Page:Discovery and Decipherment of the Trilingual Cuneiform Inscriptions.djvu/175

 B.C. 6OOO. This early civilisation seems to have been swept away by the invasion of a people in a much less advanced condition, who occupied the country for a long period of time; it is not till these had disappeared and we ascend to a level of 12.95 metres below the surface that we come to the beginning of the Elamite deposit. It has a thickness of from eight to nine metres, which, according to our estimate, would require about five thousand years to form. It was in this stratum, between 4.50 and 12.95 metres below the surface that he made his principal discoveries. Here he came upon the walls of Elamite palaces and temples, which have enabled him to show that the method of decoration by means of enamelled brick of exquisite colour and design was extensively practised. The quantity of carbonised material leads to the conclusion that wood was largely employed in the construction of these edifices; and the remains of columns prove that the Persians derived their idea of columnar architecture direct from their predcessors. The inscriptions so recentlv found are still in the hands of Father Scheil, who is now engaged in the work of decipherment. They show, he says, the influence of Semitic speech in Elam at an early period, and the advocates of the antiquity of Semitic civilisation begin to hope they may still have occasion to rejoice.

Very few other inscriptions remain for us to notice. Before the end of the eighteenth century a vase of Xerxes was discovered in Egypt containing a trilingual inscription translated into Egyptian hieroglyphics. It was described by Caylus (after whom it was named), and was long the object of much learned curiosity (Inser. Qᵃ). Another inscription was found near Suez, in A.D. 1800, and published in the 'Travels of Denon,' in 1807. It