Page:Discovery and Decipherment of the Trilingual Cuneiform Inscriptions.djvu/117

 He finally dispelled the erroneous idea that it was to be read from the top downwards; and he pointed out that certain of the characters found on bricks and gems from Babylon are never to be seen at Persepolis. His description of the ruins is painstaking, but the subject was now almost exhausted. He agrees with Niebuhr that the Hall of Xerxes was roofed, and also that it may have supported another stage. He went farther and suggested the comparison with the façade of the tombs, an idea which Fergusson afterwards turned to excellent account. But the chief value of his narrative consists in the full account he gives of Murgab and the illustrations that accompany it. Mandelslo and Morier had, as we have seen, both sketched the tomb; Ouseley adds a third sketch and by no means the best; but his other drawings are quite new, and from them the reader gains his first impressions of the plain of Murgab. They afford excellent views of the principal remains—the terrace, the square building, the palace, the caravansary, and the winged figure. He gives a satisfactory account of each, and when he comes to the palace, we find it described simply as 'a cluster of pillars and pilasters.' Notwithstanding all his prepossessions, he could not fail to be struck by the strange likeness of the Murgab tomb to the description given of the tomb of Cyrus, and he adds: 'I should not have hesitated to believe it the tomb of Cyrus had the discovery of it rewarded my researches in the vicinity of Pasa or Fasa, or if, as Mr. Morier says, its position had corresponded with the site of Passagardae.' As it was, he even ventured to express the opinion that it was a building of 'doubtful antiquity.' He visited it just an hour after Morier had made his sacrilegious entry; the startled female custodian had meanwhile