Tomb of Cyrus the Great

The tomb of Cyrus the Great is located in Pasargadae, which was the first capital city of his Achaemenid Empire and is now an archaeological site in the Fars Province of Iran.

The mausoleum is a significant historical example of earthquake engineering as it is said to be the oldest base-isolated structure in the world, allowing it great resilience against seismic hazards.^[4] It is one of the key Iranian UNESCO World Heritage Sites, as part of the archaeological site of Pasargadae.^[5]

Identification

Prior to being identified with Cyrus the Great by the British diplomat James Justinian Morier in 1812, it was attributed to a certain “Mother of Solomon” in legendary accounts that had emerged at some point after the Muslim conquest of Iran; Morier’s understanding, drawing upon the works of the German traveller Johan Albrecht de Mandelslo, was that it referred to Wallada bint al-Abbas ibn al-Jaz, who was the mother of Sulayman ibn Abd al-Malik (r. 715–717) of the Umayyad Caliphate. Similar beliefs suggested to the Venetian explorer Giosafat Barbaro in the 15th century asserted that it was the resting place of Bathsheba, who was the mother of Solomon (r. 970–931 BCE) of the Kingdom of Israel and Judah. It was also later identified by Johan Albrecht de Mandelslo.^[6]

It was first identified as the Tomb of Cyrus in the early nineteenth century, first in 1812 by James Justinian Morier and then in 1821 by Robert Ker Porter.^[7]

Morier described the tomb as follows:

[It] is a building of a form so extraordinary that the people of the country often call it the court of the deevis or devil. It rests upon a square base of large blocks of marble, which rise in seven layers pyramidically… On every part of the monument itself are carved inscriptions, which attest the reverence of its visitors; but there is no vestige of any of the characters of ancient Persia or even of the older Arabic. The key is kept by women, and none but females are permitted to enter. The people generally regard it as the monument of the mother of Solomon, and still connect some efficacy with the name; for they point out near the spot a certain water to which those who may have received the bite of a mad dog resort, and by which, if drank within thirty days, the evil effects of the wound are obviated. In eastern story almost every thing wonderful is attached to the Solomon of Scripture: the King however, to whose mother this tomb is said to be raised, is less incredibly, (as the Carmelites of Shiraz suggested to Mandelsloe), Shah Soleiman, the fourteenth Caliph of the race of Ali. But though this supposition is more probable than that it is the monument of Bathsheba, it is not to my mind satisfactory, as it differs totally from all the tombs of Mahomedan saints which I have ever seen in Persia, Asia Minor, or Turkey.^[8]