Annotated Copy of Persia and the Persian Question by George Curzon, with Inserted Papers [‎568r] (1150/1814)

PERSEPOLIS, AND OTHER RUINS
149
was indeed the palace to which the Macedonian set fire, whether this
was the citadel and fortress of Persepolis, which have been so minutely
described by certain ancient writers, whether the buildings upon its
surface were ever completed, and by what means came about their
mutilation and decline I will postpone until a description of the
existing ruins has furnished us with the data whereupon to construct a
reply. Similarly, the artistic problems which the remains suggest,
and, in part only, avail to solve—^such, for instance, as the source from
which the idea of the palace-platform and its halls was derived, the
origin, nature, purpose, and quality of the sculptures with which they
are adorned, and the character and object of the various edifices—will
be more appropriately taken in hand when we are familiar with the
grounds of a possible induction. I may, however, state at once that
Eergussons theory that the palaces of Persepolis were buildings
adapted to the double purpose of secular government and religious
adoration will meet with no support here. 1 Indeed, I know of no
source from which it is capable of receiving support at all. There is
C. Niebuhr (1765), Cte. de Ferrieres-Sauvebceuf (1785), W. Franklin (1787), J. Scott
Waring (1802), J. P. Morier (1809-11), Sir W. Ouseley (1811), W. Price (1811),
J. S. Buckingham (1816), Sir R. K. Porter (1820), C. J. Rich (1821), Sir H. Raw-
linson (circ. 1840), Ch. Texier (1840), Baron C. de Bode (1840), E. Flandin and
P. Coste (1841), R. B. Binning (1851), J. Ussher (1861), A. Vambery (1862),
F. Stolze and F. C. Andreas (1877), H. D. Kiach (1878), E! Stack (1881), M. and
J. Dieulafoy (1881). II. Hyde, La Grose, Leibnitz, D’Hancarville, Cuper, Caylus,
Heeren, Jones, Klenker, Mannert, De Murr, Maurice, Witte, Grotefend, Hagemann,
Tychsen, Hoeck, De Sacy, Langles, De Saulcy, Norris, Rennell, Burnouf, Wall,
Lassen, Westergaard, Holtzmann, Benfey, Fergusson, Ritter, Spiegel, Hitzig,
B6zold, Kiepert, Hincks, Menke, Kossowicz, Oppert, Vaux, Mordtmann, Lenor-
mant, Sayce, Menant, Perrot and Chipiez, Noldeke. III. Of the above I select, as
the most necessary to the student: Sir H. Rawlinson, Journal of the R.A.S.,
vols. x. xi. xiv.; J. Fergusson, The Palaces of Nineveh and Persepolis restored',
C, Texier, NAnnenie, &c. ; Flandin and Coste, Perse Ancienne ; E. Menant, Les
Achemenides et les Inscriptions de la Perse ; J. Oppert, Le Peuple et la Langue
des Medes and Les Inscriptions Achemenides ; F. Spiegel, Pie Altpersischen Keilin-
schriften : F. Stolze, Verhandl. d. Gesellsch. f. Erdh. z. Berlin, 1883 ; F. Stolze and
Th. Nbldeke, Persepolis ; Th. Noldeke, ‘ Persepolis,’ in Encycl. Britan. (9th edit.);
M. Dieulafoy, EArt antique de la Perse ; Perrot and Chipiez, Histoire de VArt
dans Vantiquite, vol. v.; F. H. Weisbach, Pie Achdmenidinschriften Zweiter Art.
1 Fergusson himself saw clearly that they were not temples in the strict sense
of the term. Herodotus (i. 131) said truly that the Persians had no temples, and
when, on the rock of Bisitun, Darius speaks of having restored the temples which
the usurper Gomates had destroyed, he is, probably, either alluding to the fire-
altars of the Zoroastrian faith, or to the temples of subject nationalities and
religions which the catholic and statesmanlike sympathies of the Achcemenian
sovereigns induced them habitually to patronise. A temple, as understood in
Assyria, Egypt, Judeea, or Greece—viz. a sanctuary of the god—was a conception
necessarily alien to a belief wherein the deity was regarded as expressed in the
elemental forms of nature. Fergusson’s theory of religious adoration is based
only on a far-fetched induction from the sculptures on the royal tombs.