ancient Inscriptions q/' Posepolis. 32t 



him, he read the group which follows the names of Xerxes 

 and Darius, Kschehioh, which begins with the same two cha- 

 racters as Kschearscha*. 



I shall not pursue any further the steps by which Grotefend 

 and St. Martin conceive that they have attained the meaning 

 of other groups, because I think them more doubtful; but 

 T will give here from the latter author a translation of the two 

 insci'iptions. The first (Niebuhr B.) runs thus: 



Darius, rex potens, rex regiim, rex deorum,Jilius Hystaspis 

 [Vyschtasp. SL M., Goschtaspah Gr.) generis illustris et 

 excellentissim us. 



The second (Niebuhr G.) 



Xerxes, rex potens, rex regum, Jilius regis Darii, generis 

 illustris. 



No attempt, I believe, has been made to decipher any of 

 the longer inscriptions which are found at Persepolis. M. St. 

 Martin has found one at Murghab near Persepolis, in which 

 the name of Ochus occurs ; and Grotefend reads that which 

 Morier found at the same place, and of which he has given a 

 copy, (Travels in 1810, &c. pi. xxix.) '■'■ Dominus Cyrus rex, 

 oibis rector." If this be correct, there can be no doubt that 

 Murghab is the ancient Pasargadae, built by Cyrus as a me- 

 morial of the victory by which dominion passed from the 

 Medes to the Persians, and where his tomb still remains, though 

 now appropriated by tradition to a Mahometan saint. Mur- 

 ghab lies N.E. from Persepolis; geographers have generally 

 placed Pasargadae at Feza, to the S. (see Sir J. Malcolm's 

 Map), although Pliny [H. N. vi. 26.), having mentioned Perse- 

 polis, says, " Inde ad orientem Magi obtinent Pasagardas ca- 

 stellum." Beyond the limits of Persia more than one monu- 

 ment has been found with cuneiform inscriptions; I have al- 

 ready mentioned the stone of Tak-kesra and the Babylonian 

 bricks ; some of the cylinders which are found in such num- 

 ])ers among the ruins of Babylon, and which, according to the 

 probable opinion of Landseer in his Saba?an Researches, were 

 the seals spoken of by Herodotus (i. 195.) as worn by every 

 Babylonian, have inscriptions in this character, not indeed 

 j)reciscly similar to the Persepolitan, but formed from the same 

 element. In Denon's Travels in Egypt, (pi. 66. of Peltier's 

 edition) is given a fragment of a stone found near Suez, on 

 which is the head of a Persian king, with an inscription in the 

 Persepolitan character, which Grotelend interprets of Darius; 

 but being a mere fragment, and the letters having been pro- 

 bably cut by aa Egyptian, who has placed them upside down, 

 * See Plate III. fig. 2. 



it 



