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 The Ideas of the Persians as to a Future Life. 195 such clay vats, the situation they occupied in the stratum, as well as the objects that were found in them, led him to the conclusion that they were not older than the Parthian epoch/ In a word, no chance plough or spade has ever brought to light, as so often happens in Greece and Italy, a whole number of graves in which the people of old sleep their last sleep, laid out in their earthy beds ; and yet the population of Persia has never been displaced, and if portions of the plateau are still inhabited and susceptible of cultivation, it is because the early Aryan immigrants, some three thousand years ago and more, excavated canals so as to bring subterraneous waters to the surface. There are, then, no ancient cemeteries in Persia ; albeit isolaLtd tombs occur here and there, of which many deserve to rank among the most important and remarkable monuments of the first Persian empire. Out of these, three are buildings constructed on the same lines and with the same materials as the substructures of the palaces and fire-altars ; seven are hypogeia which may be safely ascribed to the Acha;menid kings — indeed, one of them still bears engraved on the facade the name and exploits of the sovereign who erected it ; lastly, travellers have descried a few vaults on various parts of this vast territory which may be taken as humble imitations of the royal sepulchres. The fact that tombs, whether built or hollowed in the rocky wall, are so few in number was certainly not because the work was above the capacity of the Persian artban. From the speci- mens we have engraved, both of his buildings, columns, and capitals, a pretty good notion will have been gained of his skill in working and dressing stone. He gave equal proof of his boldness and patience when he attacked the living rock, as the inscriptions and sculptures of the Persepolitan tombs and the rock at BehistQn amply testify. If then tombs, built or subterraneous, are very rare, if necropoles of the kind that hide within their retreats all that goes to make a civilization now disappeared have not and can never be found on Persian soil, the lacuna must not be laid at the door of the builder, but as the natural effect of beliefs whose character we have pointed out Inhumation was not yet regarded as odious and impious in the day of the Achaemenidae, since the kings, and perhaps a few aping satraps, prepared tombs for themselves in the neighbourhood of their palaces ; but their Digitized by Google
 * DiBULAFOY, Daixiime Rapport {Revue Areki,, 1886, torn. viii. pp. 275, 276).