324 Kev. John Kenrick on the 



I have already mentioned that Tychsen and Munter had 

 pointed out a group, which they conceived to stand for king, 

 but without deciding in what language. That such a title 

 should be found in the inscriptions was a pi-iori highly pro- 

 bable; they are always placed above or beside the two large 

 figures which are seen on the walls of Persepolis ; and every 

 thing about these figures — their colossal size, compared with 

 other human figures, the flyflap and umbrella, their sitting pos- 

 ture, while others are standing or bowing — all conspire to 

 prove this. Another circumstance led to the same conclusion. 

 At Nakshi Rustam near Persepolis, and at Kirmanshah, are 

 figures of the kings of the Sassanian or second Parthian dy- 

 nasty, with inscriptions, which being accompanied by Greek 

 translations were readily deciphered by M. de Sa^y [Memoire 

 sw diverses Antiquites de Perse, Paris, 1793), and were found 

 to consist of the names of the sovereigns and their fathers, 

 along with the title king of kings, and some other of those 

 laudatory epithets in which the sovereigns of the East have in 

 all ages delighted. The Acliaemenidae, we know, affected 

 the title kiiig of kings as much as their successors, and there- 

 fore it was antecedently probable that an inscription, evi- 

 dently relating to royal personages, should contain it. Now 

 in Niebuhr's inscription G, the group supposed to denote king 

 was immediately followed by the same group, with four ad- 

 ditional characters at the end, which were naturally supposed 

 to express the modifications of number and case, so that the 

 two together would be rex regiim. The same group occurs 

 yet a third time in the same inscription, with another very 

 slight modification at the end; and it could hardly be doubted 

 that this stood for regis. The word, therefore, which pre- 

 cedes this must be the proper name of a king: but this very 

 same word begins the other inscription B. Hence it was pro- 

 bable that the inscription G also began with the proper name 

 of the king, and that as the names of both occurred in it, it 

 declared their relation to each other. The Sussanidian in- 

 scriptions referred to before, declare whose son the monarch 

 was whose name they record, and the Persepolitan inscriptions 

 might be fairly presumed to do the same. 



But who were these kings ? Cyrus could not be one of them ; 

 for if he built any palace, it was at Pasargada^, not at Perse- 

 polis ; and Cambyses being his son, had they been the two kings 

 in the inscription the nameswould probably have begun with the 

 same letter, which is not the case. Cambyses, indeed, after his 

 conquest of Egypt, sent artists thence to build the palaces of 

 Susa and Persepolis [Diodorus Sic. i. 46.), but Cambyses was 

 succeeded by Smerdis the Magian ; and it is in the highest de- 

 gree improbable that he should have built a palace, during the 



year 



