É. Apor (ed.): Stein, Aurel: Old Routes of Western Iran. (Budapest Oriental Reprints, Ser. B 2.)

INTRODUCTION xiii of Hellenization to which all the vast territories once included in the Achaemenian empire were exposed after Alexander's conquest. Hence the modern phase has much of special interest to offer to the historical student. Personal experiences of travel gathered at this curious stage of transition may help to illustrate corresponding aspects of the past and may prove instructive in retrospect to observers in the future. Reasons previously indicated made me anxious to have my work in the field linked with a reliable survey of the ground over which my journey would take me. It was hence very gratifying to me that the Iranian Government kindly granted permission for a careful plane-table survey to be carried along my routes wherever the ground crossed had not before been properly mapped. The results of such surveys were as on all previous journeys duly communicated to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs at Tehran. But apart from this enlightened permission, I owe sincere gratitude to H.M. the Shäh's Government for the very generous way in which it granted all needful facilities for my explorations in general. Without the ready help and protection on the part of the authorities, military and civil, which its instructions assured to me, it would have been impossible to carry out my task. That I was able to move for months in perfect safety through hill tracts of Lür and Kohgalu tribes, where conditions of anarchy had prevailed more or less constantly for generations, was striking proof of the boons of peace and order which the strong rule of H.M. Riza Shäh PahlawT has assured to the land. In the person of M. Bahmän Karimi, Inspector of Antiquities, the Ministry of Public Instruction kindly