Page:Discovery and Decipherment of the Trilingual Cuneiform Inscriptions.djvu/164

Rh slab nine feet long by two feet six inches broad. It was during this visit to Persia that he went to Malamir, in the valley of the Upper Karun, south-east of Susa, where he copied two long inscriptions, in a dialect of the Susian, one of thirty-six lines and the other of twenty-four, and made drawings of the singular bas-reliefs which accompany them.

The first information of importance concerning Susa comes, however, from Mr. Loftus. He was attached as geologist to Sir W. F. Williams's mission for the delimitation of the Turkish and Persian frontier, between 1849 and 1852. His first visit to Susa was made in May 1850. The ruins, he says, cover an area of about 3½ miles in circumference, within which four separate mounds are distinctly marked. The loftiest he estimated at about 2,850 feet round the summit, and it had evidently been the citadel. To the north is a larger mound at a lower elevation, and here it was that he was rewarded by the discovery of the ancient palace. To the east of these is another, which he calls the Great Platform; it covers sixty acres, and does not exceed seventy feet in height. Beyond it, still farther eastward, may be discerned some remains that indicate the place where the city itself stood (No. 4 on plan).

The excavations were begun in 1851 and at first without decisive result. Three trenches were 'dug into the citadel mound to the depth of nineteen feet, but failed to discover anything except portions of a brick pavement, fragments of moulded composition-bricks stamped with cuneiform and covered with green glaze.

It was not till the following year that Mr. Loftus