Calligraphy is called “a golden profession,” and a small but exquisite copy of the Korān has been valued at one hundred thousand dollars, while the artistic penman, who executed a copy of a popular poem, had his mouth stuffed with pearls, in addition to the promised reward. Less fortunate, however, was Mīr Amar, a celebrated calligraphist of the fifteenth century. Being summoned to court to prepare an elaborate copy of the Shāh Nāmah, and his progress being too slow to satisfy the royal ambition, his beautiful manuscript was torn to pieces before his eyes, and Mīr Amar was then hastened to the executioner. Yet such was the extreme beauty of his work, that after the lapse of three hundred years, short screeds from his pen are set in gold and sold at fabulous prices. Although the printing press is invading the domain of the Persian scribe, the art of calligraphy is still cultivated, and artistic penmen are held in great repute. EARLY LITERATURE. It is evident that the early kings of Persia possessed royal libraries, containing historical records and official decrees, for in the book of Ezra[15] it is said that “search was made in the house of rolls,” in Babylon, for the imperial decree of Cyrus concerning the rebuilding of the temple. It was afterwards found at Ecbatana “in the palace that is in the province of the Medes,” the decree having been made in the first year of King Cyrus. But aside from some of the inscriptions, the earliest literature we now have belonging to this people is the Zend- Avesta, our present version of which was possibly derived from texts which already existed in the time of the Achæmenian kings. Although there are no facts to prove that the text of the Avesta as we now possess it was committed to writing previous to the Sassanian dynasty[16] Prof. Darmesteter thinks it possible that “Herodotus may have heard the Magi sing, in the fifth century before Christ, the very same Gāthas which are sung now a days by the Mobeds of Bombay.”[17] As some of these early texts must have existed before the fifth century B.C. we place them chronologically before the inscriptions of Darius the Great.[18] Historians claim that ancient Persian manuscripts were destroyed, when Alexander, in a condition of drunkenness, ordered the beautiful city of Persepolis to be set on fire, in order to please the courtesan Thais.