Page:Discovery and Decipherment of the Trilingual Cuneiform Inscriptions.djvu/61

 Kesem was occupied and the new fort destroyed- Ormuz itself was attacked, and fell after an heroic resistance (April 1622). The Portuguese held the port of Jask on the mainland till the following year (1623), when it was taken by the Enalish to avenge the death of their commander Shilling, and handed over to the Persians. Thus the prortuguese were finally driven from the Persian Gulf, and their trade was transferred to the English and Dutch. Della Valle returned to Shiraz to recruit his health, and it was not till January 1623 that he found a passage in an English vessel to Surat. He reached Rome in 1626, bringing with him the body of his wife, and a large collection of curiosities. He gave an account of his adventures in a series of letters to a friend at Naples: the one which contains his description of Persepolis is dated from Shiraz, October 21, 1621. On his return to Rome he made a collection of his scattered correspondence, but the first part did not appear till 1650, only two years before his death; the portion (Part III.) that contains the letter on Persepolis was first published in 1658. It included the five cuneiform letters he had copied on the spot, and although their publication was delayed for nearly forty years they still seem to have been the first to appear in Europe; for we are not aware that the drawings of Don Garcia ever saw the light.

Meanwhile Persepolis was visited by an English traveller, whose description long anticipated that of Della Valle. It will be recollected that Gouvea met a young Englishman, Robbert Shirley, at Ispahan in 1602, and won him over to the Catholic faith. Shirley was subseqently employed by Shah Abbas as Envoy to the European Courts, and he resided for many years in Spain. The fall of Ormuz put an end to his mission in