Encyclopædia Britannica, First Edition/Chilminar
CHILMINAR, Chelminar, or Tchelminar, the most beautiful piece of architecture remaining of all antiquity, being the ruins of the famous palace of Persepolis, to which Alexander the Great, in a drunken fit, set fire, at the instigation of Thais the courtezan; the word comes from the Persian tchehle minar, that is to say, forty towers.
Don Garcias de Silva Figueroa, Pietro della Valle, Sir John Chardin, and Le Brun, have been very particular in describing these ruins.
There appear, say they, the remains of near four-score columns, the fragments of which are at least six-feet high; but there are only nineteen can be called entire, with another detached from the rest, about an hundred and fifty paces: a rock of hard black marble serves as a foundation to the edifice: the first plan of the house is ascended to by ninety-five steps, all cut in the rock; the gate of the palace is about twenty feet wide, with the figure of an elephant on one side, and that of a rhinoceros on the other, thirty feet high, and both of polished marble: near these animals there are two columns and not far from thence the figure of a pegasus. After passing this gate, are found fragments of magnificent columns in white marble, the smallest of which are fifteen cubits high, the largest eighteen, having forty flutings three full inches wide each; from whence we may judge of their thickness and other proportions. Near the gate is seen an inscription on a square piece of black marble, containing about twelve lines; the characters are of an extraordinary figure, resembling triangles, or pyramids: besides this, there are other inscriptions, the characters of which resemble the Hebrew, Chaldaic, or Syriac; others the Arabic or Persian; and others, in fine, the Greek characters. Dr Hyde, who hath explained the Greek inscription, by supplying some words that are effaced, observes, that the inscriptions are engraved very negligently, and perhaps by some soldiers; or, if they are the work of an engraver, he thinks that he was from Palmyra, and consequently that they are in the Phœnician tongue: he adds, that as they are in praise of Alexander, they were probably done in the time of that conqueror.