Page:Discovery and Decipherment of the Trilingual Cuneiform Inscriptions.djvu/158

Rh plans at the end of his second volume. After a few days spent at Murgab, he hastened back to cooler quarters. His negatives were so carefully packed that they all reached Europe in safety. Unfortunately, one case was opened at the London Custom House, and the plates were replaced so loosely by the bungling official that a few were cracked; but even these have been pieced together without retaining much trace of their ill usage. In the course of his travels he took no fewer than fourteen hundred negatives, and in the spring of 1879 he had the satisfaction to find himself at Berlin with his treasures. In September 1881, he submitted a few of the completed photographs to the Fifth Oriental Congress, and they sanctioned the publication of those relating to the Achaemenian and Sassanian periods. The result was the appearance, in 1882, of 'Die Achaemenischen Denkmäler von Persepolis,' photographed by Stolze and edited by Noeldeke; and two more ponderous and magnificent folios were thus added to the growing mass of inaccessible lore. Persepolis alone occupies ninety-nine plates, and the scale on which the work is executed may be judged from the devotion of twenty-one views to the Palace of Darius, eighteen to the Palace of Xerxes, twelve to the Hall of the Hundred Columns, and twelve to the Hall of Xerxes. Nine plates (106-14) are devoted to Naksh-i-Rustam and eleven (127- 37) to Murgab. It is doubtful how far the photo- graphic process will assist the student of the inscriptions. Noeldeke fears it will be of little value as regards the Pehlevi; and certainly little can be made out of the cuneiform except by the constant and painful use of a powerful magnifying glass. They may, however, be occasionally useful to decide disputed points: as, for example, the photograph of the inscription on the Anta