PERSEPOLIS

Old Persian Parsa, modern Takht-e Jamshid, or Takht-i Jamshid (Persian: Throne of Jamshid) an ancient capital of the Achaemenian kings of Iran (Persia), located about 32 miles (51 km) northeast of Shiraz in the region of Fars in southwestern Iran. The site lies near the confluence of the small river Pulvar (Rudkhaneh-ye Sivand) with the Rud-e Kor. Though archaeologists have discovered evidence of prehistoric settlement, inscriptions indicate that construction of the city began under Darius I the Great (reigned 522-486 BC), who, as a member of a new branch of the royal house, made Persepolis the capital of Persia proper, replacing Pasargadae, the burial place of Cyrus the Great. Built in a remote and mountainous region, Persepolis was an inconvenient royal residence, visited mainly in the spring. The effective administration of the Achaemenian Empire was carried on from Susa, Babylon, or Ecbatana. This accounts for the Greeks being unacquainted with Persepolis until Alexander the Great's invasion of Asia. In 330 BC Alexander plundered the city and burned the palace of Xerxes, probably to symbolize the end of his Panhellenic war of revenge. In 316 BC Persepolis was still the capital of Persis as a province of the Macedonian empire. The city gradually declined in the Seleucid period and after, its ruins attesting its ancient glory. In the 3rd century AD the nearby city of Istakhr became the centre of the Sasanian empire. The site is marked by a large terrace with its east side leaning on the Kuh-e Rahmat (Mount of Mercy). The other three sides are formed by a retaining wall, varying in height with the slope of the ground from 13 to 41 feet (4 to 12 m); on the west side a magnificent double stair in two flights of 111 easy stone steps leads to the top. On the terrace are the ruins of a number of colossal buildings, all constructed of a dark gray stone, (often polished to the consistency of marble) from the adjacent mountain. The stones, of great size, cut with the utmost precision, were laid without mortar, and many of them are still in place. Especially striking are the huge columns, 13 of which still stand in Darius the Great's audience hall, known as the apadana, the name given to a similar hall built by Darius at Susa. There are two more columns still standing in the entrance hall of the Gate of Xerxes, and a third has been assembled there from its broken pieces. In 1933 two sets of gold and silver plates recording in the three forms of cuneiform, Ancient Persian, Elamite, and Babylonian, the boundaries of the Persian Empire were discovered in the foundations of Darius' hall of audience. A number of inscriptions, cut in stone, of Darius I, Xerxes I, and Artaxerxes III indicate to which monarch the various buildings are to be attributed. The oldest of these on the south retaining wall gives Darius' famous prayer for his people: "God protect this country from foe, famine and falsehood." There are numerous reliefs of Persian, Median, and Elamite officials, and 23 scenes separated by cypress trees depict representatives from the remote parts of the empire who, led by a Persian or a Mede, made appropriate offerings to the king at the national festival of the vernal equinox. Behind Persepolis are three sepulchres hewn out of the mountainside; the facades, of which one is incomplete, are richly ornamented with reliefs. About 8 miles (13 km) north by northeast, on the opposite side of the Pulvar River, rises a perpendicular wall of rock in which four similar tombs are cut at a considerable height from the bottom of the valley. This place is called Naqsh-e Rostam (the Picture of Rostam), from the Sasanian carvings below the tombs, which were thought to represent the mythical hero Rostam. That the occupants of these seven tombs were Achaemenian kings might be inferred from the sculptures, and one of those at Naqsh-e Rostam is expressly declared in its inscriptions to be the tomb of Darius I, son of Hystaspes, whose grave, according to the Greek historian Ctesias, was in a cliff face that could be reached only by means of an apparatus of ropes. The three other tombs at Naqsh-e Rostam, besides that of Darius I, are probably those of Xerxes I, Artaxerxes I, and Darius II. The two completed graves behind Persepolis probably belong to Artaxerxes II and Artaxerxes III. The unfinished one might be that of Arses, who reigned at the longest two years, but is more likely that of Darius III, last of the Achaemenian line, who was overthrown by Alexander the Great. The Rev. R. Norman Sharp Additional reading Donald N. Wilber, Persepolis: The Archaeology of Parsa, Seat of the Persian Kings, rev. ed. (1989); Mortimer Wheeler, Flames over Persepolis (1968, reprinted 1979).