Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 8.djvu/437

 NOTICES OF ARCIIAEOLOCilCAL rUULICATlONS. 339 fastnesses, as their only safeguard, and that to a liardly cfTectual one, against the craft of the Persians and the tyranny and higotry of the Turks. Tlii' author tlicn proceeds to narrate the diflerent accounts of the taking of Babylon ; and, in his remarks on Cyrus, and the curious fact that though the most distinguished of the ancient Persians, we have no satisfactory account of his ultimate fate ; he points out the real value of early Persian history, and how little really satisfactory historical truth can he extracted from the mass of fables and legendary tales with which its history is so full. With a short iwtice of Zoroaster, who has been generally supposed to have lived during the reign of Darius the son of Ilystaspes, our autlior gives a rapid sketch of the chief characters who appear upon the field of Oriental history — Darius, Xerxes, Alexander the Great, and the Greek Empire of the Seleucida) in Syria and Western Asia ; and then, with a passing allusion to the Roman invasion of Asia, and the gallant resistance made by the Arsacidje, he comes to the rise of the first strictly Oriental Empire, in the successes of Ardeshir, the son of Babegan, the founder of the House of Sassan. To this portion of the history, no less from its intrinsic interest and value, than from the fact, that during the maintenance of power by this family many of the finest works of art, still remaining in Persia, were executed, our author has been induced to devote a considerable portion of his limited time and space. On the decline of the Empire of the Sassanida;, we have the rise pointed out of the Mohamedan power, and a sketch is given of the history of the principal chieftains and conquerors whose arms won for the disciples of Muhammed the empire of central ^Vestern Asia — the conquests of Mahmud of Ghazna and Timur are especially dilated on, and the latter is shown to have been much more than the mere ruthless destroyer of life and property which he has been too generally, and too hastily esteemed. From the death of Timur, the history of Persia and indeed of Western Asia, presents few features of any peculiar interest, and our author therefore passes almost immediately to the second division of his work — the account of the travellers themselves who have, in modern times, made Eastern lands the subject of their investigations. " The commencement of Travels in the East " was, as our author has stated " mainly due to the natural wish of Christians to visit scenes which had been consecrated by the sufterings and death of their Lord " — and hence. Pilgrimages to the Holy Sepulchre were the first instances of travels properly so called. Hence even in very early times we hear of long journeys performed for this holy purpose, and the names of Arculf, Willi- bald, Bernard the Wise, and Sa)wulf, are well known to those who have studied the History of Europe before the commencement of the middle ages. As time went on, travellers of a different description are met with ; and the journeys of Benjamin of Tudela, Marco Polo, and Maundeville, bear some resemblance to the more scientific expeditions of late times. From the return of the last of these travellers there seems to have been a cessation of such journeys, till, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, we hear of one John Eldred, an English merchant, who left England for Tripoli ia 1583, and who was one of the earliest, if not the earliest modern, who mentions having himself beheld what was called the Tower of Babel. Eldred was followed by many others, travellers of more or less note, Pietro della Valle, Emanuel de St. Albert, Chardin. Lobrun, and others, till at length Niebuhr, the father of the celebrated historian, visited Babylon in 1765, and has left an excellent description of what he saw there and VOL. VIII. ^ z