in the triple Inscriptions of the Persians, &c. 269 
that its date must fall within less than four centuries before the birth of 
Christ; as this improvement of Grecian orthography cannot be supposed to 
have come into use earlier in a remote country than in the very heart of 
Greece. With respect to the meaning of the three specimens, that of the first, 
and of the beginning of the second, is sufficiently obvious. The signification of 
the word at the end of the second is ascertained by the aid of a short bilingual 
inscription at Limyra, consisting of some Lycian lines, with a Greek translation 
subjoined. For the grounds of the meaning attributed to the two words of the 
third specimen, I must refer the reader to what Mr. Sharpe has stated on the 
subject. If his explanation of them be borne out by further investigation, the 
Lycian sigma must be considered as equivalent to sh ; whether this modification 
of its original Greek power, to suit the exigencies of their language, was effected 
by the Lycians of themselves, or through the help afforded by their observation 
of the elements of some Shemitic alphabet. The fourth specimen—selected 
from the latter part of the first line of an inscription at Antiphellus, which has the 
appearance of being by much the oldest of the collection,—is deemed, by the 
English author last mentioned, to be the name of Xerxes; and his opinion is 
supported, not only by the sound of the group of equivalent Greek letters, but 
also by the occurrence, near the commencement of the second line of the same 
inscription, of two groups similar to those constituting the third specimen, and 
which are translated by him of the king of kings, the well-known ancient title 
of the native sovereigns of Persia. Surely, then, we need not wonder at the 
Persians having derived their first alphabetic system chiefly from a Grecian source, 
when we find one obviously and confessedly sprung from that source employed 
by a nation in subjection to them, not long after the formation of their cuneiform 
alphabet, under the auspices of a Persian monarch, and again under those of a 
nobleman who appears, from the name of his father, to have been a Persian vice- 
roy.* But while the subjugated Lycians made no secret of the external origin 
* Two generals of the name ‘ Harpagus’ are mentioned by Herodotus, the one a Mede, in 
the service of Cyrus, who reduced the lower, or southern provinces of Asia Minor, and, among 
the rest, Lycia, under the dominion of his master (lib. i. cc. 176-7); and the other a Persian, 
who commanded an army in the province of Ionia, in the reign of Darius, the son of Hystaspes 
(lib. vi. c. 28). From the probable age of the inscription on the monument at Xanthus, the 
Harpagus, whose son appears to have, as governor of Lycia, erected this monument, cannot be 
