to be postponed on account of the approach of the hot weather.

On April 28 work was suspended and the treasures packed. Fifty-five cases

were despatched, containing the lion frieze and the decoration of the

stairs. They were, however, seized at the Turkish frontier, and all the

attempts of M. Dieulafoy to smuggle them on board a French steamer were

frustrated. Fortunately, the head of the lion and many small objects

were hidden away in the personal luggage and thus escaped detention.

The travellers got back to France in July, and were then informed that

the Shah had revoked the firman and would not permit them to return. It

appears that the Mollahs at Dizful had discovered that the torrential

rains and threatening clouds that had lately visited the country were due

to the presence of the foreigners so near the holy Tomb of Daniel. The

infidels had disturbed the resting-places of the faithful and removed

the talismans buried by the prophets for the protection of Susiana. It

was abundantly proved that their unholy presence was always accompanied

by signs of divine wrath and followed by terrible plagues. After much

negotiation, however, leave to return was obtained, on condition that

the French Government would waive the claim to indemnity if, as seemed

probable, their agents should perish in their forthcoming visit. This

singular condition was subsequently modified, and while the Shah

disclaimed all responsibility for the safety of the mission, he renewed

the firman for a limited time.[221] It was perhaps partly in consequence

of these negotiations, and partly to stimulate the Turkish Government

to surrender the fifty-five cases still in their possession, that the

travellers re-appeared in the Persian Gulf on board a French man-of-war,

which had not been seen in those waters for three years. On their way

they stopped at Muscat, and the officers were duly entertained at the

Lawn Tennis Club by the ubiquitous English.[222]

M. Dieulafoy resumed operations at Susa on December 13, 1885. The firman

was to expire on April 1, and their funds were now reduced to 15,000

francs.[223] They accordingly determined to abandon the hope of a

thorough investigation and to content themselves with the humbler task

of filling the Museum. They now concentrated all their efforts on the

Palace Hill: by the end of the year they had come upon the foundation

of the Palace of Darius, which had been buried beneath the ruins of

the later Palace of Artaxerxes. At this depth they made their second

great discovery of enamelled tiles, bearing the design of the archers,

an ornament attached to an earlier structure. It was, however, found

sixty metres from the Apadana and could not, therefore, have been a

portion of the decoration of the palace.[224] At a little distance, in

the plain, they came upon a small Achaemenian building which Dieulafoy

declared to be a covered fire temple.[225] By the middle of February the

exhausted state of their finances compelled them to dismiss a hundred

of their workmen. The clearance of the palace, however, continued.

Several more bases were found, and another double bull, which was

shattered into portable form by a stroke from the powerful arm of the

lady Chevalier.[226] A sketch was also completed of the fortification

for two-thirds of its circumference, a work that produces a startling

effect upon the reader who looks at Plate 2. Little now remained but

the task of collecting their treasures. The process of packing and

superintending the removal of such weighty objects occupied the rest of

their time, and when they left, at the end of March, they brought away

three hundred and twenty-seven cases and forty-five tons of baggage. When

the difficult journey to the coast was successfully overcome, they found

a man-of-war ready to transport them safely back to France. They had

acquired inestimable archæological riches, which are now to be seen among

the precious collections of the Louvre. These remains of Achaemenian

palaces, as they say, were not torn from some splendid ruin, but called

back to life from the hidden embrace of the grave; and they were acquired

at the peril of their lives. The Susian mission waged an almost hopeless

battle and came off victorious.[227] We fear, however, that a good deal

of M. Dieulafoy’s industry was misdirected. If a third plate were to be

prepared, marking only the ‘Restorations directes d’après les fouilles,’

and omitting the lines indicating the ‘Restorations calculées’ and the

‘Restitutions hypothétiques,’ the reader would be surprised to see how

little of the ‘Acropole de Suse’ remained. The great staircase ascending

to the Apadana or Columnar Edifice seems to be also entirely without

authority, and his most ingenious speculations are to a great extent

completely overthrown by the excavations of his successor.

Since the mission of M. Dieulafoy, a most advantageous concession has

been made to France. In 1895 the Shah accorded to that favoured nation

an exclusive right to carry on archæological excavations throughout the

whole of his dominions. This concession was extended in August 1900, and

was rendered perpetual, with the farther privilege of retaining all the

artistic objects discovered.[228] M. de Morgan, who had already acquired

a great reputation by his travels in Persia and his work in Egypt, was

appointed in 1897 to carry on the explorations, and with the protection

of a Persian garrison he began his operations in December of that year.

They are still in progress, but he has been able to publish an account of

his discoveries up to the spring of 1899. He has been described as the

Prince of Excavators; and it is indeed a most fortunate circumstance that

this work should have fallen into such unusually competent hands. He has

ample time at his disposal, and sufficient means to employ no less than

five hundred men at a time. He is satisfied to carry out his undertaking

in a patient and painstaking manner. He has the merit of keeping his

imaginative faculty under severe restraint, and we have little cause

to apprehend an apparition of the airy fancies that so many of his

predecessors have substituted for solid toil.

In his excavations on the site of the Apadana, he has been unable to

verify the existence of the three bases belonging to the inner row of the

northern colonnade. They were, however, among the first to be discovered

by Mr. Loftus, and as he did not belong to the inventive group of

travellers there can be no doubt they are to be found.[229] De Morgan is

of opinion that the northern colonnade could never have contained more

than a single row of columns, on account of the nature of the ground,

which, he says, would not admit of more. His careful excavations between

the central group and the lateral colonnades have proved the entire

absence of any foundations upon which a solid structure could rest. It

is clear, therefore, that the building could never have been enclosed

by brick walls, adorned, as so commonly supposed, by enamelled designs.

The theory supported by the Book of Esther that it was protected only by

hanging curtains gains, therefore, probability, though we do not see that

the supposition of its having been surrounded by wood is excluded. Below

the foundations of Artaxerxes he found farther remains of the earlier

edifice of Darius. Among these were the round base of a column and part

of a bull-headed capital.[230] Elsewhere, lying at a still greater

depth, he came upon a fluted column of a style entirely different from

those in the more modern edifice. His investigations on the southern

side have dispelled any hope of finding a sculptured staircase as at

Persepolis.[231]

His discoveries have contributed largely to widen the range of

information concerning the ancient civilisation of Susiana. He has found

upwards of eight hundred bricks bearing the inscriptions of various

Elamite kings and patesis written in the Old Susian language; some of

these are said to go back to B.C. 3000, or earlier, and a few of them are

written, according to M. de Morgan, in Sumerian and others in Semitic.

Besides bricks, a bronze bas-relief, and a few archaic tablets and a

stele with Susian inscriptions have also been discovered. Other objects

not of Elamite origin have been met which it is reasonable to conclude

were captured in the course of successful raids. They go back to the

earliest days of Babylonian history. One is an obelisk of a King of

Kish who lived, it is said, so far back as B.C. 3850.[232] Another is a

bas-relief of the famous Naram Sin carried off from Sippara; a third is

a brick of the same king, a possible indication that he was at one time

the suzerain of the country, and contributed to the embellishment of its

temples. In addition to these, many boundary stones have been found,

all relating to land in Chaldæa belonging to the late Cossaean period,

which prove how successful the Elamites continued to be in removing their

neighbours’ landmarks.[233]

Perhaps of greater interest is the glimpse these excavations have

afforded of a still more distant past. M. de Morgan found that the

Citadel Hill has reached its present altitude of one hundred and twenty

feet above the plain entirely by the accumulation of deposit left by

successive generations of settlers.