THE ROYAL SCRIBES.

29

some of the bright beams of the ancient dynasties of Persia, but still it recalls the glory of Cyrus, and the power of Darius and Sapor. "In Egypt," says "The Modern Traveller," "the intrusive Turk or Mamlouk, the degraded Copt, or the miserable Fellah, are dwarfed beside the gigantic monuments of the past, and hardly appear to belong to a scene where art and nature seem alike eternal and MAN is nothing; in Persia it is the living scene, the faded yet still imposing pageantry, the various tribes, and the diversified traits of human character that chiefly occupy attention, and by these faithful transcripts of the former ages it is that the imagination is transported far back into the past.*

Although Persia, in her earliest ages, seems to have altogether wanted the poet historian, she was not wanting in royal scribes. These secretaries, Mirzas, as they are called in modern times, were constantly with their kings-at feasts and councils, and on the field of battle. It was their duty to note down at the time his words, and make a record of his deeds. A similar custom prevailed among most Asiatic nations. The Mogul conquerors had their scribes. The great Hyder Ali used to appear in public surrounded by forty secretaries. Such records doubtless were the chronicles deposited at Babylon, Ecbatana, and Susa. The personal anecdotes and private conversations preserved by Herodotus, are probably a fair specimen of these records. They were not designed to be a history of the empire, nor of the people, but of the court. Herod, vii. 100, vi. 98; viii. 96, and Ezra, vi. i. Esther, vi. i. We shall have occasion to speak of them again.

*Vaux's Nineveh and Persepolis.

The great historic poets of Persia are Mirkhond and Firdusi, and Khondemir, son of Mirkhond. Their memorials of the empire are partly from traditions, and partly from records, and are very valuable as exponents of the inner life-the thoughts, manners and customs, of their forefathers. They tell us that the ancient name of Persia was Iran, and that ten tribes were united in composing its first inhabitants. According to Mohammedan writers, the founder of the Pischadian dynasty the first monarch of Persia was Kaiomurs, the son of Yasan Asam, the grandson of Noah. And that

he was a long time subject to the Magicians, but at length emancipated himself from their tyranny, by the aid of tigers, panthers and lions. The famous Jamshid, his nephew, succeeded his son Hoshung, who was his immediate successor. The legends concerning Jamshid are numerous and curious. They suit for an epic rather than for a sober history. As a history of Persia, however, beyond Cyrus, we have nothing better than the fabulous annals of Jamshid and his successors.

Impenetrable obscurity reigns over the early history of Persia. Most of the early Persian writers have so mixed up their history with tales of griffins, monster giants and fairies, that no sober or reliable account can be gathered from their writings. According to some of them, several of the first kings of the dynasty which they call the Pischadian, reigned from five hundred to one thousand years each. The order of its rise seems to be Iran, Turan, and then Assyria, and then a second Persian dynasty of the Kaianites, and then Media, under Cyaxares, and then Persia proper under Cyrus the Great. Xenophon traces the pedigree of Cyrus up to Perses, who gave name to the country.

PERSIA IN THE BIBLE.

31

The first name by which Persia is known to us in the Bible is Elam, Gen. xiv. 1, which is to be regarded as identical with Kurdistan and Khuzistan. The date of the events spoken of in Genesis is thought by Vaux and others to be contemporary with the beginning of the Assyrian and Babylonian empires. Balkh, (Bactra,) the capital of Kaiomurs, is considered in the East as the oldest city on the globe. It is called Omm-al-belad, the mother of cities. From the time of Abraham, when Elam was a kingdom, to Isaiah, nothing occurs in sacred history that belongs especially to Persia. Isaiah, however, speaks of the Elamites as a warlike nation, "bearing the quiver," xxii. 6. And this account agrees exactly with what Strabo says of the mountaineers of Elymais. Jeremiah (xlix. 34, 39) foretells the overthrow of Elam and its subsequent recovery, which history records as fulfilled.

The hero of Firdusi is Rustam, but Sir John Malcolm labors with great zeal to show that the Kai-Khosru of this poet is Cyrus the Great. This is probably correct; and the poem itself, Shah Nameh, is a wonderful illustration of how the fragments of history may be embalmed in poetry. The fragments from which he composed this work were in Pehlvi, and are interspersed with incidents and exploits belonging to the history of China, India and Turan, while there is no allusion to the kings of Assyria, Egypt or Babylon. The traditions of the East say that Cyrus' mother was a Jewess, and on that account he was so favorably inclined to that remarkable people. For some four centuries the Romans called the rulers of Persia by the name of Khosrus or Chosroes, that is, Cyrus. The Kai occurring so often

in the history of ancient Persia, means King; and is succeeded by Shah in our day.

The order of the empires that rose on the Tigris and the Euphrates is after this manner: The Assyrian, Chaldean and Medo-Persian, the Greek, Roman and Saracen, which was succeeded by the Persian kingdom of our own day. The Assyrian empire, of which Nineveh was the chief city, was probably founded by Nimrod. It unquestionably goes back to a very early period after the flood. The area of the Persian dominions in Esther's day was the seat of the great empires of Daniel's visions, which, as to time and manner, rose to power and passed away with an astonishing conformity to his predictions.

But little is known of Median history. The Medes are believed to have been an intelligent and wealthy people long previous to the Persian conquest. Their government was despotic, but the etiquette and strictures of their court remarkable. Cyrus the Great, who is to be regarded as the founder of the Persia of history, made Media, by forcible seizure, a part of the Persian empire. His dominions occupied the regions of all the older empires of that part of the globe that had preceded him. The period of our Hebrew-Persian Queen is about 500 years before the birth of Christ, and lies between the famous battle of Marathon and the retreat of the ten thousand Greeks. Postumius and Furius being consuls at Rome. The Chaldean monarchy, the lion empire of the Hebrew prophet, has past away. All comes to pass in its day just as Daniel sees and describes it standing on the banks of the river Ulai (Eulæus of the Grecks). Medes and Persians,

DANIEL'S PROPHECY FULFILLED.

33

Greeks and Romans, take their places in history precisely according to the prophet's assignment, just as if they were pieces played by an invisible master on the Chess-board of the Universe. The two-horned ram of Daniel signified the Medo-Persian kingdom. And the proof is complete that Persia was represented at first by a ram. This is seen in ancient coins and from the sculptures on the pillars of Persepolis. Ammianus Marcellinus expressly says that "the King of Persia wore a ram's head of gold, set with precious stones, instead of a diadem." And it is also abundantly in proof, that as Persia was represented by a ram, so was Macedonia by a goat, and both these symbols agree with Daniel's vision. The story is that the first colony of Macedon were directed to take a goat for a guide and that they were to build a city, wherever the leading goat halted his flock, which they did, and called it Egea, from Egus, a goat, and hence the people called themselves Egeadæ, and hence we have the name Egean for the sea that washed their coast. Ancient Macedonian monuments contain this figure, and at Persepolis the subjection of the Macedonians to the Persians in the reign of Amyntas is recorded by representing a Persian as holding a goat by the horn. And in the Florentine collection there is a gem with an engraving which was probably made after Alexander's conquest of Asia, representing the Persian ram and the Macedonian goat united, that is, the two heads are conjoined.

If you visit Khuzistan, a province of the Persia that now is, you will see the kingdom of ancient Susiana. In the first years of Cyrus, this country was governed