Persia from the Earliest Period to the Arab

HISTORY OF PERSIA. 99
between Babylon and Ecbatana, and their chief interest
consists in the indication which they afford of the
ancient line of communication crossing Mount Orontes.
This road, it is well known, was ascribed in antiquity
to the fabulous age of Semiramis 1
, and I was able
to assure myself by a minute personal inspection, that,
throughout its whole extent from the Ganj-nameh to
the western base of the mountains, it still preserves the
most unequivocal marks of having been artificially and
most laboriously constructed . On the western
ascent of Orontes the artificial road is still very clearly
marked, and on the summit of the mountain the pavement
is still in very tolerable preservation." As at Per-
sepolis Xerxes added largely, as we shall see hereafter,
to the unfinished works of his father, his inscrip-
tions on that site are numerous. Of these there
are two classes one (repeated originally perhaps
twenty times, and still existing in twelve copies), a reduction
of his standard inscription, giving the royal
titles, &c., the other, on two high pilasters in the in-
terior of the edifice, and on the eastern and western
staircases of one of the most important buildings there,
which is thus satisfactorily identified as his work.
The inscriptions at Van, do not furnish us with any
new facts, and the only remaining ones of Xerxes are
on two vases of Egyptian alabaster, each of which
however has an interest of its own. One of these
originally belonged to the Count de Caylus, the other
1 We now know by the statues of Nebo in the British Museum, which
are inscribed with her native name " Sammvramnt," that Semiramis
was really a queen of Nineveh during, probably, the eighth century B.C.
These inscriptions were first deciphered by Sir H. C. Rawlinson.