File:Image from page 318 of "Persia past and present; a book of travel and research, with more than two hundred illustrations and a map" (1906) (14759262526).jpg

Identifier: cu31924028627036 Title: Persia past and present; a book of travel and research, with more than two hundred illustrations and a map Year: 1906 (1900s) Authors: Jackson, A. V. Williams (Abraham Valentine Williams), 1862-1937 Subjects: Zoroastrianism Publisher: New York, The Macmillan Company London, Macmillan & Co., ltd. Contributing Library: Cornell University Library Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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Text Appearing Before Image: of importance in deciphering cuneiform records.They are the two tablets that gave the key to the Englishdecipherer, Sir Henry Eawlinson, whose work contributed mostto placing cuneiform studies in general on a firm foundation.In the modern Persian tongue Q-anj Ndmah means Treasure-Story, and the natives call the sculptured tablets so becausethey imagine that a secret of some hidden treasure is concealedin them and that this will be revealed to the one who shallbe able to decipher them. This fiction has proved to be afact, though in a different way. The stone has been forcedto tell its story of hidden riches in the realm of history andhas handed over the key which the great decipherer used when 1 Dar. Alv. 1-20. For translitera- 1893 (containing also a bibliography, tion of the Persian text of this, see p. 6) ; Spiegel, Die AUpersischen Keil- Weissbach and Bang, Die ^i«/)emscften inschriften, pp. 46, 64, Leipzig, 1881. Keilinschriften, pp. 36, 42, Leipzig, See also pp. 175-185, below.

Text Appearing After Image: RECORDS OF DARIUS AND XERXES 173 he translated the rock records of King Darius at Behistan andthus unlocked many treasures of the past. Scarcely a hundred paces distant from the tablets of Dariusand Xerxes, but around the spur to the right of the moun-tain, and overlooking the gully through which the stream flows,are two small niches. They are blank, without the trace of asingle letter, but they appear to have been prepared to receiveshort inscriptions. One of these recesses is cut at a consider-able slant, shaped like a rhomboid, the other is a narrow paral-lelogram carved vertically so that it looks almost like a smallwindow in the rock. How these panels were to have beenfilled fancy alone can surmise.^ On the road homeward from the Ganj Namah I stopped toexamine the site of some ruins on a high ridge called that ofthe Nakdrah Khdnah, or Band Tower, about two miles distantfrom the city. The outlines of a structure which the peoplename the Burj, Tower, can be clearly made out in spit

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