Page:History of Art in Persia.djvu/47

 32 History of Art in Antiquity. intended for the iEolian, Ionian, and Dorian cities on the littosal, they were perhaps translated at Sardes and Daskylon. It was the same with writing. Here also the Persians derived the materials of the first system of signs they employed in noting down the sounds of their languages, from the inheritance left by the civilizations of the Euphrates valley (Fig. 3). Late comers into a worid where alphabetical principles were beginning to prevail, they adopted, from the time of Cyrus, a syllabary that may be com- pared with the Phoenician.^ Composed of thirty-six forms between vowels and consonants, it carries the process of decomposing its Kh»s-3m-fl-r-s-4. K h ■> s - ft « y« -th - i - ya. Va- at. r » l-^rrC< mKHf<nfT<^^ tt T<- W ka. Kh - s - ft - ya -th - i - ^. Kh - s • ft - ya - th - 1 - ya - a- j r7!^«lTTir ifT£II<^ ►TE<=« n r< ^ «TT«mr<- KT -n - ft-m.D-ft-ra-ya- va-h-u-s. Kh-s-a-ya-tn-l t^K<^<T<^T^f<W ?t<«tt TTf-T,T'=<Tr^f^fv I - i - ya - h - ya -a. p - u - tra. Ha - kli - a iiki - n - i - s - 1 - y.i. I Flu. 3. — Inscription of palace No. 5 of general plan, I'eisepolis. Tranxribcd by J. Menant.* elements almost as £ir as the articulated voice ; but they are in no way related to the Phrygian, Lycian, and Carian forms, derived, as we know, from the Greek alphabet ; nor have they any affinity of the forms under notice. I^ter on, however, to judj;e from the historians of Alexander, cited by Arrian {Ana/f. v'u 29) and Strabo (XIV. iii. 7), they would seem to have suspected that disdnct systems of writing lurked behind a oonmon aspect, when the term irtpaiKa ypo/i/uira is employed to define Fenian. ' Upon the origin of this alphabet, see J. Darmestktf.r, Rappori anntul fait et la Socifte antique, le 21 Juin, 1888, pp. 39, 40. Authorities are not agreed as to the method made use of in the borrowing. It is supposed that the cuneiform alphabet ahrays preserved an offidal and monumental chanctei^ but diat for ordinary pur- poses Aramaic letters were in use {iHd.). This, to a certain extent, was the case for the Assyrian language from the days of the Sargonidas, proved by the inscriptions on the weights of Sennacherib exhumed at Nimroud, as also the legends of certain (flinders and cones, ai^ fattdy a few words in Anmaic, incised by tiie scribes as memento on the edge of many a clay tablet of the dass known as contmcMahlets between private individual^ written in cnneifoxnis {Hist, of Arif torn. iL 630^ and n. 2, pp. 687-689). lea. khsftyathiya. UisAyathtyaA- king of kings, nim. Dftiayavahus. khsftyath- son of Darius, iyahyaA. putra. HakhAmanisiya. kinft Aduemenid. Digitized by Google
 * Kiisyaar&a. khsayathiya. va^ar- Xerxes, king great,