[4] The ruins of the palace of Persepolis are still to be seen near Istaker, on the right bank of the united waters of the Medus and the Araxes. Travellers speak of them with admiration, not unmixed with awe. Many pillars still remain standing,—a melancholy monument of the wealth, taste, and civilization of the Persians, and, in this instance, of the barbarian vengeance of the Greeks. [5] See Oddy’s European Commerce; Anderson’s History of Commerce, and Historical Disquisitions of India. [6] Dr. James Mease. 1811. [7] Historical Sketch of the Progress of Trade (1811). [8] To Cadmus, who founded the kingdom of Thebes [1448 B. C.], is ascribed the introduction of alphabetical writing into Greece. At least sixteen letters of their alphabet claim him as the author. But as the order, names, and form of the characters greatly correspond with the Phœnician, it seems very probable that the Greek letters were formed from them, and that Cadmus did not invent, but copy them. [9] And the Lord said unto Moses, Hew thee two tables of stone like unto the first: and I will write upon _these_ tables the words that were in the first tables, which thou brakest.—Exodus xxxiv. 1. In the ark of the covenant, so carefully preserved by the Jews, was Moses required to put the two tables of stone on which the Ten Commandments were written with the finger of God. We are expressly told that the ark contained nothing besides these tables. Aaron’s rod, the pot of manna, and the copy of the law were _by_, but not _within_ the ark.—1 Kings viii. 9. [10] Meerman, well known as a writer upon the antiquities of printing, offered a reward for the earliest manuscript upon linen paper; and, in a treatise upon the subject, fixed the date of its invention between 1270 and 1300. But Mr. Schwandner, of Vienna, is said to have found in the imperial library a small charter bearing the date of 1243 on such paper. But more than one Arabian writer asserts the manufacture of linen paper to have been carried on at Samarcand early in the eighth century, having been brought thither from China; and, what is more conclusive, Casiri positively declares many manuscripts in the Escurial of the eleventh and twelfth centuries to be written on this substance.—_Bibliotheca Hispanica Arabica_, t. 11, p. 9. [11] The scuttle-fish emits a liquid strongly resembling ink. [12] The Rosetta stone, or rather a fragment of it, was discovered by a French officer of engineers, Mons. Bouchard, in August, 1799, when digging the foundations of Fort St. Julien, erected on the western bank of the Nile, between Rosetta and the sea, not far from the mouth of the river. It was deposited in the British Museum in 1802. [13] Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, book 1, chap. iv. [14] These epistles of Solomon and Hiram are those in 1 Kings v. 3-9, and in 2 Chronicles ii. 3-16.