The Iranian race, on its dispersion, as has been already remarked in a foregoing paragraph, took a direction from East to West; the Turanian scattered from South to North, and in two directions, one towards the North-East the other towards the North-West. The emigration occurred in those very ancient ages, of which we can have hardly the faintest conception; yet even here there are features of a common type which guide us like glittering stars through a night of uncertainty, and though the Iranian race has suffered much in modern times from the Turko-Tartar tribes, so superior to themselves in number, one can nevertheless detect in the groups lying scattered around, the separate rings of the former chain; precisely also as one recognises in the Western remnants, though in continual contact with Turanian and Semitic elements, the avowed Mede, so in the Eastern remnants one may recognise the primitive genuine Iranian. This preceding opinion formed from personal conviction, and every one who carefully observes the Persian of modern Iran and Central Asia must perceive the same, receives a further confirmation in the learned investigations of our arrow-headed writings;[47] and it is chiefly the Iranian catalogue of people in the arrow-headed writings at Persepolis which enumerates all the nations of Iran, starting from the centre of the empire, Persepolis, and continuing in a west and eastern direction. Of course nothing positive will be perceived in these with reference to higher or lower antiquity concerning the physiognomical distinctions of one or another branch of the families, but that a substantial difference existed already in the early ages is hardly to be doubted. "The Semitic influences in the west," says Fr. Spiegel, "began very early during the existence of the Assyrian and Babylonian kingdom, and lasted through the whole Achœmenian period. After the overthrow of the Achœmenian kingdom occurred the amalgamation with Greeks as well as Semitics, and so forth,"[48] As is rightly observed, for in the Southern provinces of Farsistan, Laristan, and Luristan, where the contact of the Iranian and Semitic elements from the earliest ages has remained undisturbed, we find in the person of the modern Persian the same physical characteristics that were described to us in these people by Herodotus, and later Greek authors. The spare form, which is more natural to the Western than to the Eastern, strongly reminds one of the principal feature of the Arabian, who is represented by Unsemitic tribes as _nahif_, haggard, and thin, whilst the Turk is _kesif_, blunt, and stout, the genuine Persian _zarif_, noble, and elegant. [47] Ritter, _West Asia_. Vol. ii. p. 86. [48] "The Ethnographical Position of the Iranian tribes." _Ausland_, 1866, No. 36, p. 853.