Page:Discovery and Decipherment of the Trilingual Cuneiform Inscriptions.djvu/81

 where he observed a man with a bow sacrificing to an idol which resembles a satyr. He was unable to visit Naksh-i-Rustam. He was greatly impressed by the general effect produced by these ruins, and he considered them 'one of the finest remains of antiquity.'He dwelt especially upon the immense number of bas-reliefs; he estimated that there were at least two thousand, many of them only showing their heads above ground. In addition to the general view, he has drawn a few of the bas-reliefs, among others that of the man sacrificing to the satyr. Others represent the personage beneath the parasol, or fighting the lion. These sketches are insignificant in size and execution, but they are a great advance upon the preposterous attempts of his predecessors. He shows an inscription round an arch, but it is of a purely imaginative character; and he merely records the existence of letters 'which no one can read,' many of which, he adds, were gilt. He adopted the opinion of Pére Raphael that the edifice was a Temple and erected by Assuerus, though he tells us that others maintain that it was the Palace of Darius.

A year after the publication of the 'Beautés de la Perse' a much more prosaic narrative appeared (1674), written by Daulier's travelling companion, M. de Thévenot. De Thevenot was born at Paris, in 1633. He found himself at an early age in possession of independent means, and he began liis travels at nine- teen. He first visited England, which seems to have been then regarded as the training ground where the traveller might be inured to the perils of foreign ad- venture (1G52). He subsequently visited Holland and Oermany, and he spent a few years in Italy. He had the advantage of meeting M. dTIerbelot at Kome,

Voyage de M, de Térenot Bk. III. chap, vii, pp. 501 ff.