A New Darius Inscription

Abstract

Any addition to our scanty store of Old Persian inscriptions is certain to yield something of interest, and this is true of the new Darius inscription published by Sidney Smith in JRAS, 1926, 433 ff. It is in the usual trilingual versions, and occurs in duplicate on a gold and a silver tablet. These presumably belonged to a series of three or more (gold, silver, and baser materials), such as have been unearthed in foundation deposits. The editor gives a copy made from a photograph of the gold tablet, and restorations of the text (of the Elamite version) from a photograph of the silver tablet. A photograph of the gold tablet was received from a dealer by the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, and I have used this. Just recently, after my comment was written, I have seen Herzfeld's communication in the Deutsche Literaturzeitung, 1926, 2105 ff., where is given the first account of the provenience of the gold tablet. It was found between two blocks of an ancient foundation which came to light in rebuilding a small house in Hamadan and which belongs to an extensive series of Achaemenian ruins of ancient Egbatana. Herzfeld makes no mention of the silver tablet, though he must have used it in constituting the Elamite text, which is much mutilated in the gold tablet. In the Old Persian text too, his line division after the first two lines is not that of the gold tablet. It looks as if his text, though nominally that of the gold tablet, were in reality that of the silver tablet, which is in much better condition. Mr. John P. Kellogg, who was in Persia last summer, and to whom I am indebted for first calling my attention to the find and the publications, informs me that the silver tablet was also found at Hamadan and presumably in the same building, and that the gold tablet is now in New York. Herzfeld deals mainly with the historical and archaeological importance of the find. His brief grammatical notes have not made my own comments on the Old Persian text superfluous. He gives a letter for letter transcription (except in rendering the ideogram for king). The editor in JRAS has followed the more usual method of fuller transcription, but with a considerable number of errors-the misreading