to Naksh-i-Rustam resulted in the earliest drawings we possess upon an adequate scale of the façade of a tomb, and it was completed by a ground plan of the interior.[114] He expressed his conviction that the third tomb with the long cuneiform inscription was in all probability that of Darius, an opinion afterwards proved to be correct.[115] The long debate as to the nature of the enigmatical animals on the Great Porch at Persepolis was still undecided. Even Mr. Morier adhered to the notion that they were horses, but Porter’s keen eye at once identified them with the bull, which subsequent discoveries at Nineveh has confirmed.[116] He also showed that the capital of the columns was composed of two half bulls, but he does not seem to have recorded that they are elsewhere varied by half griffins.[117] Porter had no doubt that the Takht-i-Jamshid represented the ruins of the palaces of Persepolis, although the subject had not yet passed beyond the region of controversy. He inclines, however, to the compromise favoured by Niebuhr, and dwells upon the pontifical character of the sovereign, especially after the death of Zoroaster, when, he says, Darius assumed the title of Archimagus. He accepted Morier’s suggestion that Murgab was the site of Pasargadae and its principal monument the tomb of Cyrus.[118] He had a thorough belief in the decipherment of Grotefend. He not only accepted his recognition of the names of Darius and Xerxes, but he followed him when he traced their descent from Jamshid. That hero was, he thought, none other than Shem, whom sacred writ planted in that very region of Persia, and possibly Persepolis bore his name from the very earliest ages.[119] Porter did not himself advance our knowledge of the inscriptions. He copied the inscription at Murgab, but that had been previously done by Morier and Ouseley, and, as he candidly remarks, he ‘found that we all differed in some of the lines from each other.’[120] He also copied a portion of the inscription (A) on the sculptured staircase, of which Niebuhr had already given a satisfactory rendering;[121] and finally he took the trouble to execute an extremely imperfect copy of the four tablets of inscriptions on the south wall, which had also been much better done by Niebuhr.[122]