XV. Account of an Antique Persian Gem: by the Rev. Stephen Weston, B.D. F.R.S. and F.A.S. in a Letter to the Earl of Leicester, President

Extract

I have the honour to exhibit to your Lordship and the Society an Agate, on which is engraved the head of a Persian Princess, with her name in Pahlavi, or ancient Persick characters. With the Gem itself is a drawing, and an impression in wax. The letters are six in number, and as follows: Sheen, Alif, Laum, Vau, Meem, Yee, and make up the word Shalumee, the name of a woman, and in modern Persian Selimee, corresponding with the Greek term EIPHNH, Irene, or Peace. The lady, who bears this name on my Gem, was the daughter of Chosru Parvees, the victorious, twenty-first monarch of the race of Sassan, of the fourth dynasty, of Persia, who having been set upon his throne, from which he had been driven by his subjects, by Mauritius the Greek Emperor, married his daughter Irene, and called her by a Persian name, which, like her own, signified Peace.