418 
CUNEIFORM CHARACTERS. 
till within these fifty years, this singular style of writing was 
supposed to be confined entirely to the ancient Persians, and 
only now to be found at Persepolis. But the researches of recent 
travellers have discovered it much more widely diffused; and 
that Assyria, rather than Persia, might be deemed its parent 
land. Inscriptions in this character have been traced in or near 
most of the great cities of that oldest empire of the East; some¬ 
times on the sides of mountains and monuments, as at Ecbatana, 
Nakshi-Roustam, and Persepolis ; at others buried in the earth, 
as on the bricks of Babylon and Nineveh. Persia and Media 
were long subject to the ancient Assyrian empire, planted at 
Babylon and Nineveh by the builder of the tower of Babel ; and 
as this peculiar style of writing is found in all these countries, 
we cannot but suppose it the primeval character of the oldest 
nations in the world. Nay, since we have discovered it on the 
very bricks which construct the tower of Babel itself, which the 
most authentic evidence testifies to have been erected when 
“ the whole earth was of one speech,” we might not be extrava¬ 
gant in believing these characters to have been used before the 
flood. The ruins of Babylon produce numerous specimens, on 
bricks, cylinders, and marbles. Mr. Rich has discovered some 
particularly curious ; and one is a large cylindrical mass of baked 
clay, written thickly all over, similar in every way to a fragment 
I found at the same place, and of which I present a copy, in the 
accompanying print. * 
The learned Grotefund, in his Appendix to Heeren, in speak¬ 
ing of this character, observes, that the elementary forms of the 
cuneiform writing are only two, the wedge and the angle, being 
totally devoid of curves. The general directions of the wedges, 
* See Plate LXXVIII. 
