He remarked the great inscription near the lion on the wall of the sculptured terrace below the Columnar Edifice. ‘It occupies,’ he says, ‘the entire height of the wall from top to bottom. One cannot tell in what language or letters these inscriptions are written, because the characters are unknown. They are very large and are not united to one another, but divided and distinct, each by itself alone as in Hebrew: if indeed what I take for a letter only is not a complete word. I have copied five of them as best I could, and they are those that occur most frequently.’[23] The lines of the inscription are filled up ‘so that I cannot tell whether they are to be read from right to left as in Oriental languages, or from left to right as with us.’ He is, however, disposed to believe they are read from left to right, because when the ‘pyramidical figure’ is vertical the head is always uppermost, and when the figure slopes or is placed horizontally the head is to the left and the point inclined to the right. He remarked that the writing was composed entirely of the one pyramidical figure and of an angular character more slender than the other; and it was simply the number and disposition of these two forms that constituted the difference of the letter. Don Garcia had no doubt that the ruins had been entirely devoted to the secular uses of a palace and citadel. We have seen that Della Valle, though he accepted their identification with Persepolis, could not readily believe that the large roofless buildings had ever been suited for a dwelling, and he therefore inclined to the theory that they were the remains of a temple.