How a Renaissance Man Discovered the Samaritan Pentateuch

Rejected in love, the Italian nobleman Pietro della Valle (1586–1652) set sail from Venice in 1614 hoping that a pilgrimage to Jerusalem would heal his broken heart. What began as a rather ordinary excursion, however, was destined to turn into an extraordinary 11-year sojourn that took della Valle through Egypt, the Levant, Turkey, Persia and India. With the financial means to follow his wide-ranging intellectual interests wherever they led him, he studied Turkish and Arabic in Constantinople, visited exotic locations unknown to most Renaissance Europeans and collected unusual artifacts throughout the Near East. Among the souvenirs he brought back from his travels were several drawings he had made of cuneiform texts in Persepolis. He also returned to Italy with a small cargo of Persian cats, a breed he is thought to have introduced into Europe.