Livonia, Muscovy, Tartary, Media, Persia, East India, Japan, and various other Countries." Some writers have gone so far as to assert that Struys was an impostor, who never left the flats and dykes of Holland; at any rate, he never saw Persepolis. His plate represents a marvellous' building, in which Turkish domes and classical columns are combined in a fashion never seen in any earthly structure; if he had even carefully read the reports of his contemporaries, he could never have made such a blunder as this.

The first complete book of travels in Persia is the production of Chardin, who was in the East between 1664 and 1677; in his famous work he not only published a full description of Chehel-minar, but also gave numerous plates, representing the ruins and some of the inscriptions. Chardin, however, would not accept the view of Silva y Figueroa and Della Valle that the remains are part of a palace of Darius; the spot would, he fancies, have been too much exposed to the heat to have been chosen as a dwelling-place; it was probably a temple, he thinks, especially as the bas-reliefs appear to have a religious character. As for the date of the edifice, he adopts the Persian tradition, which ascribes it to Jemsheed, accepting the latter as an historical personage, who must have lived about the time of Jacob. do the doctors differ! An equally remote antiquity was ascribed to Chehel-minar by Engelbert Kaempfer, a German physician and good Persian scholar, who returned from the East in 1694, and wrote a Latin work on Persia and other parts of Asia, in which he gives

So

plates of the ruins and of some of the inscriptions, to which he was the first to assign the name of cuneiform. He says:

"The southern wall [of the terrace]

exhibits an inscription

in strange characters, which have the form of small wedges (cuneoli), such as are not to be found in any other part of the world, except in the chambers of the same palace; nor can they be understood at present by any human being."

An illustrious successor of Chardin and Kaempfer was the Dutchman Cornelis de Bruin, who started for the East in 1701, and on his return gave to the world a full account of his journeys, including plates drawn by himself of Persepolis and of some of the inscriptions. De Bruin rejects the theories of the two former travellers on the origin of the remains, saying:

"I think we may conclude that the ruins of Chilminar are those of the famous palace of Persepolis which was destroyed by Alexander the Great."

In justice to our countrymen, a work must here be mentioned which was published in London in 1739. It is "Persepolis Illustrata," and contains twenty-one engravings on copper-plates of the palaces, accompanied by a description of them, and a lithographed account of the ancient authors who have written upon them. Considering the period, we must allow that the engravings do credit to the artists, but they are incomplete and full of mistakes in details. A fairly correct view is taken of the date of the buildings.

All former travellers were eclipsed by Niebuhr (1765), whose drawings and copies of the ruins and

inscriptions henceforward formed the material that scholars could best rely upon, and whose opinions upon all the subjects of which he treats are accurate and scholarly. No new information was supplied by the Count Ferrières Sauveboeuf (1782), who saw little to admire in the Achæmenian palace, or by Francklin, who journeyed from Bengal to Persia in 1786, and is inclined to accept the native legends about the origin of the remains. One remark of Francklin is worth. recording, as it has been partly justified by events :

"I should presume that until the ancient characters on the walls can be decyphered, no account of this place, either Grecian or Persian, or any other, can be depended upon as genuine or authentic, as they are unquestionably of an antiquity far beyond the records of any language now known in the world."

At this time, then, the end of the eighteenth century, the learned world of Europe possessed a fairly complete knowledge of the ruins of Persepolis and of the inscriptions upon them. The time was come for the decipherer to arise. Since this date other travellers. have visited Persia, and have corrected and added to the information already possessed. Sir Robert Ker Porter, especially, published copies of the inscriptions more correct even than those of Niebuhr; Morier, who accompanied the embassy of Sir Harford Jones, added much useful information; Sir William Ouseley, who accompanied his brother's embassy in 1810, through his great knowledge of Persian, supplied us with many interesting facts; and Buckingham must not be omitted. Then came the French expedition sent out

by Louis Philippe in 1839, during which MM. Flandin and Coste made the drawings which they published in their magnificent work. Lastly, M. Dieulafoy and Dr. Stolze have completed our knowledge by their works on the "Ancient Art of Persia" and on

CHAPTER III.

DECIPHERMENT OF THE OLD PERSIAN INSCRIPTIONS.

WHEN it was made known in Europe that inscriptions in an unknown character had been found at the ruins of Chehel-minar, identified by some with the ancient palace of the Achæmenian monarchs at Persepolis, much interest was excited among the learned, but the idea of interpreting the mysterious sentences was generally given up as hopeless. The native Persians believed that the writing on the walls contained the key which, if discovered, would open the door to the treasures buried beneath; for all ancient ruins are supposed in the East to contain hidden wealth. It must not be omitted, however, that some of the natives seem to have made attempts to decipher the writing, and to have preserved a correct notion of its nature and origin; for in a Persian manuscript, the contents of which were communicated by Lord Teignmouth to Sir William Ouseley in 1798, there is a list of cuneiform characters, many of them, it is true, of imaginary form, but all composed of wedges in different positions, and some actually found at Persepolis; and the modern Persian letters supposed to correspond to them are added beneath. The whole scheme is absolutely inaccurate,