378 ANTIQUITY OP WRITING. 



mer, we arc (old, travelled into India, and was instructed in (lie 

 sciences by the Bramins, for which they w<-re at that time famed *. 

 The ancient Persians contemned riches, and were strangers to com- 

 merce ; they had no money amongst them, till after the conquest 

 of Lydia+. It appears by several inscriptions taken from the 

 ruins of the palace of Persepolis, which was built near seven hun- 

 dred years before the Christian oera, that the Persians sometimes 

 wrote in perpendicular columns, after the manner of the Chinese. 

 This mode of writing was first used upon the sttms of tre's, or 

 pillars, or obelisks. As for those simple characters found upon 

 the west side of the staircase at Persepolis, some authors Tiave sup- 

 posed them to be alphabetic; others, hieroglyphic; whilst others 

 have asserted them to be ante-diluvian : but our learned Dr. Hyde 

 pronounces them to have been mere whimsical ornaments, though 

 a late writer J supposes they may be fragments of Egyptian anti- 

 quity, taken by Cambyses from the spoils of Thebes In the second 

 volume of Niebuhr's Travels in Arabia, p. 25, several of the in- 

 scriptions at Pers< polis are engraven. This author says, that they 

 furnish three different alphabets, which have long been disused. 

 .They are certainly alphabetic, and not hieroglyphic or mere orna- 

 ments, as some writers have supposed. In fine, the learned seem 

 generally agreed, that the ancient Persians were later than many of 

 their neighbours in civilization : it was never pretended that they 

 were the inventors of letters . 



ARABIANS. 



THE Arabs have inhabited the country they at present possess, 

 for upwards of three thousand seven hundred years, without having 

 been intermixed with other nations, or being subjugated by any 

 foreign power. Their language must be very ancient. The two 

 principal dialects of it, were those spoken by the Hamyarites, and 

 other genuine Arabs ; and that of the Koerish, in which Mahammed 

 wrote the Koran. The first is stiled by the oriental writers, the 

 Arabic of Ilamyar ; and the other, the pure, or defecated. 



Univ. Hist. vol. v. p. 130. 

 + I!id. p. 1 :<l. 



J The author of Conjectural Observations pn Alphabetic Writing;. 

 I) See some remarks upon the old Persic letters in the Universal History, 

 vol. xviii. p. 399. 



