Page:Discovery and Decipherment of the Trilingual Cuneiform Inscriptions.djvu/177

inscription with the legend 'I [am] Darius the king.' The other occurs upon a vase of grey marble, and like the one of Caylus, it is quadrilingual. It was first made known by Longpérier in the 'Revue Archécologique' (1844), through an imperfect copy taken by the Abbé Giacchetti, but a complete transcript was afterwards sent by Sir Gardner Wilkinson to Rawlinson. It reads simply: 'Artaxerxes the great king.' It is known as the Venice vase, and is preserved in the Museum of St. Mark's (Inscr. Qᵇ). A few other vases were afterwards found at Susa and at Halicarnassus, but they all repeat the same legend as that found upon the Caylus vase. A short inscription of Darius, containing the long introductory form already described, is also mentioned by Gobineau as having been found near Kermanshah.^[1] Two unilingual inscriptions, one of Arsaces and the other of Pharnuches. were also afterwards found on seal cylinders which, with the trilingual of Darius in the British Museum (Nᵈ) raise the number to three in all.^[2]

1. Menant, Les Achiminides, p. 143.
2. Benfey, Die Persischen Keilinschriften (1847), p. 68; Spiegel, p. 129; Records, O.S. ix. 87.