the cuneiform writing. Semiramis carried it into Armenia twenty centuries before the Christian era. Moreover, the Persians had been long acquainted with it, when (after the Medes) they invaded the fruitful plains of the Tigris and Euphrates. In their turn, they carried it for a time into Egypt, but it remained there confined to their own use, and never replaced the national writings. The dominion of the Persians in that country was, in fact, too temporary.

It was at Babylon, that the cuneiform inscriptions which exist amongst the ruins of the ancient edifices of this celebrated capital of Assyria, were first remarked by modern travellers; and the honour of their discovery is assigned to Father Emmanuel de Saint Albert, a Carmelite friar, who had long resided at Bagdad. The Europeans who, after him, visited these regions, observed and described the same inscriptions; and Pietro della Valle sent to the Jesuit Kircher at Rome, a brick from the ruins, bearing an inscription of this kind. The French consul at Bagdad, Beauchamp, wrote an account of these ruins, and sent to the illustrious Abbé Barthelemy many of the bricks, still preserved in the Cabinet des Médailles of the Bibliothèque Royale, and published by Millin*.

Other travellers, equally zealous, leaving Babylon to the south-east, penetrated as far as Persepolis, and recognized inscriptions among the ruins of this capital of the empire of Cyrus, similar (as far as the form of the signs is concerned) to those of Babylon.

In our own times, an unexpected discovery has opened a wider field to the conjectures of the learned, concerning these inscriptions. In 1827, a German traveller, under the protection of the French Government, penetrated into Kurdistan, and discovered on the shores of Lake Van, and in the vicinity

* Monumens Antiques Inédits, tom. ii., p. 263, 4to., 1806.—ED.

of the city of the same name, a considerable number of cuneiform inscriptions*, many of great extent. They are the evidences of the ancient Babylonian dominion in this part of Armenia, as stated in history; the Armenian chronicles having preserved to this city of Van the name of Shamiramgher, the city of Semiramis; and the recollections of the conquests of this great queen are themselves preserved in the majority of the inscriptions collected in this inhospitable region, where M. Schulz, the traveller by whom they had been discovered, was barbarously murdered by the natives in the midst of his researches.

An exposition of the different systems which have been formed for the interpretation of the cuneiform inscriptions, would require a large dissertation. Three different alphabets have been successively published; one by M. Grotefend, who first obtained any certain results on this difficult subject; another by the late M. Saint Martin, who suggested some new views; and the third by M. Bournouf +, who, after reviewing the opinions of his predecessors, proposed in his turn thirteen explanations of signs, differing from or completing those which they had proposed. The number of these characters extends to thirtyt.

These alphabets have hitherto, however, been applied only to the Persian inscriptions of Darius and Xerxes; those of Babylon and Lake Van are still unexamined§. Is the

* Engraved in the Journal Asiatique, 3me série, tom. ix.-ED. + Mémoire sur deux inscriptions cunéiformes trouvées près d'Hamadan. 4to., Par., 1836.-ED.

The number now is increased to thirty-nine, and their value rests upon a basis not to be shaken. See Major Rawlinson's interesting Memoir in the Journal of the Asiatic Society, vol. x., in which a comparative table is given of the progress made in the interpretation of the Persepolitan cuneiform inscriptions, according to the different systems proposed; see also the papers by Dr. Hincks, in the Trans. of Royal Irish Academy, vol. xxi., pt. i. ii. 4to., 1846-7.—ED.

§ Since this was written, the discoveries of numerous inscribed

idiom lost in which they are written? In that of the Persian kings, M. Bournouf has recognized a dialect of the ancient Zend, as spoken in Persia in the fifth century B.C., and supposed to be the origin of the modern Persian.

In the Plate, Nos. 1 and 2, is represented a double inscription from the city of Semiramis; in No. 3, an inscription on a vase in the Bibliothèque Royale, in which the name of Xerxes is found, both in the phonetic Egyptian hieroglyphics, and in the cuneiform characters; the Egyptian writing agreeing with the Persian, as first discovered by the younger Champollion. In Nos. 4, 5, 6, are the first three lines of a long inscription, probably in three languages, and containing also the name of Xerxes, brought from Lake Van. We abridge with regret the curious details which might be furnished by the subject before us.

PLATES XVI-XIX.

PERSIAN WRITING OF VARIOUS PERIODS.

THE AVESTA, IN ZEND; THE BUN-DEHESH, IN PEHLEVI; SASSANIAN INSCRIPTIONS, AND MODERN TEXTS.

THE great antiquity of the historical period in Persia sufficiently explains the cause of the number and remarkable variety of the subjects enumerated in the heading of the present Assyrian cuneiform monuments at Khorsabad and Nimroud, have recently opened a wider field for comparison and analysis; and it is confidently expected, that the successful labors of Major Rawlinson on the Babylonian portion of the Behistun inscription, will give the desired key to the explanation of the Assyrian monuments. The researches of M. Botta and Mr. Layard will, no doubt, contribute to, and confirm this result; nor should the paper of Professor Westergaard, on the Median species of cuneiform writing, (in the Mémoires des Antiquaires du Nord, 1844) be neglected.-ED.

article; and this variety sufficiently also indicates that of the systems of writing which were in use in the great empire of which Cyrus was one of the most remarkable personages.

The most learned researches into the annals of the ancient civilization of the East teach us, in respect to the empire of Iran, the primitive name of Persia, that it was at first subject to a Hindu dynasty, seated at Mahabad, in Media, which was thence called Mahabadian. This was succeeded by a dynasty of the Iranian race, more than twenty centuries before the Christian era, the Pishdadian race, termed Medes by the Greeks, of whom Kaïoumorz was the sovereign.

The Kayanides next followed, about the year 700 B.C., of whom Cyrus was the fourth king, about 560 B.C. His successors were destroyed by Alexander, in 330, and the first Persian empire ended with the conquests of the Macedonian hero.

In the year 312 B.C., the Greek Seleucidæ succeeded Alexander; in the year 250 the Arsacides drove away the successors of the first Seleucus, and maintained themselves on the Persian throne till the year 226 of the Christian era, although the imperial sceptre of Rome had then governed a part of Western Asia for more than three centuries. The Sassanides, who were of Iranian origin, took the place of the sons of Arsaces in A.D. 226, and in their turn they were expelled by the Mussulmen in A.D. 652.

Thus, ancient Persia, or Iran, was governed successively by Indian kings, Iranian kings, Greek kings, and Mussulman princes; it was temporarily usurped by the Indians, Assyrian Arabs, Turanians or Scythians, Greeks, and Turks; and perpetually affected, owing to its geographical position, between two conflicting systems of civilization of different origin, namely, the civilization of the Arab race, and that of the Hindu.

From such a succession of weighty influences, throughout

a period of twenty-five centuries, we have no reason to be astonished at the striking varieties exhibited by the successive states of the language and writing of Persia, or at discovering in its monuments and books the cuneiform character, the Zend, the Pehlevi, the Greek, the Sassanian, and the Arabic; or at finding among its most ancient monuments a writing proceeding from left to right, (the nail-headed,) as in the Indian system, or one which proceeds from right to left, (the Zend, &c.,) as in the Arabic.

It has been asked, which of these two systems belonged to the first civilization of Iran? but the synchronism of certain facts, very much opposed in their nature, demands a prudent reserve, before such a question is answered. In fact, the known languages of Iran on the east are either derived from, or are contemporary with, the Sanscrit; whilst those of Assyria, on the west of Iran, are derived from, or are contemporary with, the Arabic; and yet we find at Babylon, the capital of Assyria, and at Istakhar, the capital of ancient Persia, the same cuneiform system of writing, which is neither Indian nor Arabic.

But another question arises, whether this identity in the form of the signs of the Babylonian and Iranian writings, is also found in the idioms which were in use in these two countries at the same period? To resolve this doubt, we must first be able to read the cuneiform inscriptions of Babylon and Istakhar, or Persepolis, and thus discover whether at Babylon a dialect of Arabian origin was written with this character, at the same time that at Istakhar it was used to write a dialect of Hindu origin; or rather, whether India had penetrated as far as Babylon, through the influence of the Persian dynasty of the Mahabadians, or by means of the temporary possession of Assyria by the Persians, and if these Babylonian inscriptions ought to be studied by the assistance of a Sanscrit dialect, like those of Istakhar, and,