Annotated Copy of Persia and the Persian Question by George Curzon, with Inserted Papers [‎533r] (1078/1814)

FROM ISFAHAN TO SHIRAZ
89
bracketed as they were. Furthermore, we know from the inscriptions
on Babylonian cylinders that Cyrus was originally king of Anzan ;
and if Anzan, as appears probable, was identical with the west part of
modem Persia, perhaps with Susiana, it is unlikely that he would be
found fighting Astyages and founding a royal city in the distant
east. Above all, there is not at or near Darabjird the smallest vestige
of palace or tomb of Cyrus, not a single cuneiform inscription, nor,
indeed, any remains that can conceivably be regarded as Achsemenian,
with the possible exception of a species of rampart in the middle
of which rises a rugged rock, identified by tradition with the citadel
of Darab or Darius, 1 generally supposed to be the Darius Nothus of
the Greeks, who reigned 423 b.c. It is difficult to believe, in a country
where some lelics, at least, have been found of nearly all the great con
temporary cities, that Pasargadse, had it been here, could have been so
completely blotted out from the face of the earth.
I am disposed myself to think that the name Pasargadse, which, as
we know from Herodotus, was that of the royal tribe of Persia, may
Conclusion haVe been S iven to more than one sit e, and may thus very
naturally have confused the Greek and Latin writers, who were
compiling their works about countries which they had never themselves
seen from the testimony of earlier writers, whose accounts they could
not invariably reconcile, and who thus led them astray. We have
already seen that the title of Pasargadse was applied to a lofty
mountain m one locality (which I have identified with the valley of the
Polvar) ; whilst in another passage of Ptolemy we find a second place
of the same name in Kerman. I even think it likely, for reasons
that will be stated in the next chapter, that Pasargaclse may have been
the Persian title of Persepolis itself. It is possible, therefore, that there
may also have been a Pasargadm or Pasarracha in south-east Pars, at or
near Darabjird or Fasa, to which the few allusions in the classical
writers which postulate such a situation may have referred. But that
1 Ouseley, who visited it in 1811, called it Kaleh-i-Dehay eh (probably a mis
understanding of Darayeh), Travels, vol. ii. p. 177. Keith Abbot in 1850 de
scribed it as a mud rampart, thirty to forty feet high, surrounding an isolated
rock at a distance of 800 yards {Journal of the R. G. S., vol. xxvii. p. 189).
Flandin and Coste visited it in 1841, and have included a ground plan and illus
tration in their beautiful collection of plates, vol. i. plate 81. J. R. Preece, the
latest visitor, in 1884, said that the remains consisted of walls of clay, twenty feet
high, with a ditch forty feet broad, surrounding two small rocky hills, the higher
of which is 100 feet. He added: ‘After searching the whole place and most
carefully examining the rocks all about, not the slightest trace of a stonemason’s
handiwork could be found, and the rocks show no sign of ever having been touched.
The place did not give the idea of any great antiquity. It doubtless belongs to
the Sassanian period, and not to the Achtemenian, as we surmised and hoped.’
{Supplementary Proceedings of R. G. 8., vol. i. part iii.)