In No. 31 the previous reading of in No. 26 is fully confirmed by its definite repetition in this place. Line two suggests many uncertain details, though the best version seems to be But the interest of this tablet centres in line three, where, if we could rely upon our standard text, we might transcribe freely the words

ه و من ركنت امیوت ایاله و رهيو

و پاتر و has been ايك a variant of the ; كرتكني پتره و اكياك ماكيوش

met with before in No. xxvi., but the, if it could be assured, would throw additional light upon this apparently religious manifesto of the Zoroastrian creed. The (possibly the of No. xxiv.) commences line four, followed

پتیسه

of the printed text هويتي The کنهیت و یا یکان هشتر کریت by . هريتي at اكايمود The

complete all that remains of يازتن كربي و هشتر .on hereafter

in line five may require correction into the end of the line is a word to be compared and commented

the last line.

The 32nd and last tablet is the most curious of the whole broken series, and in the seeming completeness within itself, as judged by its remaining fragments, must have either constituted a portion of a summary or recapitulation apart from the rest of the inscription, otherwise any preconceived idea of the absolute continuity of the text from stone to stone in the ordinary line of writing must be altogether at fault. Though it is by no means improbable that the record of the original manifesto of Ardeshir was finished after the accession of Sapor, even if it was not supplemented by him with independent tablets devoted to his own glorification. Such an inference would accord well with the frequent appearance of Sapor's name, as associated with the full honors of royalty, in certain passages whose consecutive order it is, at present, impossible to determine. The five letters still extant in the first line resolve themselves almost naturally into the Aryan (), but the long vowels tend to cast a doubt about the identity of the word. After some obscurities, line two presents us with the word, which, adverting to the sub

No. 30.

No. 29.

מותאיר

כהכתר

השתר אסתנבכ

פיתי השתר הרתלין

פתי ו ח . וז - היתת איך השתר והמכ השתר אישא

כהויידוהן פרשכרת לנפת ופושת ושמיי מיי

...

סריהכרתי רשׁ פנרפלזך מלכא ומכורן מלכא ספולשיה . . . ול - וכנ ו באתי זורכתשן הותוי ו ...

ופאתרו כרתכני פתרה ואכיאם מאגיוש פארס וכרגת ותן ואסור פתיסה וכנהית ו יאיכלן חשתר כרית . . | ארמינר ואריאן השתר אתהשתרי מלכאוב הופתי השתר הות ו... אכאימוד אותן כריי ו השתר

...

...אמארלישתפ מנז

......

sequent associations, may possibly stand for the country of Syria, but which I prefer to consider as the ancient, muchesteemed title of Surena, a name the Romans learned to know but too well in the course of their Persian wars.1 The country of Persia seems clear enough; (,),

presents a

1 Plutarch in Crassus; Strabo, xvi. c. i. § 24; Ammian. Marcell. xxiv. c. ii.

§ 4, c. iv. § 12; Zosimus, iii. c. xv.; Mos. Khor. i. 313; J.A. 1866, p. 130. The title was possibly derived from "King" There is a term

having something of the like import in Modern Persian in, “Regis Minister" (Vullers).

difficulty, but,\ Assyria can scarcely fail to represent that even then renowned kingdom., in line four, may reasonably be corrected into Armíní, especially in its direct conjunction

is confessedly a re ارتشتري The name of اریان هشتر with .

storation out of the very imperfect tracing of the original pencil copy, but the letters in are sufficiently assured to justify the insertion of the missing after the initial, and the

needful termination before.

nearly illegible.

The concluding line is

Sir H. Rawlinson has favoured me with the subjoined Note on the locality and surroundings of Pai-Kúlí, which unfortunately reached me after the preceding pages had been set up in type.

These ruins which I first heard of in 1835 whilst employed in the neighbouring district of Zohab (see Journal of the Royal Geograph. Soc., vol. ix. p. 30), I had an opportunity of examining in some detail during a two days' visit which I paid them in 1844, in company with Mr. Alexander Hector, on a return trip from Sulimanieh to Baghdad. They are situated at the South-Eastern extremity of the rocky ridge of Seghermeh, at the distance of about four miles from the right bank of the river Shirwán or Diyáleh, and just beyond an easy pass which crosses the shoulder of the hill from the Karadagh valley. The hill which intervenes between the ruins and the river, and which is a lower and less rugged continuation of the Seghermeh range, is named Gúlán. The district on the river is called Bani-Khilán, and is well known from the ford of that name by which the river is crossed on the high road from Zohab to Sulimanieh. The exact position of the ruins is in latitude 35° 7′ 16′′, and longitude 45° 34′ 35". With these indications any traveller may succeed in finding the locality, but to enable him to inspect the ruins at his leisure it will be indispensable that he should be attended with a suitable escort, as the districts along the river, being a sort of debatable ground between the Persian and Turkish empires, are overrun with marauding Kurds who pay no respect to either Prince or Pasha.

The ruins, which are called indifferently Päï-Kúlí (“the

foot of the pass"), and But-Khaneh ("the idol temple"), crown the summit of a shoulder which runs out from the range towards the East and thus presents a sloping declivity circling round from N.E. to S.E. It is difficult to determine the design of the original edifice, so completely has it been ruined, but it may be conjectured to have been a quadrangular construction, about one hundred feet square, formed of rubble and brick and faced with large blocks of grey stone of which the exterior surface was smoothened; and probably the building itself was crowned with a cupola. At present indiscriminate heaps of brick and mortar, rubble and stone, cover the entire summit of the hill, and nowhere is any portion of the wall in its original state to be recognized. Scattered along the brow, however, and at different points on all three sides of the steep slope, which extends perhaps 150 yards from the ruins to the plain below, are to be seen at least 100 blocks of hewn stone, the débris apparently of the building above; and as a considerable number-perhaps half-of these blocks are engraved on their smoothened face with writing, and the inscribed blocks would all seem to have fallen from the Eastern wall of the building, I conceive that it was on that face only, fronting the rising sun, that the commemorative record was placed. This record, like most of the other memorials of the early Sassanians, was engraved in two different characters and languages, which used to be called Parthian and Sassanian, but which it is now proposed to distinguish as Chaldæo-Pehleví and Persian-Pehleví. I copied the in

scriptions on thirty-two blocks of stone, ten of these inscriptions being in Chaldæo-Pehleví and twenty-two in Persian-Pehleví; and these were all the fragments of writing which were exposed and which were tolerably legible; but there are, I doubt not, an equal number of fragments still to be recovered by any traveller who has the means and the leisure to turn over the many blocks lying with their face downwards, and also to disinter those which are now half imbedded in the soil, or covered over with the rubbish, on the summit of the hill. Amongst this rubbish I further observed one slab about four feet square, rudely sculptured with

the head and shoulders of a Sassanian king, the figure being intended in all probability for Ardeshir Babegan; and it is very possible other similar slabs would be found if the ruins were thoroughly examined. I always, indeed, cherished the idea of being able, on the occasion of some future visit, to take an exact paper-cast of the inscribed surface of every block throughout the ruins, by which means I might succeed in reconstructing the work, after the manner of a child's puzzle; and I am still of opinion that this reconstruction might be partially, if not completely, effected,-notwithstanding that the edges of the blocks are in many cases chipped and worn; -since it would be assisted, not only by the coincidence of the lines of writing, but by the identifications of the different words and phrases as the general tenour of the inscriptions became gradually intelligible.

It only remains that I should say a word as to the purport of the original building. In popular tradition the place is known as the But-khaneh (or “idol-house "), probably from the figure of Ardeshir, which is still the prominent feature of the ruins; but I found that the educated Kurds-and there are many such at Sulimanieh-considered Páï-Kúlí to be the site of a Fire-Temple of the Magi; and such I believe to be a true explanation of this really interesting spot, although I have never met with a notice of the locality among the many copious descriptions of Sassanian antiquities that are found in the early Arabic Historians and Travellers, and although the inaccessible position of the ruins and the present desolate and inhospitable character of the surrounding country are singularly inappropriate to a great scene of popular pilgrimage. In all probability, however, the country has very much altered in appearance since the Sassanian period. At present there are no permanent villages or fixed inhabitants between the Turkish frontier at Khannikin and Sulimanieh, but along the course of the Diyáleh, throughout this interval of space, are to be seen on both banks numerous traces of ancient populousness and prosperity. On the Persian side of the river, for instance, the ruins of Sheikhán, of Hurín, and Hershel have been already described by me (see Geograph.