128 KERMANSHAH TO TEHERAN. 



being of the kind known as honeycomb. Beneath the 

 floor is an underground chamber in which are several 

 tombs. There was at one time a legend that from this 

 chamber there was an underground passage to Mecca, 

 but a member of the usual crowd which invariably 

 collects round any European who happens to stop to 

 inspect anything, taking pity, I suppose, on my cred- 

 ulity, assured me that this was not the case ! 



Beyond these objects of interest there are two 

 tablets with trilingual inscriptions known as Ganj- 

 nameh, bearing the names and titles of Darius and 

 Xerxes ; nor must I forget to mention an ancient stone 

 lion which stands near the Musallah, a mound on the 

 outskirts of the town, and is said to have been set up 

 by Belinas, a magician, as a talisman against cold, from 

 which the city suffers severely. I was unable to visit 

 the Ganjnameh myself, since, being situated high up on 

 the side of Mount Elvend, it was deep under snow ; but 

 according to the accounts of others there are two 

 square excavations in the face of an enormous block 

 of red granite, cut to the depth of a foot, about 5 feet 

 in breadth and much the same in height, each tablet 

 containing three columns of engraved arrow-headed 

 writing — a description which agrees with a photograph 

 which I have in my possession. 



Layard describes them as being of special interest, as 

 having first afforded the key to the decipherment of the 

 cuneiform writing ; but in this he is incorrect. The 

 first clue w^as given by the inscriptions of Persepolis, 

 accurate drawings of which were made by Niebuhr in 

 1765, and the first man to discover a method by Avhich 

 the inscriptions might be deciphered w^as the German 

 Grotefend, who presented a paper upon the subject to 

 the Gottingen Academy in 1802. By comparing the 

 inscriptions copied by Niebuhr, he deciphered the names 



