نسخة مذيلة من "بلاد فارس والشأن الفارسي" بقلم جورج كرزون، مع أوراق مدرجة [و‎‎٥‎٦‎٢] (١٨١٤/١١٣٦)

PERSEPOLIS, AND OTHER RUINS
139
1 ^ 5 ^ 1 © design of the author, or the
number of dead whom the sepulchre was expected to accommodate.
Interior The structura, l disposition is, however, in all essentials the
““ ge ' Same * Crouchin g to pass through the low doorway, the
visitor, who has probably been hauled up by his guides
or by the neighbouring villagers to the level of the portico, enters first
a sort of vestibule, usually flat-roofed, but in some cases arched, and
hewn out of the solid rock. Behind this and opening from it is a series
ot lecesses, containing deep excavations, originally covered with stone
lidb, foi the reception of the royal dead. The maximum number of
these sarcophagi, in any one of the Achgemenian tombs, is nine. The
cavities have in every case been rifled many hundred years ago, and
the cuiiosity of the explorer can expect no spoil. The interiors are
black and begrimed, and redolent, like the Egyptian rock-tombs, with
the odour and fluttering of bats.
The peculiarities of each royal sepulchre, where they exist, may be
separately noticed. The first or easternmost has a different orientation
First from any of its fellows at Naksh-i-Rustam. Situated in a
i. i
deep natural bay of the rock, it faces, not south, but west,
and did not accordingly, when I saw it, admit of photographic
delineation. The angle of the cliff is here so extremely abrupt, that
not even the nimble-footed natives can clamber up in order to haul the
traveller up after them, and I can find no record of the interior having
been so visited by Europeans. It could only be attained by means of
ladders or a scaffolding. The inaccessibility of this tomb, and its
protection from the blinding glare of the midday sun, have enabled its
sculptures to retain a greater crispness of outline than is the case
with any of the others ; and one might well believe that the artificer’s
chisel had only yesterday been laid down.
IText in order comes the most interesting of all the sepulchres,
inasmuch as the unravelled mystery of the cuneiform alphabet reveals
Tomb of to us that it hid the body of the greatest of Persian kings,
Harms Darius son of Hystaspes. 1 This we learn from the crowded
lines of arrow-headed inscriptions in the three tongues—Persian,
Susian, and Assyrian—that fill the space between the central columns
of the portico, and part of the upper surface of rock behind the king. 2
The £ writing on the wall ’ has suflered a good deal in the lapse of time,
particularly so the Persian text. Yet from it we ascertain without doubt
that it is Darius who speaks. To Ormuzd he gives honour j his own
1 For the tomb, vide Texier, vol. ii, pi. 128; Flandin and Coste, vol. iv.
pis. 174-8; Stolze, vol. ii. pi. 108. For the inscription, vide Stolze, vol. ii.
pis. 109-11.
2 There are traces of this inscription having- been picked out in blue, one of
the few certain relics of colour on the stone sculptures of the Achgemenians.