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XXXII. Remarks on an erroneous Explanation of one of the Inscriptions at Naksh-i-Rustam, occurring in the “Mémoires sur diverses Antiquités de la Perse, par le Baron Silvestre de Sacy.”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2009

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Extract

The Baron De Sacy, in his essay on the inscriptions and sculptures at Naksh-i-Rustam, by way of reconciling the historical relation to the representation itself, is led to assert that the design illustrates the conquest of Ardashír over the last sovereign of the Arsacidœ, or the contest for the crown. The inscription on the horse belonging to the monarch, supposed to be one of the Arsacidœ, as copied from Niebuhr's plate, is ΤΟΓ ΤΟΠΡΟCΩΠΟΝ ΔΙΟC ΘΕΟΥ, and M. de Sacy imagines that the Greek who traced it, if the word be ΘΕΟΥ, was ignorant of the deity whose name is inserted in the other inscription, i.e. μασδασνγ, and gives it as his opinion that the inscription, rightly translated, originally meant,

“This is the representation of the god Hormuzd,”

one of the last Sassanian kings. From an inspection of the monument, I conceive this to be an error.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 1834

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References

* Mémoires sur diverses Antiquités de la Perse, etc. 4to. Paris, 1793, pp. 63 and 107, Plate I. The inscriptions explained in this work by the Baron de Sacy, were copied from those published by Niebuhr.

Memoires, etc. Plate I.

* Mem. Plate I, A No. 3.

* In the first volume of SirPorter, Robert Ker's Account of his Travels in Persia, &c. (4to. London, 1820)Google Scholar, will be found a detailed description of this, among the other sculptures at Naksh-i-Rustam; it is illustrated by a plate containing fac-similes of the inscriptions. Sir Robert adopts Baron De Sacy's explanation of the monument.

C No. 3, Mém. Plate I.