clad multitudes, they were simply suspended round the neck, while the better classes seem to have worn them either on the wrist or as an armlet.1

The first of these seals is engraved on the highly-prized amethyst belonging to the Duke of Devonshire. The second is now known only by its reproduction in a work of the last century, entitled "Tassie's Gems." It would seem to have proved from the first a mere artist's failure both in the portrait and in the imperfection of the legend, and to have been superseded by the more elaborately engraved design, giving the accepted likeness of the Prince, with his style and contrasted royal titles encompassing it in the Pehlvi character. The portrait, in this instance, presents a remarkable specimen

1 This arrangement is shown to have been in immemorial acceptation in the far East, by numerous passages in the Shah Námah; among the rest, when Rustam takes leave of his wife Tahmimah, the daughter of the king of Samangán, we are told

که آن مهره اندر جهان شهره بود ببازوي رستم يكي مهره بود

بدو داد و گفتش که این را بدار گرت دختری آید از روزگار بنیک اختر و فال گيتي فروز بگیر و بگيسوي او بر بدوز ببندش ببازو بسان پدر ور ایدون که آید ز اختر پسر

Mohl. Paris edition, ii., p. 82. Macan. i. p. 336.

The conclusion of this passage has been quaintly paraphrased by an early English translator in the following couplets :

"This seal with care preserve, and if by Heaven

To your caress a daughter may be given,

Upon her hair you must this charm entwine

As an auspicious star and happy sign.

But if a son be born, his arm around

Let this insignium of his sire be bound."

-C. T. Robertson, Calcutta, 1829, p. 18.

So also, in the fatal single combat between father and son, in front of the hostile hosts of Irán and Turán, whose several nationalities each is supposed to represent where the son fights with the full knowledge of the person of his adversary, but Rustam is ignorant that Sohráb is the offspring of his own deserted wife, the latter in his dying moments reveals himself with the expression, "Thy

ببازوم) بر مهرۀ خود نگر) ".seal upon my arm behold

of Oriental youthful beauty, of which I have vainly sought to obtain a thoroughly satisfactory representation, though the accompanying woodcut gives a very artistic rendering

HEAD OF VARAHRÁN, FROM THE DEVONSHIRE AMETHYST.

(True size of the seal, 1.25 x 1.05 inches.)

of the general details. The following is a fac-simile of the legend that surrounds the bust on the signet:1

INSCRIPTION NO. 9.-VARAHRÁN, KIRMÁN SHAH, seal in use during the lifetime of his Father, SAPOR II., ZU'LAKTAF.

{ubąuajabo updo caąbo

abso

VARAHRÁN, king of Kermán, the son of Ormazd-worshipper, divine Shahpur, king of kings of Irán and Anirán, of celestial origin from God.

1 Numismatic Chronicle, N. S. vol. vi. p. 241.

The second less perfect seal, to judge from the engraving of 1791,1 does a certain amount of justice to the profile of the Prince, who is there figured with a full and well arranged beard and curled locks, while his Parthian helmet is adorned with the self-same device as is seen on the more valuable gem. The inscription, however, breaks off abruptly, though the introductory portion follows the arrangement of the lines of the legend above given, while the which follows in line after the K, and the reduced size of the letters of the name of Varahrán, sufficiently establish that the first published design is not a mere vague copy of the more finished seal. The transcript in modern Persian runs

منوچتري

شهپوهري ملكان ملكا منوچتري من يز.

ورهران کرمان

It seems, it must be confessed, a strange hazard that brings to us, from a far distant land, two if not three signets of a king who lived nearly fifteen centuries ago.

The authenticity of the portrait-seal of Varahrán, employed while he was his father's viceroy, in Kermán, is sufficiently attested by the legends on its surface. The signet we have now to deal with as clearly declares its associations, though in a less formal manner, inasmuch as the style of head-dress borne by the chief figure typifies the conventionally distinguishing crown of Varahrán IV. as "king of kings," or after his accession to Imperial honors.2

The seals of the deceased Sassanian princes were, without doubt, religiously preserved in the Jewel Treasuries of the family, who, as we have seen, were sufficiently jealous and punctilious in these matters; so that nothing short of a total disruption of dynastic ties would be likely to have scattered abroad such cherished symbols of ancestral domination; but precisely such an extreme convulsion took place some 250 years

1 Tassie's Gems (London, 1791), pl. xii. fig. 673, vol. i. p. 66. See also Ouseley's "Medals and Gems" (London, 1801).

? The date of this event is not very exactly determined, but it may be placed in 389 A.D., with a reign of ten years, extending to 399 A.D. Clinton, from Western sources, fixes his advent to the throne in 388 A.D.-Fasti Romani, p. 518.

later, in the total conquest of Persia by the early Muhammadan Arabs, whose practice of dividing the spoil, on the one part, and their objection, then but partially developed, to graven images, on the other, would equally conduce to the dispersion of the more or less correctly-appreciated valuables of this description.9

The gem in question, an engraving of which is given in the margin, has lately been brought to this country by General A. Cunningham, to whom I am indebted for my present knowledge of it, as well as for many recent obligations of the same

nature.

The seal is sunk into a dark onyx, upon whose upper surface a milk-white film has It is stated to have been obtained

been allowed to remain.

from Ráwal Píndi, in the Punjáb.

On the first cursory inspection of the device, a suggestion arose as to whether the standing figure might not represent the oft-recurring Sapor I. with the prostrate Valerian at his feet? But it was felt that, as a general rule, the coin portraiture of each Sassanian king had been intentionally reduced to a definite typical model in respect to the form of the crown,which suffices, even in these days, to determine, with almost invariable precision, the individual monarch to whom any given piece should be assigned, however obscure or defaced the descriptive legends may chance to be.

Ardeshir Babegán, and more notably Sapor I., as we have seen, varied with the progress of their arms the forms and representative devices of their crowns; but their successors

1 After the battle of Kadesía, the spoils, after deducting one-fifth for the Khalif, were divided among the sixty thousand horsemen at the estimated rate of 12,000 dínárs each!-Price, Muhammadan Hist. i. 117, 120, 121.

2 There are odd tales, alike, of the Conquerors, from the desert, offering gold for the better-known silver, and of their being unable to distinguish camphor from salt, etc.; but in regard to the number of precious stones stored up and partially adapted to the purposes of Oriental display, there can be no question. The carpet of "Cloth of Gold," of 60 cubits square, had its pattern fashioned of jewels of the highest value. This was cut up into small pieces, "one of which, of the size only of the palm of a man's hand," was afterwards sold for 20,000 dirhams; or, as others say, for the same number of dínárs."-See Price, 117, 121, 122, etc.

necessarily exercised less licence in this respect, though the sculptured representations were not always bound by Mint laws. The first monarch who adopted, on the public money, the design of head-dress introduced by Sapor I. (as figured in page 62), was Varahrán II., at least to this particular one of the several kings of the name are all coins distinguished by this style of head-gear, by common consent, attributed; and to Varahrán IV. are assigned, by the equally arbitrary decisions of Numismatists, all those pieces that are marked by the subsidiary modification upon the earlier form, comprised in the introduction of the projecting front of the mural crown, in advance of the established eagle's wings; and it is this peculiarity alone that, in the present state of our knowledge, determines the attribution of the seal to the last-named ruler.1

The subordinate prostrate figure is evidently designed to represent a Roman warrior, but the semblance of the "laureated" Valerian of the sculptures is altogether abandoned; and though it may be freely admitted that the helmet with the flowing plume, here depicted, is identical with the design adhered to in the leading Imperial mintages of his period,2 yet it must be remembered that there were many such western casques left behind in Persia, to serve as models for artistic

1 Some of the local historical authors pretend to give descriptions of each Sassanian king's costume in succession, from a book of portraits, which was supposed to carry considerable authenticity. The following is Hamza's account of Varahran the IV.'s dress and appointments :-"Vestis cœrulea est, acu picta, braccæ rubræ itemque picturatæ, corona viridis inter tres apices et lunulam auream; stat, dextra manu hastam tenens, sinistra gladio innixus" (p. 39). The description of the crown in the original text is couched in the following terms :—

شرفات The

Pinna شرافة ،

. و تاجه اخضر بين ثلث شرفات و مازرج ذهب

may possibly refer to the three projections of the mural crown arcis vel muri). The Persian version in the Mujmal-al-Tawáríkh has (M. Quatremère, in the Journal Asiatique, 1839.) The has very much the air of the ordinary Persian, which would so nearly accord with the Arabic Ja in the parallel descriptive passages.

2 Visconti. Icon. Rom. vol. iii. pl. 56, Nos. 10 and 13. See also Trésor de Numismatique Icon. Rom. Helmet of Gallienus (pl. lii. fig. 5), and his successors.

.