Pasargade

Pasargadae

Unless otherwise indicated, pictures on this page © Marco Prins and Jona Lendering. Photos can be downloaded and used for non-commercial purposes, but you have to acknowledge Livius. Pasargadae (Old Persian Pâthragâda) was built by the Achaemenid king Cyrus the Great in the valley of the river Polvar. According to the Roman geographer Strabo of Amasia, the town was built on the site where king Cyrus had defeated the leader of the Medes, Astyages, in 550 BCE (Strabo, Geography 15.3.8). This may or may not be true. In Antiquity, at least eight dams regulated the river, which shows that Pasargadae was an important city. It became the capital of the Achaemenid empire, and remained its most important settlement until Darius I the Great and Xerxes built Persepolis. Yet even then, Pasargadae remained an important town, because the king was inaugurated here. The Greek researcher Herodotus of Halicarnassus, writing a generation or two after the foundation of the new capital, knew the name Pasargadae but did not know Persepolis. (Compare modern Holland: the government is in The Hague, but Amsterdam, where the Dutch king is inaugurated, is more famous.)

The picture above shows a view of Pasargadae from the Tall-i Takht, the citadel in the north.
Pasargadae resembled a large park, about 2x3 kilometers large, in which several buildings were to be seen. This is one of the most famous monuments: the tomb of Cyrus. The great king was buried here in 530/529. According to literary sources, more than two centuries later, Alexander the Great ordered the tomb to be restored. Archaeologists have found no traces of repairs, however. The monument stands on a small platform. Similar substructures are known from Anatolia, but as yet, it is impossible to establish which ones are earlier - the Iranian or Anatolian. Here you can see it on a satellite photo. Stated differently, it is possible that Cyrus got the idea of this type of monument when he had defeated king Croesus of Lydia in 547 (or a couple of years later), but it is also possible that the Anatolians copied an Iranian form.

The tomb is about eleven meters high. There are two chambers: one is the real tomb, the other is an attic. The function of this second room is unknown.

The tomb as one approaches it on a winter's day... ... and again. The tomb chamber: two meters wide, two meters high, three meters deep. It contained a gold sarcophagus, Cyrus' arms, his jewelry and a cloak. This garment played an important role in the Persian inauguration rituals (see Plutarch of Chaeronea, Life of Artaxerxes, 3.1; the custom itself is Babylonian). The Mosque of the Mother of Soleyman, seen from the Tomb of Cyrus the Great. This Muslim sanctuary may occupy the site of an ancient temple, dedicated to a warrior goddess. Here, the king was inaugurated. The tomb again. Although it is not an enormous building, it dominates the fertile plain, which is on all sides surrounded by mountains. It is as if the tomb was built in a giant natural bowl.