ancient Iiiscriplions of Persepolis. 329 



tribute to men in early times. But the Persepolitan alphabet 

 brings back the original difficulty in all its force ; it has no ana- 

 logy whatever with the Egyptian system in any of its stages ; 

 it must have been formed by combination from a single ele- 

 mentary character; and though it exhibits the marks of rude- 

 ness in that prolixity which results from want of junction in 

 the strokes, still it is so copious as to have, according to M. St. 

 Martin, thirty-seven distinct characters, — a number greater 

 than that of any alphabet, except the Sanscrit, which has fifty- 

 two*. We must, therefore, admit that a similar result has been 

 attained by two processes wholly dissimilar, and that the culture 

 of the Medo- Persian empire was independent of that of Egypt. 

 It will be no small gain to history if this discovery should check 

 that disposition to deduce all science, art, and civilization, and 

 even all varieties of religious belief, in the most distant parts of 

 the ancient world, from some one centre, arbitrarily assumed, 

 which has produced so many volumes of historical romance. 



" Literas" says Pliny [H. N. vii. 57) " semper arbitror 

 Assyrias fuisse ; sed alii apud ^Egyptios a Mercurio, alii apud 

 Syros repertas volunt." By Assyrimi letters he probably means 

 the cuneiform characters : for a few lines further, having men- 

 tioned the inscriptions on the Babylonian bricks, he says, " Ex 

 quo apparet aeternum literarum usum." Now these have ex- 

 clusively, I believe, cuneiform inscriptions. Nor has any mo- 

 nument, older than the Sassanian dynasty, been discovered in 

 Media, Persia, or the countries on the Tigris and Euphrates, 

 in any character but this. These then were the 'Atruvpia. ypufj.- 

 fjiXTd, in which, as well as in Greek, Darius recorded on the 

 shores of the Bosporus the names of the nations whom he had 

 led (Herod, i. 87), and in which the dispatches of the Persian 

 envoy were written, whom the Athenians intercepted in the 

 Peloponnesian war; Thucyd. iv. 50. (raj iTrto-roAaj jaexayga- 



\J/ajX?VOJ Ix TWV ' A<T(TVqlMV yg«(U,jU,«Ttt)V OLViyVVXTOLv). 



Sir William Jones in his Discourse on Persia (As. Res. i. 

 196.) throws out a suspicion that the Persepolitan characters, 

 if alphabetical at all, would prove to have been used only by 

 the priests, and to have been intelligible only to them. The 

 priests of Egypt long laboured under a similar imputation of 

 having locked up knowledge from the people in hieroglyphics. 

 In both cases the charge is without foundation. We may be 

 sure that the kings of Persia would not choose a character' 

 legible only to priests, in which to record their own praises ; 

 and in no other sense was the character concealed from the 

 people, than that the arts of reading and writing were little 

 difiiised in those ages beyond the literary caste. 



• See Phil. Mag. vol. xi. p. 26."), 266.— Edit. 

 2^.S. Vol. 5. No. 29. M/j/1829. 2U The 



