Annotated Copy of Persia and the Persian Question by George Curzon, with Inserted Papers [‎524r] (1060/1814)

FROM ISFAHAN TO SHIRAZ
73
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Dieulafoy
(1881),
Part I.
3,4
5
12-14
17
18-20 |
metres l 011 #’
a palace or hall of audience, similar to those that were raised by the
successors of Cyrus at Persepolis.
Descending towards the south on to the level of the plain, the next
ruin, at a distance of over 300 yards, is that of the single wall of a four •
2. Not a sided building that has been commonly called the Fire-temple ;
liie temple (Ouseley said that the local designation was Zindan-i-Suleiman
or Prison of Solomon). I am not aware that there is the slightest justifi
cation for this purely arbitrary nomenclature, beyond the fact that this
building appears to have been an exact facsinrileof the square tower that
stands in front of the royal rock-tombs at Naksh-i-Pustam (vide the next
chapter) and the interior chamber of which, being blackened by smoke, was
hastily conjectured to have been used for the rites of their worship by
the Zoroastrians. There is, however, every reason to suppose that neither
edifice ever was, or could have been, a fire-temple. The upper chamber
in each, entered by a staircase from outside, was an apartment without
aperture or outlet except the door. It was roofed over, and had no
communication with the roof ; nor could the latter have supported a fire-
altar, seeing that it was slightly convex in shape. Moreover, the form
of the Peisian atesh-gahs, or fire-altars, still remaining or reproduced
in sculptures and on coins, is entirely different. There can be little
doubt that both of these towers were sepulchral in character, the means
of hauling up the heavy weight of a sarcophagus having even been
traced in that of Naksh-i-Pustam ; and the analogy to some of the
Lycian tombs discovered in Asia Minor, notably that at Telmessus, is so
minute as to confirm this belief. M' e need not, however, rush to the
conjectural extreme of M. Dieulafoy in identifying the Murghab
tomb as that of Cambyses, the father of Cyrus. The aperture of the
doorway that led into the inner chamber gapes in the still surviving
wall, 1 and the remains of the staircase are visible below- it. The entire
structure is 42 ft. 3 in. high, and 23 ft. 3 in. square, and the blocks
are of the same material as the Takht-i-Suleiman, held together, not by
mortar, but by cramps. They are also pitted with the same incised
orifices, probably designed with decorative intent, that are visible in
the tower at Naksh-i-R;Ustam.
At about the same distance to the south, the third ruin is visible
m the shape of a single tall monolith, or block of chiselled stone,
3. Inscribed eighteen feet high, one side of which is hollowed in the form
pillai i 0 f a niche (perhaps in order to receive the crude brick-work
of which we may assume the walls of the building to have been com
posed), while high up on the exterior surface are engraved in four
1 Early in the century parts of all four walls were standing, and as late as
1840 parts of two. The stones are carried off by the natives for housebuilding
purposes.