KING BAHARAM. 
533 
while another band, that is tight, secures the garment round the 
waist. It is fastened in front, and very neatly tied. No waving 
ends decorate him, a proof that they are marks of high rank. 
What is yet visible of this figure measures, from the line of the 
earth that has encroached on it to the top of his head, five feet ten 
inches ; from the same embankment, to the summit of the crown 
of the king, seven feet eight inches and a half; and measuring 
what is seen of the lady, in the same way, it is seven feet five 
inches. The whole length of the excavation is nineteen feet. 
From the composition of this piece, even as it now appears, 
shewing a royal union, and, as its more perfect former state is 
exhibited in the drawing I saw at Shiraz, where a boy with a 
princely diadem completes the group, I find that it corresponds 
with a Sassanian silver coin in my possession. On that coin 
are the profiles of a king, a queen, and a boy. On the reverse, 
is a burning altar, supported by the same man and woman, the 
latter holding a ring in her right hand. From the Pelhivi 
legend which surrounds the coin, it is one of the Baharams, 
which is there written Vahraran. Comparing certain peculiar 
circumstances which marked the reign of Baharam the Fifth, 
surnamed Gour, with the design on the coin, and with the 
figures on this excavation, I should conclude that the king in 
both is Baharam the Fifth. I have mentioned him before, and 
in a melancholy account of his death in a gour-hunt, as one of 
the bravest and best princes of the Sassanian race ; or rather, in 
the words of Sir John Malcolm, “ that ever ruled Persia.” 
That author gives a curious anecdote respecting the love of this 
king towards his queen ; and the circumstances which raised her 
into such high estimation with him, as to induce him to thus 
commemorate her image with his own. Though the tale is very 
