Le Bruyn appears to have been one of the first travellers to attempt to make a collection of these antiquities to send home to Europe. The extreme hardness of the stone severely taxed the strength of his tools, and it was with considerable difficulty that he secured a piece from a window covered with cuneiform characters, and some other smaller objects. These he despatched through the agent of the Dutch East India Company to the Burgomaster of Amsterdam. So far as we know, the only other specimens of cuneiforms that had hitherto been seen in Europe were those picked up by Della Valle on the site of Babylon and sent to the Kircherian Museum. He was not very happy in some of his criticisms. He described the animals on the Entrance Portico as having a likeness to the Sphinx with the body of a horse and the feet of a lion. He imagined that the animal attacked by the lion on the sculptured stairs was a horse or even an ass. The object that separates the various groups in the same place he describes as a vase. He considered the capital surmounting the columns was the figure of a kneeling camel. He is about the only competent observer, with the exception of Niebuhr, who discerned female figures among the sculptures.[79] He appears to say that there are no less than forty-six of these in the Palace of Darius alone: among them are the King’s attendants bearing the fly-chaser and parasol. He estimates the total of human figures among the ruins at 1300; and, judging by the number of bases, he considered there were originally not less than two hundred and five columns.[80] He gives the measurements of the buildings, the size and number of the figures with a detail that becomes irksome and bewildering. The reader often regrets that he did not make better use of his pen and pencil, and spare him some of the results of the measuring tape. He is by no means too lavish of his praise. He censured the figures as stiff and devoid of animation; the nude he found represented without anatomical skill and the draperies without taste. He admits, however, that the ornamentations, when they occur, are beautiful. He was of opinion that all the stone for the construction of the various edifices came from the neighbouring mountains, where he observed all the various shades found at Persepolis. He had the good sense to reject the foolish theory supported by Chardin as to the Jamshid origin of the ruins; and he could see no evidence that they had ever been used as a temple. On the contrary, he considered that they had been a palace, and his conviction that the columns had originally supported a roof lessens the difficulty of accepting that view. He argues with some force and great diffuseness that it could only have been the Palace of the Achaemenides destroyed by Alexander: an opinion confirmed by later investigation, and one that greatly facilitated the attempt made by Grotefend to decipher the inscriptions. CHAPTER II NIEBUHR TO DE MORGAN. A.D. 1765-1897