514 
HAREM OF JEMSHEED. 
other of fourteen. I copied them with all the accuracy in 
my power, being much impeded by the height and darkness of 
their position. One portion of the three upper lines, I could 
not make out in the least. Each inscription occupies a whole 
excavated tablet of about four feet in width. Should these 
copies meet the attention of the learned Mons. de Sacey, it may 
be hoped that, under his translation, they will cast some light 
upon the neighbouring object of a traveller’s pilgrimage, the 
Mountain of Sepulchres at Nakshi-Roustam. 
Previous to my visiting this latter interesting spot, I rode to 
what is called the Harem of Jemsheed; about a mile distant 
from my quarters, to the south-west. Close under the rocks which 
form the right side of the valley, rises a high piece of ground, 
at the foot of whose northern and waving slope, flows the Kur- 
aub, in a serpentine course, for nearly a mile. On one part of 
this minor hill we see a magnificent and solitary column, stand¬ 
ing pre-eminent over a crowd of ruins, which had evidently 
belonged to some very spacious and stately edifice. The height 
of the pillar, judging by its fallen companions, is twenty feet 
six inches ; the top of the shaft is finished by a capital in 
the form of the head, breast, and bent fore-legs of a bull, richly 
ornamented with collars and other trappings ; which bust-like 
portion of the animal, is united at the back to a corresponding 
bust of another bull; both joining just behind the shoulders ; 
but leaving a cavity between, of one foot and eight inches wide, 
sufficient to admit the end of a square beam of wood or stone, 
to connect the colonnade. Seven similar columns lying in a 
broken state on the ground near that which still stood 
erect, afforded me an opportunity to collect the proportions and 
measurement of the other. They are composed of a very dark 
