Volume 1

A history of Babylonia and Assyria / [R.W. Rogers] ; rev., largely rewritten, and illustrated.

  • Robert William Rogers
Date:
[1915], ©1915
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A history of Babylonia and Assyria / [R.W. Rogers] ; rev., largely rewritten, and illustrated. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    39/764 (page 9)
    Mount Rachmet was a wandering friar, Odori- cus, or Odoric, by name. He was going overland to Cathay, and on the way passed between Yezd and Huz, about 1320 A. D. He had no time to look at ruins, and appears hardly to have seen them at all. Yet his record is the first word heard in Europe concerning the ruins at Persepolis: ‘‘I came unto a certaine citie called Comum, which was an huge and mightie city in olde time, conteyning well nigh fiftie miles in cir- cuite, and hath done in times past great damage unto the Romanes. In it there are stately pal¬ aces altogether destitute of inhabitants, notwith¬ standing it aboundeth with great store of victuals. The passage is disappointing. Odoric was a ^ The Second Volume of the Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of the English Nation, etc. By Richard Hakluyt, Preacher, and sometime Student of Christ Church, Oxford. Imprinted at London, anno 1599, p. 54. [Here beginneth the iournall of Frier Odoricus, one of the order of the Minorites, concerning strange things which hee sawe among the Tartars of the East.] The following is the original Latin text: “A]:> hac, transiens per civitates et terras, veni ad quamdam civitatem nomine Coprum, quae antiquitatus civitas magna fuit: haec maximum damnum quondam intulit Romae; eius autem muri bene quadraginta miliarum sunt capaces. Et in ea sunt palacia adhuc integra, et multis victualibus haec abundat.” (See Sopra la Vita e i Viaggi del Beato Odorico da Pordenone, Stuni del Chierico Francescano Fr. Teofilo Domen- ichelli. In Prato, 1881, pp. 156, 157.) The name of the place called Comum, above, is variously written by different authorities: Comerum, Yulk; Conium, Venni; Comum, Utin. ; Coman, Mus.; Comerum, Pars. The manuscript readings are very diverse, but I believe with Yule {Cathey and the Way Thither, ])y Col. Henry Yule, C. B., London, Hakluyt Society, 1866, p. 52, note) that the reading to be preferred is Comerum, whi(‘h is the Camara of Barbaro, the Kinara of Rich, and the Kenar6 of Mine. Dieiilafoy.