A Monumental History

Persepolis... and the word MAUSOLEUM.

 
     The ruins of Persepolis that survive,
 massive though they may be, give only the faintest
 hint of the wealth of this ancient seat of government.
 The Greek historian Plutarch sheds some light on
 the matter when he said that Alexander the Great,
 who conquered Persepolis around 330 B.C., needed
 10,000 mules and 5,000 camels to carry away the
 spoils. Those treasures belonged to the Achaemenid
 dynasty of kings, and Persepolis was just ONE
 of their royal capitals! It is often said that
 the splendor of Athens and of all Greece, and later
 Rome, were just copycats of Persepolis. And there
 is good evidence to back up that statement. In
 that sense all of Persepolis is a monument, but
 there is more...

     Naqsh-i Rustam is a solid, wide cliff near
 Persepolis and holds four tombs belonging
 to the Achaemenid and later Sassanian dynasties.
 The inscription on one tomb identifies it as that of
 Darius the Great. The others are thought to be
 those of his successors, Xerxes I, Artaxerxes I,
 and Darius II. The tombs are carved to depict
 the facade of a palace, and the bas-reliefs show
 figures supporting a king on a throne while he
 seems to be worshipping the Zoroastrian god Ahura
 Mazda. In front of these tombs is the Cube of
 Zoroaster, a 40 foot high building with a single
 inner chamber and an outside stairway. It is thought
 to date from the time of Darius the Great and may
 have been a fire temple.

     What brings this monument to our attention,
 besides the enormous wealth and skill needed to cut
 away an entire cliff, is that all the carvings on it
 tell vivid stories, without any writings.
 Iran sits between India and the great societies of
 the West. In India massive shrines and temples were
 being built in honor of the gods and human fertility.
 These buildings were covered with carvings of all
 sorts, sometimes to the point of being wholly
 congested! But not one word explains anything -
 the figures do it all. Back in the West we find
 less emphasis on figurines and more on emotional
 responses and words. Persepolis is the refinement
 of the Indian method and the probable precursor of
 the Western method. Not only is Naqsh-i Rustam
 an awe-inspiring memorial, it's a clear monument
 to the art of communication.
     Meanwhile over in a small kingdom named Caria
 around this time in 353 B.C., a king of no note
 - King Mausolus by name - died.  His wife, and sister,
 Artemisia, just fell to pieces over her loss. After eating his
 ashes for two years she finally died of a broken heart.
 However, during those two short years she gathered the
 best architects and sculptors to build a sepulchral monument
 for her beloved at Halicarnassus. It was tagged Mausoleum
 in honor of her king and the entombed man. It's a similar
 story as the Taj Mahal except this monument was 
 built out of sorrow for the loss of a king, not a queen. And,
 also like the Taj, this monument was esteemed for over
 1,000 years as one of the seven wonders of the world. 
 Until the Crusades did a number on it. The knights of
 St. John, to be exact, in 1402. When it was excavated in
 1857, the area of the base, which was cased with marble,
 was measured to be 230 by 250 feet. 

Go to:

Part 2, The Taj Mahal. | Part 3, Newgrange & Stonehenge. | Part 4, Nile Valley. | Part 5, Persepolis. | Part 6, Parthenon. | Part 7, Pont Du Gard. | Part 8, The Colosseum & St. Augustine & MASONS. | Part 9, Renaissance. | Part 10, Miss Liberty. |

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