A preferable site having been found for the new fort of Erivan, the old one was still standing at the period of Dr Wagner's visit. He gives an amusing account of its interior, and especially of the apartments of the ex-sardar, Hussein Khan, whose walls were painted in fresco, an art still quite in its infancy amongst the Persians. The pictures, as might be expected, were rather grotesque than graceful in their execution. "The subject of one of them is the history of Jussuf (Joseph) in Egypt, based upon the Arabian tradition. Zuleikha, the wife of Potiphar--so runs the Moslem legend--had become the laughing-stock of the ladies of Pharaoh's court, by the failure of her attempt to seduce the beautiful Joseph. To revenge herself, she invited all those court-dames to visit her, and commanded Joseph to hand them fruit and sherbet. But when the women beheld him, they were so bewitched by his beauty, that they bit their fingers instead of the pomegranates. This is the moment selected by the Persian artist. One of the ladies is seen to swoon from surprise, and Zuleikha triumphs at this incident, and at the confusion of the scoffers." There was considerable license in the subjects of some of the other pictures, one of which was intended to turn the Armenian Christians into ridicule, by representing their priests and bishops in profane society and riotous revel. Amongst the portraits, one of the last sardar of Erivan represented him with a gloomy and forbidding countenance--an expression which, if true to life, was by no means in conformity with his character.