NOHENXLATURE OF MONUMENTS TO BE STUDIED. 45 posing ruins, which all travellers who have seen them have agreed to identify with the Persepolis of the Greeks, to which modem Persians apply the name respectively of Chehl-Minar (the Forty Columns), Takht-i-Jamshid (the Throne of Jamshid), and Kane-i- Dara (the House of Darius).* It is just possible that the Parsd of the cuneiform inscriptions denotes this same place. The remains of the palaces of the Achsmenidae, from Darius, the head of the second dynasty of Persia, stand at different levels on a spacious and artificial platform at the foot of the mountain. The royal tombs are excavated, speos-like, behind the es[}Ianade, in the flanks of the lofty cliff. To the same epoch belong the remains of the town of Istakhr, distant some five kilometres from this to the ward at the entrance
- of the Polvar valley. Its well-chosen situation near the passes, on
the bank of the river as it escapes from the narrow gorge, and the rich arable and pasture land around, made it an importtot thriving centre down to the Arab conquest. Conspicuous among its relics are fragments of Jamshid's harem. The third group of monuments are at Naksh-i-Rustem, on the right bank of the Polvar, whiere the masons who built Istahkr attacked the spur of a mountain which faces the platform of Persepolis on the other side of the valley. Here, in the gloomy depths of the lofty difif, are the rock-tombs of Darius Hystaspes and three other kings ; whilst incised in the sheer front of the rock appear the famous " drawings of Rustem," the legendary hero of Persia, whom the natives think they recognize in the figures representing Sassanid sovereigns, the Sapors or Sh&pOrs and Chosroes, depicted below the tombs in the side of the cliff at its ^ Before the Macedonian epoch, the Greeks do not appear to have had any clear notions in regard to the royal residence j they deemed that the Great king always held bis court at Sma, because thdr envoys woe usually received there. The pardcular name the Peniaiis gave to the diief town of their own country of Fars is not known with cert^ty; the term "Persepolis" does not appear in Greek historians before Alexander, and is generally ascribed to Clearchus. To be grammatically correct it should have been lIcp<roiroAi«, since the literal signification of n^w^roXw is properly "town-destroyer." It was a play upon the word, mtended to recall the name of Persians and the destruction (ir^**"*) of the town by Alexander, in imitation of 'IXioi- Tre/urK of the Greek epos. Later historians and geographers tried to correct the ill-formed name, and proposed TLfp<Ta[-troXi<t, IIc/MrtVoAts, and even IIc/xroTroXts ; but to no purpose. The liabit wa^ of too long Standing to be easily cast aside (NobldbkBi *' Persepolis" in Eiuyde^. Brit^ 9th editX Digitized by Google
