Nestorian Christian, as the latter part of the name -Iso is cer- tainly Jesus, found not uncommonly in Nestorian proper names, and the second manner of decipherment gives an old appellative still current in Syriac names. ^
Passing farther up, towards the entrance into the fortress, we came across a series of inscriptions, perhaps a dozen, cut on a parapet of gray stone, before one reaches the entrance ; they were chiseled in Arabic letters, but were not so old as the tab- lets, though perhaps five or six centuries old.
We had now reached the doorway of Narln Kal^ah, or ' the Citadel of Narin ' (the meaning of the name Narin not being clear), the fortress whose antiquity goes back into the hoary ages. This was the stronghold ascribed by current tradition to Alexander's foundation ; it was the Viraparach or BLpairapax of the writers of Byzantine times on the wars of the Romans and the Persians,^ and the citadel mentioned by many authors afterwards.
Close by the entrance, however, were seven or eight stones marked with the same kind of characters as those seen on the third, or lowermost, block at the left of the Bayat Kapii Gate, as already described. In style of writing they seem to resemble a cursive Pahlavi, but appear to be Syriac (?), yet the markings are so weathered as to be, for the most part, illegible. Alas, that their mutilated lips can no longer tell a tale that may be connectedly read!
It is worth noting in passing that one of these inscribed blocks had evidently been battered down in some onslaught that had breached the wall, but it was restored afterwards to its place, or to a place not its own — upside down ! This fact
1 The second way of reading is pre- Lydus, De Magistratibus, 3. 51-53 ;
f erred by my colleague, Professor Priscus, Fragm. 31 and 37 ; and Syriac
Richard Gottheil. In parts of West- Version of the Pseudo-Callisthenes,
em Persia, I know, Nestorian Chris- ed. Budge, Hist. Alex. p. 140, 1. 12.
tians have left cuttings of their names These passages in full will be found
in Syriac. discussed in my forthcoming mono-
3 See above, references to Joannes graph, Caspia Portae.
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