When the English mission to which Rawlinson was attached withdrew from Persia, the Shah made overtures to Louis Philippe with a view to replace the English by military instructors from France.[170] The French king judged this a favourable opportunity to reopen diplomatic relations with Persia, and he accordingly despatched the Count de Sarcey on a mission to the Shah. The ambassador was accompanied by a numerous staff, each member being charged with the investigation of a particular subject. The embassy assumed the character of an exploring expedition quite as much as that of a political mission. One attaché was required to make a special study of the geology, another of the arts, a third of the industry, as if the country had been hitherto wholly unexplored by Europeans. The proposed adventure excited much interest, and the two Academies of Inscriptions and Beaux Arts solicited permission to send representatives. This was duly accorded, and MM. Flandin and Coste were elected by the suffrage of the members of the Academies: the one in the capacity of artist, the other in that of architect.
M. Coste was already familiar with the East, and was known by a work on the Arabian monuments of Cairo. M. Flandin was apparently unused to the inconveniences of Oriental travel, and his book presents us with a harrowing picture of the sufferings he endured. It is indeed wonderful that he survived his cook, whom he describes as a ‘véritable empoisonneur,’ or the numerous lacerations of soul he underwent as, one by one, his friends returned to the shade of the boulevards and left him behind a prey to the tortures of the Persian sun. Still more wonderful that he should have escaped alive from so many perils. At one time, he and his horse roll together into a trench from which there seemed no visible escape; at another, the enthusiastic artist is seen scrambling up the rock of Behistun with bleeding feet and hands to find his toil and peril fruitless, and to accomplish a descent backwards by a ‘véritable gymnastique de lézard’;[171] or again his excitable temper involves him in personal encounters with the natives, in which blows are freely exchanged on both sides, and on one occasion he received a stab with a poniard. These adventures, however amusing to himself and his readers, unfortunately involved his antagonists in shocking punishments by flogging, which the courtesy of the Persian officials thought it necessary to inflict, although Flandin is not always free from the blame of having been the first to give provocation.
The embassy left Toulon on October 30, 1839, but it was not till the following June that the two artists settled down before the rock of Behistun, where they found numerous traces of ruins in the plain on both sides of the river, which indicate the former existence of a very considerable town; but there was nothing that pointed to an earlier date than the Greek and Sassanian periods. The only exception is the cuneiform inscription on the rock itself. Three years before, Major Rawlinson had succeeded, as we have said, in obtaining paper casts of about two hundred lines of this inscription. M. Flandin does not seem to have been aware of this achievement, otherwise he would have been less willing to declare that it is impossible to approach. After having ‘done all that was possible,’ the two travellers went on to Kermanshah. M. Coste proceeded to Sar-i-Pul-i-Zohab, where he copied a bas-relief, which was afterwards found to be of Medic origin; and Flandin was left alone to accomplish the task of copying the Sassanian inscriptions at Takht-i-Bostan.[172] After eighteen days of solitude, he returned once more to Behistun in a more resolute frame of mind. Upon this occasion he brought ladders to assist him to scale the rock; but these turned out to be too short. He declared that without a scaffolding made expressly for the purpose, it would be impossible to accomplish his object, and even then he foresaw great difficulties in its erection. As it was, he was without rope, or wood, or workmen. He, however, made one last effort, and succeeded at some risk in scrambling up to the ledge at the base of the tablet. He found the inscriptions were even then beyond his reach, and it was impossible to recede a sufficient distance to obtain a tolerable view. He ascertained that they consisted of seven columns, each of ninety-nine lines, and that there were also tablets above the figures.[173] It must be admitted that the result was extremely unsatisfactory, considering the official position of the explorer. He abandoned the enterprise and left the honour to Major Rawlinson, who, as soon as political events permitted, revisited the scene and completed the task he had already begun. Flandin and Coste returned to Ispahan in August, and after a period of rest they proceeded, early in October, to Murgab. Here they remained for two days. M. Flandin hesitates to accept the identification of the ruins with those of Pasargadae, and prefers Fasa: an impression which, however, wears off later, when he had visited that place.[174] He describes the ruins of the principal palace at Murgab to consist of three pillars and a column. ‘There are,’ he adds, ‘no means of obtaining sufficient data to reconstruct the plan. Nothing is to be found except the foundations of columns and pillars, which lead to the belief that it was formerly the site of some important structure.’ Not more satisfactory is his notice of the Terrace, which, he says, is the remains of an edifice of which it is impossible to recognise the character. These descriptions scarcely prepare us for the very elaborate plans that appear in the plates, upon which the modern ideas of the place are chiefly based.[175] From Murgab they proceeded to Naksh-i-Rustam, where they again allowed themselves to be baffled by difficulties that they should certainly not have treated as insuperable. They observed the long inscription on one of the tombs, which they made no effort to copy, because it happened to be in a position which they considered inaccessible. They reconciled themselves to the omission the more easily on account of its mutilated condition, which they thought would defy the perseverance of the decipherer; otherwise indeed it might be found to record ‘the life of the illustrious dead intombed within.’[176] Less than two years after they had left, this very inscription was copied by the Dane Westergaard; and in 1843, or seven years before Flandin published his book, it had been deciphered by Lassen, who found that it declared the tomb on which it was inscribed to be that of Darius Hystaspes. From their quarters at Husseinabad they visited various objects of archæological interest, and made drawings and plans of them. They finally removed their camp to Persepolis on October 25, and remained there to December 8. During that period of forty-three days they made upwards of a hundred magnificent drawings of the place, which will always remain a striking proof of the industry no less than the talent of the two artists. The plates include highly-finished pictures of the Terrace and surrounding country taken from various points of view; admirable drawings of the different buildings, and of all the numerous bas-reliefs they contain; ground plans of the platform and of each of the principal edifices; besides copies of all the inscriptions. The work is farther enlivened by a few pictures of Persepolis before it fell into decay, restored according to the imagination of the ingenious artists. The scale upon which this work is executed may be judged from the number of plates devoted to the more important objects. The sculptured staircase fills no less than twenty-two; the Palace of Xerxes and the Hall of the Hundred Columns occupy twelve each; while sixteen plates are appropriated to inscriptions.
There can be no doubt of the high artistic merit of these drawings; but it must have been impossible within the time to complete them upon the spot; and they have no doubt suffered in accuracy by subsequent elaboration. Sir James Fergusson indeed goes so far as to declare that they cannot be relied upon to decide any matter requiring minute accuracy of detail, and he points out several ‘of their many mistakes.’[177] It may be doubted also how far their plans and measurements are absolutely trustworthy. There is certainly the most surprising and singular contrast between the doubt and hesitation expressed in the text and the confidence and minute execution displayed in the plates.[178] The surveys indeed may be due chiefly to M. Coste: and it is possible he may not have communicated all the results of his investigations to his volatile companion. While the latter despairs of detecting the plan of the edifice at Murgab, or those of the Palaces of Darius and Ochus at Persepolis, we find all three set down with the utmost precision upon the plans; and while the one traveller declares that all the tombs at Naksh-i-Rustam contain accommodation for an equal number of bodies,[179] M. Coste was quietly making the plans that refute this statement. It cannot be admitted that the combined work possesses any exceptional authority, or that it suffices to set at rest the many doubtful points that have arisen with reference to these ruins. So far from its having superseded the more careful labours of Porter, it is entirely deficient in the minute and accurate verbal description in which that writer excels.
The copies of the inscriptions made by the two explorers have received the praise of M. Burnouf, and they are certainly wonderful productions, especially when it is considered that neither appears to have had the smallest knowledge of the cuneiform writing. If they had been able to face the perils of Behistun or the difficulties of Naksh-i-Rustam, they might still have anticipated the work of Rawlinson and Westergaard. At Persepolis itself there was little that was now left for them to accomplish. They appear to have been the first in point of time to make a serviceable copy of the inscriptions over the Porch; Rich, it will be recollected, was forced to abandon them to his Seyid, who failed in the attempt. But this inscription was first published by Westergaard, although his copy was made two years after that of Flandin. Flandin seems, however, to have been the first to publish the inscription of Artaxerxes Ochus from the west stairs of the Palace of Darius; but the same inscription occurs also on the Palace of Ochus, and this was already well known through the copy made by Rich. MM. Flandin and Coste have not therefore made any contribution to our knowledge of the cuneiform inscriptions. They, however, carried on somewhat extensive excavations. They employed labourers to clear away the rubbish that had accumulated in the palaces and which obscured the lower portion of the bas-reliefs. By this means they brought to light a Sassanian relief at Naksh-i-Rustam which had hitherto been unobserved, and which they found to be covered with a Pehlevi inscription.[180] At Persepolis they claim to have discovered eight entirely new bas-reliefs, besides disclosing the lower portion of many others.[181] They dug up the statue of a bull near the east stairs of the Palace of Xerxes, the only monument en ronde which has been found among the ruins.[182] They disclosed the head of a bull among the débris of the Porch, and finally set at rest the long debated question as to the nature of the colossal animals. They completed the portraiture of the guards on the façade of the sculptured staircase, by raising the fallen masonry.[183] They were the first to clear away the rubbish that had collected in the Palace of Darius, and to disclose the bases of the columns that had supported the roof.[184] They settled the nature of the monster with which the king is seen to struggle, by unearthing its tail, which proved to be that of a scorpion.[185] They were the first also to show the correct position and number of the columns in the Portico of the Palace of Xerxes. They were also the first to show the former existence of columns in the South-Eastern Edifice.[186] Fragments of columns strewn on the ground within the Hall of the Hundred Columns had been remarked by Kaempfer and by Niebuhr; but they do not seem to have been observed by Flandin and Coste. It was due to their laborious excavations that it was ascertained, after six and a half feet of rubbish had been cleared away, that the edifice had originally contained ten rows of columns of ten in each in the centre, and two rows of eight in the Portico.[187]
In the beginning of the year 1841, they found themselves at Fasa, and speedily recognised that it could not compete with Murgab 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.[188] 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 was still sufficient to support the cost of another year in safer and pleasanter quarters.[189] 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.’[190] The excavations of Mr. Loftus, ten years later, dispelled this flattering illusion. After a month spent in the enjoyment of royal favour, they left Teheran (April 24), and proceeded by Tabriz and Urmia to Bagdad, which they reached in July. M. Flandin bade farewell to Persian territory after a free interchange of blows with the people of the frontier village.[191] From Bagdad he paid hurried visits to Hillah and Mosul; and left early in September for Aleppo and Beyrout, where he embarked for France on December 1, 1841.
He revisited the East in 1843, in order to sketch the monuments discovered by M. Botta at Khorsabad. In consequence of this employment, the publication of the results of the Persian journey was greatly delayed. The ‘Voyage en Perse’ was not even written till 1850, and it did not appear till the following year.[192] The folio edition with plates bears no date. A portion of the plates was used by Mr. Fergusson in 1850, for his book on the Palaces of Nineveh and Persepolis, but they were not available the year before.[193] They brought home two hundred and fifty-four drawings and thirty-five copies of inscriptions, most of which they profess to have executed on the spot;[194] and the collection forms an extremely valuable addition to our knowledge of the antiquities of Persia. M. Flandin was strongly of opinion that no individual enterprise could hope to compete with the minuteness of research and the untiring industry of an official like himself, who was charged with a Government mission, and invested with the confidence of two academical bodies.[195] A Government can indeed afford to publish a book no one can afford to buy, but it seems unable to imbue its commissioners with the energy so frequently displayed by private individuals. The lamentable failure of Messrs. Flandin and Coste before the rock of Behistun and the tomb of Darius; besides the serenity with which they abandoned even an attempt to reach Susa, afford sufficient evidence of this. M. Coste is scarcely even mentioned in the ‘Voyage’; but we see enough of M. Flandin to recognise that he did not possess the qualities that make a successful explorer. His narrative is interrupted and disfigured by puerile details of personal adventure in which he evinces a complete absence of the coolness, the nerve and the tact requisite for his task. He magnifies to absurd proportions the risks to which he is exposed; he is constantly involved in humiliating personal encounters with the people of the country, in which he displays vastly more temper than courage. The reader might be tempted to regard these conflicts with some complacency, if it were not for the excruciating punishment with which the politeness of the Persian authorities thought fit to visit his assailants.[196]
Very little more now remained to be done to illustrate all that is necessary to know of these Persian ruins. The inscriptions had been successfully recovered and many times copied. The Persian text had been fully translated, and only a few obscure passages awaited farther elucidation. Still the most careful accounts were found to conflict on many points, and neither Porter nor his successors had removed the discrepancies and contradictions that had been so long remarked.
After the lapse of many years, it was determined to appeal to the new art of photography, in order to obtain a degree of accuracy that could not be achieved by the pencil. The first to make the attempt was a Mr. Ellis, but his negatives were entirely destroyed in the course of the rough journey to the sea. At length Herr Stolze made another and very successful effort.[197] He was attached to a German scientific expedition, sent out to the East in 1874, under the direction of Dr. Andreas, to observe the transit of Venus. Stolze spent some time travelling over Persia, and visited among other places Persepolis and Fasa in the winter of 1874; but his real work began in June 1878, a season of the year when the heat is excessive, and when the process of developing the negatives within a closed box involved actual suffering. Notwithstanding these disadvantages he took upwards of three hundred plates between the date of his arrival on June 16 and his departure on July 3. He found the vertical sun of summer better suited for photographing the inscriptions than the bas-reliefs, especially those situated in the deep shade of the doorways. One of his greatest achievements was the photogrammetric plan of Persepolis, which surpasses any previous attempt to arrive at an accurate survey. It is said that no fewer than three hundred and fifty plates were used in the construction of the three metrical plans at the end of his second volume.[198] After a few days spent at Murgab, he hastened back to cooler quarters. His negatives were so carefully packed that they all reached Europe in safety. Unfortunately, one case was opened at the London Custom House, and the plates were replaced so loosely by the bungling official that a few were cracked; but even these have been pieced together without retaining much trace of their ill usage. In the course of his travels he took no fewer than fourteen hundred negatives, and in the spring of 1879 he had the satisfaction to find himself at Berlin with his treasures. In September 1881, he submitted a few of the completed photographs to the Fifth Oriental Congress, and they sanctioned the publication of those relating to the Achaemenian and Sassanian periods. The result was the appearance, in 1882, of ‘Die Achaemenidischen Denkmäler von Persepolis,’ photographed by Stolze and edited by Noeldeke; and two more ponderous and magnificent folios were thus added to the growing mass of inaccessible lore. Persepolis alone occupies ninety-nine plates, and the scale on which the work is executed may be judged from the devotion of twenty-one views to the Palace of Darius, eighteen to the Palace of Xerxes, twelve to the Hall of the Hundred Columns, and twelve to the Hall of Xerxes. Nine plates (106-14) are devoted to Naksh-i-Rustam and eleven (127-37) to Murgab. It is doubtful how far the photographic process will assist the student of the inscriptions. Noeldeke fears it will be of little value as regards the Pehlevi; and certainly little can be made out of the cuneiform except by the constant and painful use of a powerful magnifying glass. They may, however, be occasionally useful to decide disputed points: as, for example, the photograph of the inscription on the Anta of the Palace of Darius proves that the transcription of Westergaard is correct, and that of Rich wrong (Plate XIII.). Another photograph shows that the error in one of Niebuhr’s copies is due to a defect in the original.[199] Elsewhere Niebuhr is shown to be even more careful than Westergaard.[200] The photographs of the monuments and bas-reliefs meet with a very varying measure of success. Some are so blurred and indistinct that it is fortunate that they are each labelled in German, French and English; otherwise we might doubt whether they are correctly described.[201] Comparative success is reached more frequently, and excellence occasionally. It is particularly unfortunate that the great sculptured staircase has not been taken on a sufficiently large scale to bring out the figures with distinctness (Pl. 77 ff.); Noeldeke is, however, of opinion that it is the best view of them taken since Ouseley, thus passing over both Porter and the two French artists, Texier and Flandin. Among the most valuable views from Murgab are the two plates showing the Tomb of Cyrus (Pl. 128-9). The series closes with what might pass for a snowy mountain in Switzerland, but which is explained to be fragments of a bas-relief at Pasargadae (Pl. 137). Noeldeke, like Texier, fully believes in the destruction of some of the buildings by fire, and he also considers that few of them were ever thoroughly completed; indeed he attributes to that cause the absence of all traces of walls round the Hall of Xerxes, or of a roof. He thinks there never were any more columns than can now be identified, and that some even of these were left unfinished. The same applies to the Entrance Porch; possibly the gates on the North and South sides (which are supposed to have been part of the general design) were never erected; nor the second pair of columns. At the instigation of Dr. Andreas, a trench was dug into the Central Mound, which had long been the object of so many conjectures, with the disappointing result that it was found to contain nothing but cuttings discarded by the masons.
Three years later, in 1881, these ruins were visited by M. Dieulafoy and his wife, Madame Dieulafoy, who notwithstanding the disabilities of her sex, has been appointed a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour and an Officer of the Academy. The journey has resulted in the production of two vast works: one an elaborate treatise on ‘L’Art antique de la Perse,’ in five volumes, petit in-folio, 1884, by Monsieur Dieulafoy; and a single volume of massive proportions descriptive of their travels by the valiant and industrious lady.[202] M. Dieulafoy is one of the best known writers in France on architecture, and his opinions, though at times as fanciful as those of M. Flandin, are always worthy of respect. Madame Dieulafoy displayed marvellous pluck in the course of her adventures, and extraordinary expansiveness in their relation. When the span of life is lengthened to that enjoyed by the patriarchs, there will be time to study her works at leisure. One other traveller should be named who has given an admirable account of Persepolis, and, if detached from its cumbrous surroundings, one more adapted to the pressure of modern times. Lord Curzon visited Persia in 1889-90 and he has devoted a chapter of his Travels (chap. xxi. vol. ii.) to the subject. It is by far the best description we know, and affords all the information that need be sought. He frequently calls attention to the extraordinary contradictions to be found in the various writings on the subject, which, from the days of Porter, it has been the constant aim of successive travellers to remove. In mere matters of opinion there is, of course, no prospect of reaching unanimity in this or in any other subject. Whether the great halls were walled and roofed, or protected only by falling curtains; whether the palaces were ever occupied as residences or reserved only for state ceremonial, and a host of other disputed questions, will remain points of controversy. Each successive traveller with pretensions to originality to establish will continue to put forward new theories, and he will illustrate the beauty of his imagination by elaborate drawings of his conjectural restorations. These are inevitable failings of humanity and must be treated with toleration; but it is different when mere questions of fact are involved. After three centuries of travellers to Persepolis, we have still to reiterate the desire of Fergusson that some one may yet be found ‘who will go there with his eyes open, which does not seem yet to have been the case.’[203] Although the sun itself has been summoned to share in the task, even still there is a conflict of evidence as to the number of windows in the Hall of the Hundred Columns, as to the number and position of the columns in the Palace of Darius, and many other points too tedious to mention. There may indeed be more important questions in the world awaiting solution than even the exact construction of a Persepolitan palace, but it is irritating to find, notwithstanding our painful quest, that Truth evades our grasp in this as in weightier matters.