1801.] 
tracts the admiration of every traveller. 
Thefe rums are called by the Perfians 
Chehil-Minar ; or, The Forty Columns, 
although there are:always more.or lefs 
to be feen than that number. The fol- 
lowing travellers, Ives, Irwin, Figuerca, 
Pietro della Valle, Thevenot, Chardin, 
Gemelli, Le Bruyn, Kempfer, Gtter, 
Niebuhr, and Franklin, have actually 
vifited them; and among writers, the 
following—Hyde, Caylus, Murr, Langles, 
Herder, Witte, Wahl, Hageman, befides 
a number of others, have {poken of them ; 
and feveral have attempted to explain the 
copious {culptures which are ftill vifible 
on them. Bat it is chiefly the foreign 
and unufual charaéters and infcriptions 
joined to them which have Jong occupied 
the fkill and exercifed the penetration of 
many learned Orientalifts, who - have 
wearied themfelves in fruitlefs attempts 
to difcover the alphabet out of which they 
are compofed. 
Thefe remarkable infcriptions appear 
to be regular variations and compofitions 
of a right line, as Sir W. Jones well ob- 
ferves ; and of an angular figure. They 
have, likewife, a ftriking refemblance 
to nails, for which reafon the French 
writers commonly call them, carac- 
téres a cloux, or the nail-headed cha- 
racters. They are alfo denominated Per- 
fepolitan, upon the fuppofition that thefe 
columns once formed a part of the royal 
palace of the fovereigns of Perfia, called 
by the Greek writers Perfepolis. Among 
others, this opinion is advanced by the 
learned M. Heeflen, profeffor at Gottin- 
gen, in a work lately publifhed on that 
dubjecét ; an opinion, however, which Mr. 
Tychfen attempts to refute, who fuppofes 
the palace, the ruins of which {till remain, 
to have been built much later, by. the 
princes who fucceeded Alexander, and 
governed that country under the name of 
the Arfacides and Arfacide. Whether 
this be the cafe or not, or whether thefe 
yuins date from the time of the firft and 
- moft antient dynafty of Perfia, the Pifh- 
dadians, or whether, as others pretend, 
they were built by the famous Gemfhid, 
who is faid to have built the celebrated 
city of Iffahar, is not the objet of our 
prefent enquiry. It is more certain that 
the place of the infcriptions is.to this day 
called Iffahar, and alfo Tahti-Gemfhid, 
or the Throne of Gemfhid; and it is 
equally certain that the above-faid in- 
{criptions have been hitherto reckoned 
peculiarito thefe ruins ; at leaft it is the 
géneral opinion of the literati, that they 
Infeription on the Babylonian Bricks. 8 
-are only to be found on the marbles or 
gems dug up there, and not in any other 
part or province of Perfia. More recently, 
however, the curious difcovery has been 
made, ‘that the fame fort of characters are 
to be found, not only in the province of 
Fars, in Perfia, but that they are co- 
pioufly and ufually met with near the 
Euphrates, in’ Chaldea, amongft what 
are fuppofed to be the ruins of its antient 
capital, Babylon. ‘This fact was, in- 
deed, announced feveral years ago by M. 
Beauchamp, Correfpondent of the Royal 
Academy of Sciences at Paris, who, on 
his return from Bagdad, where he had 
refided  feveral_ yeais, brought to the 
learned Abbé Barthelemy: fpecimens of 
unknown characters, which he difcovered 
on the bricks, ftill remaining in great num- 
bers near Helleh, on the Euphrates, on 
the identical fpot: where, according to 
D’Anville, Major Rennel, and other geo- 
graphers, the anticnt Babylon was fituated. 
Befides thefe bricks with in{criptions, M, 
Beauchamp likewife found feveral folid 
cylinders, three inches in diameter, com- 
pofed of a white fubftance, and covered - 
with very {mall writing, refembling the 
infcriptions, of Perfepolis, as defcribed 
by Chardin; alfo a number of blue ftones 
with in{criptions engraved on them. M, 
Beauchamp’s correfpondence was tran{- 
lated from the French of the Journal des 
Sgavauns, publifhed in the year 1782, inte 
Englifh, and inferted in the European . 
Magazine for 1792. 
M. Michaux alfo, a French botanift, 
(the fame who has now again accompanied 
Captain Baudin in his voyage of difco- 
veries) during the time of his being at 
Bagdat procured and lately brought te 
Paris a fine infcription, which was tound 
in that neighbourhood, and which con- 
tained characters refembling the Perfepo- 
litan ones. Of this infcription, M. Mil- 
lin, the prefent keeper of the Cabinet of 
Antiquities, has procured a plafer catt 
to be made, which is one foot and a half 
long, and one foot broad, for the purpofe 
of fending copies for the infpeétion of the 
foreign literati; one of thefe is expected 
to arrive foon in London.. 
Our curiofity, however, is now {till 
further and fufficiently excited hy the 
twelve original bricks which have lately 
arrived in London, fent from Bagdad to 
the Eaft India Company, and which con- 
tain infcriptions perfectly according with 
the Perfepolitan ones, thus confirming M. 
Beauchamp’s difcovery. They are of 
two different kinds; one of thofe which 
Bz were 
