Purer than the purest, fairest,
Bright through never-ending days.
What is good and what is brilliant,
That we reverence in thee—
Thy good spirit, thy good kingdom,
Wisdom, law, and equity.
Persian Inscriptions.—In a flower-clad plain of southwestern Persia, shut in from the outer world by lofty hills, and now dotted with pleasant villages, once stood the great palace of Persep’olis, the wonder of the world for its magnificence—which Alexander, in a fit of drunken fury, reduced to a heap of ruins with his wanton torch (331 B.C.). Yet, though silent and deserted, “the piles of fallen Persepolis" speak to us, not only with their strange sculptures, but also through the inscriptions carved upon them in cuneiform letters, originally adorned with gold.
THE ROCK OF BEHISTUN.
MOUNTAIN RECORD OF DARIUS.
Not far from these ruins is the famous rock of Behistun, 1,700 feet high, and inscribed with the same arrow-headed, wedge-shaped characters. Some of these, protected from the weather by a varnish of flint, have been wonderfully preserved to the present time.