Page:History of Art in Persia.djvu/214

 TiiE Built Tomb. 203 whilst there are still visible traces of subsidiary sections or annexes, and the whole has been traced, measured, and drawn by travellers whose testimony is in perfect accord. It is a problem, then, well deserving to be discussed, all the more that data exist which may help to solve it. In the first pJace, let us reconsider the description of Aristobulus by the light of the plan, perspective view, and section of the Gabre (Figs. 96, 49, 95), when the numerous points of agreement cannot fail to strike each one of us. Reference is made to a pertdolos, or court, by the wayside leading to the memorial, within which stood the small house of the Magi who had the keeping of the tomb.* Remains of the enceinte still exist, and it is possible that were excavations made, they might result in the discovery of the site of this same house or lodge. As to the colonnade, it is not specially mentioned, but the word peribolos, often employed by Greek historians in connection with the temples of Asia Minor and Syria, where the sanctuary was always surrounded by spacious courts and vast offices, is enough by itself to awake the idea of ranges of columns around a court If Aristobulus says nothing of these covered walks, it is because he had seen too many, his eye was too well accustomed to them to feel any surprise. What, however, excited his attention were those trenches for irriga- tion, the green lawns, and the shady walks leading to the enclosure. The Greeks had nothing that resembled those well-timbered parks, those paradises, as they said, amidst which the Persians loved and love now to place their monuments.' If from examining the annexes we pass to the tomb itself, we can easily trace the characteristics insisted upon by Aristobulus, e.g. a quadrani^ular shape, a massive substructure, and a small chamber with pedimented roof, making up a type of which this is Vfiuepov TOts MayiH? irtmtrjfiivov, 01 Sij iiXa(T(Tov tov Kvpov ra^v (Arrian, vi. 29). fied from the Zend pairida^ found in the Aveti», where it has the goient 8ignifi> cation of endosure, a space fenced m {VtmfidM, iii. s8, 19: *▼. 49). There is nothing strange in the fact that in the dialect spoken in Persia at the time of the Achjemenida:, it should have been used in a more definite sense, when it came to denote those parks, full of beautiful trees and game, by which the great lords of Perna. set so much stoi^ as we learn from Xenophon and Plutarch. The word no longer exists in the Persian language We find it in Hebrew under the form of j>ardiSf whence it passed into Arabic as Jiii/aus, and through Arabic it has got back to Persian. The word is found in the name of the celebrated poet Ftrdausi. Digitized by Google
 * E^«a4 Si ^VTOf rov WtptPmihn irpot avafidaci tt; <7rt tov rdtftov ^^mvajf oUeiffiA
 * Grammarians tell us that the Greek wgrd irapabtunn is of Persian origin, modi-