aces must have possessed,
besides the method which has been described as a cursive system of
writing. Of this, however, there is at present no direct evidence. No
cursive writing of the Arian nations at this time, either Median or
Persian, has been found; and it is therefore uncertain what form of
character they employed on common occasions.

The material used for ordinary purposes, according to Nicolas of
Damascus and Ctesias, was parchment. On this the kings wrote the
despatches which conveyed their orders to the officers who administered
the government of provinces; and on this were inscribed the memorials
which each monarch was careful to have composed giving an account of the
chief events of his reign. The cost of land carriage probably prevented
papyrus from superseding this material in Western Asia, as it did in
Greece at a tolerably early date. Clay, so much used for writing on both
in Babylonia and Assyria, appears never to have approved itself as a
convenient substance to the Iranians. For public documents the chisel
and the rock, for private the pen and the prepared skin, seem to have
been preferred by them; and in the earlier times, at any rate, they
employed no other materials.

CHAPTER VI. CHRONOLOGY AND HISTORY.

Media . . . quam ante regnum Cyri superlovis et incrementa Persidos
legimus Asiae reginam totius.--Amm. Marc, xxiii. 6.

The origin of the Median nation is wrapt in a profound obscurity.
Following the traces which the Zendavesta offers, taking into
consideration its minute account of the earlier Arian migrations, its
entire omission of any mention of the Medes, and the undoubted fact that
it was nevertheless by the Medes and Persians that the document itself
was preserved and transmitted to us, we should be naturally led to
suppose that the race was one which in the earlier times of Arian
development was weak and insignificant, and that it first pushed itself
into notice after the ethnological portions of the Zendavesta were
composed, which is thought to have been about B.C. 1000. Quite in
accordance with this view is the further fact that in the native
Assyrian annals, so far as they have been, recovered, the Medes do not
make their appearance till the middle of the ninth century B.C., and
when they appear are weak and unimportant, only capable of opposing a
very slight resistance to the attacks of the Ninevite kings. The natural
conclusion from these data would appear to be that u