Page:Discovery and Decipherment of the Trilingual Cuneiform Inscriptions.djvu/40

Rh books and obscured the subject in hand. He is certain that some such building with a hundred columns had existed somewhere, but it never seems to have entered his mind that he had to go so far afield as Persia to find it. Whether the idea was suggested by what he had heard from Barbaro we cannot say; but it is a complete error to suppose that he represented his drawing as 'the plan and elevation of Persepolis.' The first to suggest the identity was Don Garcia, who, however, does not appear to have read what Serlio had to say on the subject. He thought Serlio had called his drawing the 'Forty Alcorans' and omitted its size and proportion. Serlio, on the contrary, says nothing about forty columns, and he gives the proportions of his imaginary edifice, which he leaves us to infer was one of the marvels of Greece.

It was not till the Portuguese found their way round the Cape of Good Hope that communication with Persia became regular and frequent. In 1508, Alboquerque conquered the island of Ormuz at the entrance to the Persian Gulf. Even at that time this barren rock was the resort of merchants from India; and under Portuguese rule it rapidly rose to great prosperity. Its king was permitted to retain his rank and a nominal authority, but his dominions, which included the islands of Kesem and Bahrein and the port of Gombrun on the mainland passed under Portuguese influence. In the division of the East among the religious orders, Persia fell to the Augustinians, to be the special field of their missionary labours. They erected a church and convent at Ormuz, which continued for a hundred years to be a centre of their activity. In the reign of Don Sebastian the Father