Page:Discovery and Decipherment of the Trilingual Cuneiform Inscriptions.djvu/121

 painstaking and, upon the whole, accurate measurements he took of each monument, and in the clear and explanatory account he has given of the various subjects depicted on the bas-reliefs. The care with which his investigations were made was rewarded by the discovery of the remains of the second edifice at Murgab, which had escaped the notice of Morier and Ouseley. His visit to Naksh-i-Rustam resulted in the earliest drawings we possess upon an adequate scale of the façade of a tomb, and it was completed by a ground plan of the interior He expressed his conviction that the third tomb with the long cuneiform inscription was in all probability that of Darius, an opinion afterwards proved to be correct. The long debate as to the nature of the enigmatical animals on the Great Porch at Persepolis was still undecided. Even Mr. Morier adhered to the notion that they were horses, but Porter*s keen eve at once identified them with the bull, which subsequent discoveries at Nineveh has confirmed. He also showed that the capital of the columns was composed of two half bulls, but he does not seem to have recorded that they are elsewhere varied by half griffins.

Porter had no doubt that the Takht-i-Jamshid represented the ruins of the palaces of Persepolis, although the subject had not yet passed beyond the region of controversy. He inclines, however, to the compromise favoured by Niebuhr, and dwells upon the pontifical