I 



10 Account of Mamallaipur. [No. '30. 



Mokatteb, and in other valleys near the mountains of Sinai, it 

 would seem that the art of " engraving" on rocks is in those 

 regions of great antiquity. Figures of men and animals ac- 

 company those inscriptions ; the characters of the latter are for 

 the most part unknown in the present day. These inscribed 

 rocks extend in one place for about 3 hours march, and are 

 mentioned by Burkhardt, Laborde and other travellers. 



At Be-Sitoon, near Kermansheh in Persia, is a stream 

 above whose fountain head is a projecting rock containing 

 the remains of an immense piece of sculpture. The great 

 antiquity of this interesting relic is evidenced by the succes- 

 sive mutilations it has suffered, to afford room for subsequent 

 inscriptions, as well as by the ordinary operations of time 

 upon both it and them. By Mr. Macdonald Kinnier this 

 bas-relief has been supposed identical with one spoken of 

 by Diodorus Siculus. on the authority of Ctesias ; who cer- 

 tainly had peculiar advantages for obtaining accurate infor- 

 mation connected with Persian tradition and history. He 

 says, " We are informed by Diodorus Siculus that Semiramis 

 in her march to Ecbatarfa, encamped near a mountain called 

 Bagistan in Media. She cut out a piece of the lower part of 

 the rock, "'and caused her image to be carved upon it, and a 

 hundred of her guards that were lanceteers, standing round 

 her ; she wrote likewise in Assyrian letters on the rock, that 

 Semiramis ascended from the plain to the top of the moun- 

 tain, by laying the packs and fardles of the beasts that fol- 

 lowed her one upon another." There are many points of re- 

 semblance between the mountain of Be-sitoon and that of 

 Bagistan described by Diodorus Siculus ; and supposing Mr. 

 Kinnier to be right in his conjectures, we have here the rem- 

 nants, for they are unfortunately no more, of a bas-relief ex- 

 ecuted at the lowest computation 800 years before the Chris- 

 tian Era. Throughout ancient Media and Persia sculptured 

 rocks, of various ages, repeatedly occur : a great many of 



