322 Rev. Jolm Kenrick on the 



racter resembling a, pair of compasses partly opened ( ^ ), but 

 with this exception, the letters are formed not by the junction 

 but the juxtaposition or supelposition of the arrowheaded 

 strokes, so that many of them occupy a large space. 



The travels of Chardin, Le Bruyn, and Kaempfer, towards 

 the close of the seventeenth century, had made known the mag- 

 nificence of the ruins of Tchilminar, and the inscriptions which 

 remain on various parts of this palace of the ancient kings of 

 Persia, But the travellers of that age seldom paid sufficient 

 attention to copying inscriptions, especially in characters which 

 they did not understand. It was not till after Niebuhr, on his 

 return I'rom Arabia and India, visited Persepolis, and published 

 his exact copies of the inscriptions there, that curiosity was 

 effectually excited, to discover the alphabet in which they were 

 written, and the language the sovuids of which they expressed. 

 No external aid was to be expected ; the Greek and Latin 

 writers never mention them ; the modern Persians know Perse- 

 polis only as the palace of their fabulous monarch Djemsheed, 

 and the repository of his countless treasures. Sir William 

 Ouseley, in his Oriental Collections (ii. 57.), has given, from 

 the MS. of a Mahometan author, what professes to be a Perse- 

 politan alphabet ; but it is the mere work of fancy, like several 

 other alphabets which the same MS. contains. 



The first author, as far as I am aware, who published any- 

 thing on this subject, was Professor O. G. Tychsen of Rostock, 

 in his Lucuhratio de Cuneatis Liscriptionibus Persepolitanis, 

 1798. He was followed in 1802 by Professor Miinter of Co- 

 penhagen, in a German work, entitled " An Attempt to de- 

 cipher the Cuneiform Inscriptions of Persepolis." Both these 

 authors proceeded with the caution which is necessary in so 

 difficult an undertaking; and if they made little progress, that 

 little was in a right direction. They ascertained that the in- 

 scriptions were alphabetical, that the words are divided by a 

 character placed obliquely ( "\ ), and that they are to be read 

 from left to right, like the Indian and European alphabets ; not 

 from right to left, like those of the Aramaean nations : they also 

 pointed out the probability that a frequently recurring group 

 of characters, which has since proved the key to the whole sy- 

 stem of writing, as well as to the language, must answer to the 

 word king. Professor Lichtenstein of Helmstadt made a much 

 bolder, and proportion ably unsuccessful attempt, in his Ten- 

 tamen PalccograpliicE Assyriacce^ 1803. Having persuaded 

 himself, from the supposed analogy of the Aramaean alphabets, 

 that the cuneiform inscriptions must be read from right to 

 left, and that the language must be nearly allied to the Chaldee 

 of the Targums, he proceeded to give a translation accord- 

 ingly. 



