Page:Discovery and Decipherment of the Trilingual Cuneiform Inscriptions.djvu/154

Rh compete with Murirab as the representative of Pasargadae. On their return to Shiraz, they ascertained that Baron de Bode, an attaché to the Russian embassy, had just left for Susa. When at Kermanshah, in the preceding summer, they abandoned an attempt to reach that place from the south through the defiles of Luristan. Such an enterprise would probably not have been very easy even to travellers much better suited to deal with the turbulent tribes; and it would most likely have proved fatal to one of M. Flandin's excitable temperament. But now an opportunity offered to follow close upon the steps of a traveller protected by the authority of a diplomatic mission, and along a route that circumstances rendered at that time exceptionally secure. M. Flandin finds some difficulty in excusing his neglect to perform a journey which his commission seemed to demand. He tells us that his purse had begun to feel the strain of eight months' travel, although we find it as still sufficient to support the cost of another year in safer and pleasanter quarters. Having abandoned this project, they returned for a few days to Persepolis, in order to obtain a few plaster casts of the more striking bas-reliefs. They reached Teheran on March 20, where they met Baron de Bode, who had just returned from Susa. The inspection of the antiquities he had collected 'in that country, the object of our regrets,' must have excited some mortifying reflections; though they gladly inferred from the drawings that the place 'offered in reality little of interest.' The excavations of Mr. Loftus, ten years later, dispelled this flattering illusion. After a month spent in the enjoyment of royal favour,