Page:History of Art in Persia.djvu/58

 Nomenclature of Monuments to be studied. 43 primitive people of Anterior Asia, who on the neighbouring rocks of Malamir have left curious sculptures — of which specimens will be given a little farther on — long inscriptions seemingly in the Susian language, the deciphering and translating of which are not yet by any means an easy task. If from Susiana the traveller goes through the Bakthiyari mountains, he will reach Persia properly so called, Farsistan, Pars, and thence lihe Shiraz province, the cradle-land of the royal house of the Achxmenidse, whose sons were the youthful com- panions in arms of Cyrus. Here are found monuments of Pefsian art, both numerous and well preserved, which from the seventeenth century, when they were visited by Chardin, have been carefully drawn and studied by subsequent travellers. They may be divided into three principal groups. The first, to name them from north to south, is found in the upland valley of the Polvar, near Meshed-i-Morghab ; the second at Persepolis ; and the third hard by, at Naksh-i-Rustem, ruling the plain of Mervdasht (see map, Fig. 7). The ruins near the small village of Meshed-i-Murghab were long held as those of Pasargadse, a holy town of Persia, frequently mentioned by Greek writers. Within the last twenty years, however, some have tried to prove that the site of Pasargadse should be sought, not in the Polvar valley, but to the southward of Shiraz, on the caravan road which from this town ran to Kirman, somewhere between Fesa and Daral)gcrd.' This is not the place for discussing a somewhat obscure question of historical geu^^raphy, but for the sake of brevity we wHl continue here to designate as Pasargadse the group of ruins near Meshed- i-Murghab where a great block of masonry occurs, built out of the hill, known as TakkU-Madere-i-SoUman ("the Throne of Solomon's Mother"), intended, no doubt, to uphold a structure that never was built and the remains of a palace that rose in the plain ; together with two monuments — the Gabre-Madere-i-So1ei- torn. xix. p. 548, and Disulafoy, L'Art laUiqiit de la JWse, i. pp. 1-3. Noeldeke {J^rsia, p. 565) and Stolzk {Bemtrkmngen) do not accept the reasons pat forth by the Brendi savant, and continue to regard the ruins at Meshed-i-Murghab as those of Pasargadx. No remains of the Acbsememdian epoch are visible in the neigh- bourhood of Darabgerd. s The word iakhtc properly signifies any artificial platform akin to those stages that serve as thrones. Digitized by Google
 * With regard to the position of Pasargadse, see Oppcrt, yiwrz/r// asiii/ii/uf, 187 1,