The hill that overhangs the platform on the south-east is shown by the drawing to be covered by a wonderful work of art. Four rows of figures support a stage whereon we observe a kneeling figure; but the serpent is now seen grovelling upon the ground, and the centipede of the earlier edition has developed into ‘a demon of as uncouth and ugly a shape as well could be imagined.’ ‘It is of a gigantic size ... discovering a most dreadful visage twixt man and beast. This monster has seven several arms.’ He now treats us to three lines of inscriptions ‘for better demonstration, which nevertheless whiles they cannot be read, will in all probability like the Mene Tekel without the help of a Daniel hardly be interpreted.’ He agrees with Della Valle that each character might represent a word—or at least a syllable. He also agrees with the same authority that the writing ran from left to right, but in the sample he gives us, two or three characters are placed upside down which, if they had fallen under Della Valle’s notice in that position would have entirely upset his argument from their ‘posture and tendency.’ Herbert compared the characters with ‘twelve several alphabets in Postellus and with the fifty-eight alphabets which Purchas had borrowed from the learned Gromex,’ but he could not perceive the least resemblance. They are, he says, ‘like Pyramids inverted, or with bases upwards, or like Triangles or Deltas.’ He, however, recommends the study to ‘ingenious persons who delight themselves in this dark and difficult art or exercise of Deciphering.’ The language must have been known to Daniel, who was probably the architect of this palace as of ‘Shushan and Ecbatan’; for we know that he was a ‘civil officer’ under ‘Nebuchadnezzar, Belshazzar, Astyages, Darius and Cyrus.’