Page:Discovery and Decipherment of the Trilingual Cuneiform Inscriptions.djvu/76

Rh alphabets in Postellus and with the fifty-eight alphabets which Purchas had borrowed from the learned Gromex,' but he could not perceive the least resemblance. They are, he says, 'like Pyramids inverted, or with bases upwards, or like Triangles or Deltas.' He, however, recommends the study to 'ingenious persons who delight themselves in this dark and difficult art or exercise of Deciphering.' The language must have been known to Daniel, who was probably the architect of this palace as of 'Shushan and Ecbatan'; for we know that he was a 'civil officer' under 'Nebuchadnezzar, Belshazzar, Astyages, Darius and Cyrus.'

During the remainder of the century we are chiefly indebted to French travellers for the gradual accumulation of more correct information upon this subject, and it was greatly to their advantage that they could always depend upon a hospitable welcome and much store of information from the friendly Superior of the Capuchins at Ispahan. When Persia was first rendered accessible to Europeans by the liberal policy of Shah Abbas, numerous missionaries flocked to the capital in the hope of winning converts to the Roman faith. We have already seen that the Augustinian Friars who arrived with Gouvea were awarded a disused palace as a monastery. They were followed, in 1608, by Carmelites from Rome. In 1627, Father Pacifique, of the French Order of Capuchins, obtained permission to establish missions at Ispahan and Bagdad; and during the second half of the seventeenth century their house became a resort of the principal European travellers. The rule of Père Raphael du Mans covered the whole of that period. He is first heard of at Ispahan, in 1644, where he remained as Superior of the Order till his death, in 1696, at the age of eighty-three. Not