Annotated Copy of Persia and the Persian Question by George Curzon, with Inserted Papers [‎558v] (1129/1814)

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PERSIA
and discouragements ; nor can tlie impetus be exaggeiated ^\niclr their
lal)ours gave°to the study of Persian art and architecture. In later
times, the science of photography has come to the aid of the student;
and although in the blinding glare and corresponding shadows of the
Eastern atmosphere, unequal results have so far only been attained, we
have, nevertheless, much to be grateful for in the plates of Stolze, 1 and
of Dieulafoy. 2
And yet, for all our modern amplitude and certainty of knowledge,
to this day we have no idea what was the ancient Persian name that
The real was used h y and his successors for the city and the
name palaces that were reared by them in the valleys of the Medus
and Araxes. Istakhr and Persepolis are the titles by which they are
known to us—the former applied to the city of the populace, the latter
to the palace-platform of the sovereign. But the name Istakhr does
not so much as occur in a single Greek writer The lowest of the four classes into which East India Company civil servants were divided. A Writer’s duties originally consisted mostly of copying documents and book-keeping. , and is believed to be of
Pehlevi origin ; while the name Persepolis, which has been consecrated
in the usage of the world, is never heard of before the time of
Alexander, 200 years after its edifices had begun to be raised, and
then only starts into existence from the doubtful parentage of a pun. 3
These are problems upon which the cuneiform inscriptions have, so far,
thrown no light, and which it appears doubtful whether the ingenuity
of a future generation will be able to solve.
The several fabrics of the different Achsemenian sovereigns will
come under notice in the order of their occurrence. Persepolis, though
with the Macedonian invasion it leaped into a European fame, had not
1 Persepolis, 2 vols., 1882. 2 L'Art antique de la Perse, five parts.
3 persepolis, if it signifies the ‘ city of the Persians,’ should rather have been
Persopolis. But the form Persepolis was, in all probability, preferred because
of the play on the Greek word irtpcns (cf. the A\iov 7re>cm), signifying ‘destruction,
and of the veiled allusion to the exploit of Alexander, from one of whose his
torians—probably Clitarchus—the name originated. At the same time it mus
have been an approximate translation of the original Persian name. What was
the latter ? History is silent on the point. Ctesias, Plutarch, Xenophon, an
other writers frequently speak of it as TUpcrai, but it is disputed whether this
refers merely to the city or to the country. Personally, I incline to think that tie
name Pasargadse, or Parsagardae, which, as I have before shown, was the name
both of the royal tribe and of the city of Cyrus, and which is explained as having
signified the ‘ city or encampment of the Persians,’ or, if not thecompoun wor
then ‘Parsa’ by itself, may have been employed by Darius to denote his later
capital, a little lower down the course of the same river; and that the Gree s,
hearing it interpreted as above, may have adopted the punning translation, Pers
polls In the cuneiform inscription on the Propylma of Xerxes occur the words,
Parsa, which Rawlinson translates ‘ besides or in this Persepohs Opp ^
‘dans cette Perse,’ Spiegel ‘in Persien,’ and Wiesbach ‘ m ^esem Persie •
accept Rawlinson’s theory that the reference is not to the country, but to the .
and platform itself. Vide Journal of the B. A. S., vol. x. p. 331.