We shall see in a future chapter that before the close of the century the writings of Le Bruyn and Niebuhr had attracted a fair share of attention among European scholars; and the copies they had made of the inscriptions became the object of sedulous study, especially in the North. In Göttingen, the interest excited by the description of the ruins of Persepolis gave rise to an extremely heated controversy between Heeren and Herder. The former, in an early edition of the ‘Historical Researches,’ maintained that they were of Achaemenian origin. Persepolis, he says, ‘as the residence and place of sepulture of the Persian kings, was considered in the light of a sanctuary, and held to be the chief place in the kingdom.’ Herder, on the other hand, contended for its Jamshid origin, and supported his opinion in a series of very acrid ‘Persepolitan Letters.’[96] The question was of more importance than might at first sight appear, for upon its decision depended the royal names that should be looked for in the inscriptions. George Grotefend, a student in the University, who made the first successful attempt to decipher them in 1802, adopted the opinion of Heeren, and his investigations were largely based upon the conviction that the names of Darius and Xerxes could not fail to be found hidden in the cuneiform characters.
Meanwhile the new century opened with a continuance of the explorations, and one of the most fruitful discoveries was the inscription of Cyrus found by Morier at Murgab. For some time previous the disturbed state of the country had led to a complete suspension of diplomatic relations between Persia and European countries. Foreigners, who had been so cordially welcomed by Shah Abbas became almost unknown. Englishmen were gazed upon in the streets of the capital as ‘monsters of an unknown genus,’ and thought to be Chinese.[97] At length Captain (afterwards Sir John) Malcolm was sent by the Indian Government to solicit an alliance for common action against the Afghans. The French, however, viewed this friendly alliance with jealousy, and in 1805 they sent M. Jaubert, a well-known Orientalist, to detach the Shah from the English alliance.[98] The French envoy was successful; a Persian mission visited France, and concluded a treaty with Napoleon, in May 1807; an embassy under General Gardanne followed. These intrigues were, however, immediately met by a special mission from England, headed by Sir Harford Jones; and James Morier was appointed secretary. Morier was descended from a Huguenot family who, after leaving France, settled first in Switzerland and afterwards in Smyrna, where they engaged in business. Here James was born, about 1780. Not long after, his father came to England, became a naturalised subject, and sent his sons to Harrow. A reverse of fortune compelled him to return to Smyrna, where James again resided till about 1800. His father was appointed Consul at Constantinople in 1804, and died there of the plague in 1817. He had, however, the good fortune to secure appointments for three of his sons in the diplomatic service, and a commission in the navy for a fourth. Morier reached Bushire at the end of 1808, but upon this occasion he only spent a few months in the country. He returned in 1810, once more filling the position of secretary to an embassy of which Sir Gore Ouseley was chief. Ouseley brought his brother William with him in the capacity of private secretary and Mr. Gordon, a brother of Lord Aberdeen, was also attached to the mission. While the party was detained at Shiraz, in 1811, they scattered in pursuit of archæological discovery. Morier revisited Persepolis; Sir W. Ouseley went to Fasa, which was then considered to be the ancient Pasargadae; while Gordon undertook the dangerous journey to Susa.[99] Morier remained in Persia for six years, devoting himself to study; and he has secured a lasting fame as author of ‘Hajji Baba.’ Upon the occasion of his first visit in 1809, he spent only two days at Persepolis, and he added nothing to the knowledge already existing with reference to it. He, however, went to Naksh-i-Rustam, and his friend Captain Sutherland succeeded, as Mr. Hercules had done before, in entering the tomb farthest to the left.[100] He afterwards continued his journey along the valley of the Polvar, ‘between mountains whose brown and arid sides presented nothing to cheer or enliven the way.’ When he had travelled, as he supposed, about forty miles, and was still some two miles from Murgab, he turned from the direct route to view the ruins known in the country as ‘Mesjid Madre Suleiman,’ or Tomb of the Mother of Solomon. He observed the three pilasters of what is now termed the Palace of Cyrus, and conjectured at once that they belonged to a Hall, ‘the interior of which was decorated with columns.’ They were surmounted by a short inscription, of which he made a copy. He next observed a ‘building of a form so extraordinary that the people of the country often call it the court of the deevis or devil.’ He gives an excellent drawing of the well-known tomb, and adds: ‘if the position of the place had corresponded with the site of Passagardae as well as the form of this structure accords with the description of the Tomb of Cyrus, I should have been tempted to assign to the present building so illustrious an origin.’ He shows that the plain in which it stands was once the site of a great city, ‘as is proved by the ruins with which it is strewed’; the cuneiform inscriptions indicate that it was of the same ‘general antiquity’ as Persepolis; the two structures correspond in description, and in fact the only evidence on the other side is the absence of the inscription which Aristobulus declares he saw upon it. The place had been visited twice before, once by Barbaro in the fifteenth century, and again by Mandelslo in 1638. Mandelslo, indeed, gives an admirable drawing of it, which later artists have scarcely excelled. But till it was seen by the imaginative Morier no one had suggested that it was the Tomb of Cyrus. The opinion was readily accepted by Grotefend,[101] and it guided him to no small extent in the decipherment of the name of Cyrus in the inscription brought from the immediate vicinity.[102] When, however, Morier paid his second visit to Murgab in 1811, he was so overawed by the ponderous learning of his travelling companion Ouseley, that he tacitly allowed the subject to drop. On this occasion he succeeded in gaining access to the interior, but found nothing worthy of mention. He also noticed for the first time a very remarkable bas-relief of a winged human figure, and over it a repetition of the inscription he had already copied.[103]
Kaempfer had set the example of collecting specimens, and we fear the gentlemen of the embassy were only too ready to follow in his steps. They even went so far as to bring stone-cutters with them, provided with the requisite tools to carry their design into effect. We afterwards hear rather ominously of ‘the specimens in the possession of Sir Gore Ouseley and Lord Aberdeen.’[104] Morier published in 1812 the account of his ‘First Journey,’ containing the famous Cyrus inscription, and in 1818 the account of his ‘Second Journey’ followed. These works were well received, and can still be read with interest, but the fame of the author rests on his ‘Hajji Baba,’ which appeared in 1824.
Ouseley, who accompanied the embassy, was a very learned Orientalist, who was perhaps somewhat oppressed by the weight of his own accomplishments.[105] He was born in Ireland, in 1771, and after serving for a time in the army, he retired in 1794, and devoted himself wholly to his favourite pursuits. He became a thorough Persian scholar, and the author of many books bearing on Persian history and antiquities. He was therefore well qualified to accompany the embassy, and it was a source of keen pleasure to him to visit the country under such advantageous circumstances.
We have said that he turned aside from Shiraz to visit Fasa or Pasa, in the hope of finding the tomb of Cyrus; but, like Della Valle, he discovered nothing except a venerable cypress tree, which ‘is said to have been for above one thousand years the boast and ornament of the place.’[106] He finally came to the conclusion that Pasargadae and Persepolis were one and the same place, and firmly opposed the claim put forward by Morier on behalf of Murgab. Ouseley seems to have spent five days in all among the ruins of Persepolis, and he made excellent use of his time. He added another to the increasing number of general views (Pl. 40), and contributed a few small sketches of various parts of the building (Pl. 41). He rendered considerable service by the accurate copy he made of the cuneiform inscription round the window frames of the Palace of Darius. He found it repeated no less than eighteen times, and by a careful collation he was able to present a complete reading of the mutilated text.[107] He finally dispelled the erroneous idea that it was to be read from the top downwards; and he pointed out that certain of the characters found on bricks and gems from Babylon are never to be seen at Persepolis.[108] His description of the ruins is painstaking, but the subject was now almost exhausted. He agrees with Niebuhr that the Hall of Xerxes was roofed, and also that it may have supported another stage. He went farther and suggested the comparison with the façade of the tombs, an idea which Fergusson afterwards turned to excellent account.[109] But the chief value of his narrative consists in the full account he gives of Murgab and the illustrations that accompany it. Mandelslo and Morier had, as we have seen, both sketched the tomb; Ouseley adds a third sketch and by no means the best; but his other drawings are quite new, and from them the reader gains his first impressions of the plain of Murgab. They afford excellent views of the principal remains—the terrace, the square building, the palace, the caravansary, and the winged figure. He gives a satisfactory account of each, and when he comes to the palace, we find it described simply as ‘a cluster of pillars and pilasters.’ Notwithstanding all his prepossessions, he could not fail to be struck by the strange likeness of the Murgab tomb to the description given of the tomb of Cyrus, and he adds: ‘I should not have hesitated to believe it the tomb of Cyrus had the discovery of it rewarded my researches in the vicinity of Pasa or Fasa, or if, as Mr. Morier says, its position had corresponded with the site of Passagardae.’ As it was, he even ventured to express the opinion that it was a building of ‘doubtful antiquity.’[110] He visited it just an hour after Morier had made his sacrilegious entry; the startled female custodian had meanwhile returned, locked up the sacred shrine, and fled; so he was unable to satisfy his curiosity by a near inspection. He copied the Cyrus inscription from a solitary monolith to the north of the palace, and there were thus three independent versions of the same inscription taken from three different parts of the ruins.[111] The copy made by Ouseley was sent to the Director of the Imperial Library at St. Petersburg and through him it fell under the notice of Grotefend. Ouseley succeeded in making a magnificent collection of Persian manuscripts, especially relating to history and geography. His later years were spent in France, and he died at Boulogne, in 1842.[112]
Two hundred years had now elapsed since Gouvea called attention to the ruins of Persepolis. A considerable amount of literature had accumulated on the subject, and large numbers of plans and drawings of the principal objects were taken, which materially assisted the student. On looking back over these, however, it was curious to observe how widely the descriptions differed from each other, and how irreconcilable were the various views of the same monument. The explanation was not far to seek. Most of the travellers could only spare a few days from more pressing occupations to devote to the work. They were afterwards compelled to complete from memory the hasty sketches they had made on the spot, and although many of them display considerable skill in the use of their pencil, only a few had any professional knowledge of drawing. They were, moreover, all alike at the mercy of the engraver, and some thought they had good reason to complain of the treatment they received at his hands. But there was another cause that led to inevitable discrepancies. Few of them aimed to produce the minute accuracy of a photograph, or could resist the temptation of idealising the work before them: on the one hand, Le Bruyn exaggerated the ruin wrought by time; on the other, Niebuhr repaired its ravages. According to the one, the sculptured staircase is a confused mass of mutilated figures; according to the other, it appears as perfect as when first completed by the sculptor. Nor was it only in the drawings that inaccuracies were to be detected. The measuring tape itself seemed to yield different results in different hands. It was impossible to find agreement even as to the number of steps in the great staircase. According to one, there were only ninety-five (Herbert); according to another, one hundred and thirteen (Kaempfer); and other accounts ranged between these two extremes.
It was with the professed object of giving a final and authoritative representation that would satisfy the curiosity of the minute student that Sir Robert Ker Porter undertook to go over the old ground once more. He was an accomplished artist and he consequently possessed qualifications many of his predecessors were without. He arrived at Murgab on June 12, 1818, and left Persepolis on July 1, so that he was not more than eighteen days engaged in the study of the numerous antiquities in the neighbourhood. At the conclusion of his stay, he congratulates himself upon finding that: ‘I had drawn nearly every bas-relief of consequence, had taken a faithful plan of the place, and copied several of the cuneiform inscriptions.’[113] His industry during the time must certainly have been extraordinary. He surveyed the sites of Murgab and Persepolis, and made two ground-plans of both places. The former was now made for the first time, but the latter had been taken as early as the days of Kaempfer. He took two drawings of Murgab, four of the Achaemenian remains at Naksh-i-Rustam, six of the Sassanian sculptures, and two of the same period at Naksh-i-Rejeb. In addition to this he made twenty-four drawings of the monuments of Persepolis—some of them upon a large scale—and copied inscriptions that occupy four plates: that is to say, he accomplished in eighteen days work that now fills forty-two plates of engravings. This is certainly wonderful, but if he had executed less than one-quarter, the result would perhaps have been more satisfactory. In addition to the drawings, he measured the various buildings and the more important objects in each; and took notes for his very elaborate description of the dress, the arms, and other minute details of the various figures in the numerous bas-reliefs. Herbert had long ago expressed the opinion that ‘a ready Lymmer in three moneths space can hardly (to do it well) depict out all her excellences,’ and certainly the twelve days (from June 22 to July 1), which were all that Porter actually spent at Persepolis, were wholly inadequate for the purpose. In looking through Porter’s drawings, we find indeed ample evidence of haste, and of the absence of that minute accuracy which it was his special object to achieve. Yet his book is still perhaps the best that exists upon the subject in English. The drawings of his competitors are certainly not more accurate, and his careful and minute descriptions are quite unrivalled. His merit lies in the thorough investigations he made upon the ground itself, in the 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.[114] 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.[115] 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 eye at once identified them with the bull, which subsequent discoveries at Nineveh has confirmed.[116] 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.[117]
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 character of the sovereign, especially after the death of Zoroaster, when, he says, Darius assumed the title of Archimagus. He accepted Morier’s suggestion that Murgab was the site of Pasargadae and its principal monument the tomb of Cyrus.[118] He had a thorough belief in the decipherment of Grotefend. He not only accepted his recognition of the names of Darius and Xerxes, but he followed him when he traced their descent from Jamshid. That hero was, he thought, none other than Shem, whom sacred writ planted in that very region of Persia, and possibly Persepolis bore his name from the very earliest ages.[119] Porter did not himself advance our knowledge of the inscriptions. He copied the inscription at Murgab, but that had been previously done by Morier and Ouseley, and, as he candidly remarks, he ‘found that we all differed in some of the lines from each other.’[120] He also copied a portion of the inscription (A) on the sculptured staircase, of which Niebuhr had already given a satisfactory rendering;[121] and finally he took the trouble to execute an extremely imperfect copy of the four tablets of inscriptions on the south wall, which had also been much better done by Niebuhr.[122]
Notwithstanding its many defects, his book continued for thirty years to be the chief authority on the subject.[123] Heeren popularised the general result in the fourth edition of his ‘Researches’ (1824), and it thus became equally well known to German readers. Texier complained, in 1842, that there was absolutely no book in French upon the subject, and he had to refer to Porter for his information.[124] It was not till after the publication of the elaborate works of Texier and Flandin, which did not appear till 1849-51, that Porter was in any way superseded. Even then the form in which the great French authorities are published has rendered them inaccessible except to students in a great public library. The general reader would have remained in complete ignorance of the results but for the opportune publication, in 1851, of Fergusson on the ‘Palaces of Persepolis,’ and Vaux on ‘Nineveh and Persepolis.’
Within this long period, the area of discovery widened. Hamadan was identified with Ecbatana by D’Anville and Rennell, and it soon became an object of curiosity. The city stands 6,000 feet above the level of the sea, in a plain at the foot of Mount Elvend (the Orontes), and is surrounded by vineyards, orchards and gardens. Morier visited it in 1813, and discovered in the outskirts of the city a base of a small column of the identical order found at Persepolis, and near it he observed a large irregular terrace, perhaps the foundation of the Palace. Rawlinson afterwards detected five or six other bases of the same type. Three years before Morier’s visit, Kinneir had observed an inscription some seven miles distant, carved on the surface of the rock on a steep declivity of Mount Elvend.[125] ‘It consists,’ says Morier, ‘of two tablets, each divided into three longitudinal compartments, inscribed with the arrow-headed character of Persepolis. These inscriptions are called by the Persians Genj-nameh, or “Tales of a Treasure.”’[126] When Porter passed through Hamadan, he also went in search of the mysterious stone which he heard bore unintelligible writing. After a fruitless ascent of one of the highest peaks of Mount Elvend, he was fortunate enough in the course of his descent to come across the object of his expedition. The stone, he says, consists of ‘an immense block of red granite of fine texture,’ and the inscription is in excellent preservation. The natives believe that whoever succeeds in deciphering it will find a key that will enable him to discover a large treasure in the mountain, and hence the name they give it. Porter only reached it when the day was far advanced, and he had not time to make a copy.[127] Bellino, of whom we shall hear later, made another attempt, in 1820, but unfortunately he was attacked by fever at Hamadan, and died without accomplishing his object.[128] At length Mr. Stewart and M. Vidal, the consular dragoman at Aleppo, obtained copies about 1827, and communicated them to M. Schulz, who was then at Van. Professor Schulz of Hesse had been commissioned by the French Foreign Minister to undertake a scientific journey to the East, and he reached Van in July 1827, where he made copies of no less than forty-two cuneiform inscriptions. Long afterwards they were found to be written chiefly in the old Armenian language; but one was in the three varieties adopted by the Achaemenian kings. It was engraved on a large square tablet escarped on the precipitous face of the rock about sixty feet above the ground. It was divided into three columns, each column consisting of twenty-seven lines. Unfortunately, Schulz was murdered in 1829, and his papers ultimately found their way into the hands of M. Lajard of Paris, by whom they were sent to M. St. Martin for publication.[129] St. Martin, as we shall see, had early busied himself with cuneiform inscriptions, but in consequence of his early death, the papers of Schulz fell into the possession of the very eminent Orientalist Burnouf, by whom they were used with singular ability. The inscriptions found at Mount Elvend and at Van[130] became the subject of his ‘Mémoire sur deux Inscriptions,’ which appeared in 1836, and which marked the first great advance in cuneiform decipherment that had taken place since the memorable effort of Grotefend thirty-four years before.