“605. THE TOMB OF CYRUS—EZEKIEL 32:24-32”

The Tomb of Cyrus—Eze_32:24-32

Having in a former portion of this Volume given much attention to the history of Cyrus, in its connection with sacred prophecy, we cannot neglect the opportunity which is afforded by the mention of Persian sepulchers, of following the hero to his last earthly home.

It is clear that, whatever were the ordinary modes of sepulture among the Persians, their princes, and (at least in the provinces of the empire) the high satraps or grandees, had sepulchers hewn in the rock. The “sepulchers on high,” of which the Scripture speaks, were especially affected by them. Those of the better sort are found to have been placed so high up on the face of the perpendicular cliffs as to be inaccessible, without such exertion, hazard, and contrivance, as few are able or willing to exercise. Such tombs had the twofold advantage of being safer from desecration, and of exhibiting to more advantage their sculptured fronts. The Mountain of Sepulchers at Nakhsh-i-Rustam offers the most remarkable example of this practice. Here are many tombs, perhaps forming collectively, the royal sepulchers. They are excavated in an almost perpendicular cliff; about 300 yards high. They are in two rows, of which the highest are four tombs, evidently of high antiquity; while those below are of inferior workmanship and later date. The four are alike, each presenting highly sculptured fronts, and each crowned with a representation of that act of Sabean worship which has been copied in p. 125 of the present volume. Sir Robert Ker Porter obtained access to one of them by being hauled up with a rope by some active natives, who had contrived to clamber up to the ledge in front of the tomb. He found the sepulchral chamber to be thirty-four feet long and nine feet high; but it had long been despoiled of its contents. This tomb, which is in better preservation than the others, has the front charged with inscriptions, copies of which have lately been secure by the antiquarian zeal of Mr. Tasker who died of a fever brought on by the toil and exposure he encountered in taking copies of the legends, while hanging by a rope from the summit of the rock. The decipherment of these inscriptions by Colonel Rawlinson has confirmed the conjecture of Porter, that this is the tomb which Darius Hystaspis caused to be made for himself in his lifetime.

The tomb of Cyrus was of a different and more distinguished character. It was not excavated in the rock, but built solidly as a rock. A description of it is furnished by Arrian, from the account of an eye-witness, one Aristobulus—“The tomb of Cyrus was in the royal paradise at Pasargada, having around it a grove of various trees with abundance of water, and rich grass in the meadow. The tomb was below of a quadrangular shape, built of freestone. On this was a house of stone, with a roof. The door that leads into it is so narrow that a man of average height can with difficulty get in. Inside was a golden sarcophagus, in which the body of Cyrus was laid. Near it was a couch with golden feet; and the coverings were Babylonian carpets, and costly cloths of various colors, the manufacture of Babylon and Media. There were also chains, cimeters, and ornaments of gold and precious stones. Close by was a small house for the magi, to whom, since the time of Cambyses (the son of Cyrus), the care of the tomb had been entrusted, and had so continued from fathers to sons. On the tomb was engraved in Persian, an inscription to the effect, ‘O man, I am Cyrus, who gave the empire to the Persians, and was lord of all Asia; therefore, grudge me not my sepulchre.’”

Some things in this description have been ill understood by translators and explainers; but it seems to us perfectly intelligible, from what we have seen of the interior of the sepulchers of royal persons and saints in modern Persia, and indeed in Turkey. These are arranged and furnished much in the style here described. In the center of the chamber stands a kind of sarcophagus of all oblong figure, and generally higher than a man, greatly resembling in shape the hut-like upper portion of the monument of Cyrus, as shown in the engraving. This is usually of some valuable wood; and the sides are hung round with rich cloths, usually velvet, laced with gold or silver—the roof being left uncovered, and the inscription running along the ledge, between the roof and the perpendicular sides. This seems to give a correct idea of what is meant by the description, except that the sarcophagus was of gold; so that the precious metal, of which the whole was composed, shone in the uncovered roof above the rich hangings which enveloped the sides. Either to this kind of sarcophagus, or to the couch which is said to have been placed beside it in the tomb of Cyrus, the prophet’s expression, “a bed in the midst of the slain,” may very well be supposed to refer. Among the Turks, these constructions are usually lower, and rounded at top; and the costly coverings are laid over the whole, and the royal turban and cimeter are laid upon them. We have no doubt that the weapons, ornaments, etc., which are mentioned as in the tomb of Cyrus, were those which he had himself used.

Tomb of Cyrus at Murghab

When Alexander the Great visited this tomb, his officers greedily surveyed the rich spoil it offered; but the conqueror, having had the inscription explained to him, forbade that aught of its contents should be touched. When, however, he returned from Bactria, he found the tomb despoiled of all its treasures; whereat he was so wroth, that he ordered the perpetrator to be put to death, although a Macedonian of high rank and influence.

The tomb still exists in the plains of Murghab, and has been described by different travellers. Its appearance is accurately given after Ker Porter, whose description is also the best. It stands in a wide area, marked outwardly by the broken shafts of twenty-four circular columns, which surround the building in the form of a square. The base on which the tomb stands is composed of immense blocks of white marble. A succession of gigantic steps completes, in a pyramidal form, the pedestal of this truly royal tomb—majestic both in its simplicity and its vastness. The lowest range of the foundation is 43 feet by 37; and the edifice itself, which crowns the summit, diminishes to 21 feet by 16 feet 5 inches. It is covered with a shelving roof, built of the same massive stone as its base and sides, which are all fixed together by clamps of iron. The key of the tomb is in the charge of women, and ostensibly females only are admitted to the interior; but Porter found means of prevailing upon the two old guardians of the great king’s tomb to admit him. The tomb is quite empty. The walls were found to be a solid mass of stone, five feet thick; and the chamber ten feet long, seven feet wide, and eight feet in height. The whole interior surface is of polished marble, much blackened by time, and broken away in many parts, as if by violence. There is no inscription in the ancient cuneiform character, which confirms our impression that it was on the sarcophagus itself. The identity of the tomb, however, has been established beyond all reasonable doubt, by the discovery of an inscription upon a pillar hard by, consisting of four words, repeated in three different species of the wedge-like writing. This the learned Orientalist Lassen has rendered into Roman equivalents thus: Adam Qurus Kshâjathija Hakhâmanisija; and translates it, “I am Cyrus, the king, the Achæmenian.” This inscription, so beautiful in its simplicity, and so indicative, by its want of Oriental inflation, of the character of the man, is doubtless the original of the inscription which the Greek narrators amplified as above. It is indeed curious that Onesicratus, and Aristus of Salamis, have preserved a Greek hexameter which, it is pretended, was engraved by the side of the Persian legend, and which is almost as simple as the original: “Here I Cyrus, king of kings, rest.”

The remaining allusions (Eze_32:26) are to the sepulchral rites of “Meshech, Tubal, and all her multitude,” who are described as going down to the grave “with their weapons of war,” and “their swords under their heads.” This is singularly appropriate to the nations supposed to be indicated—those lying between and to the north of the Euxine and Caspian Seas. And that their “iniquities shall be upon their bones,” may very well be supposed to refer to the vast heaps of earth, answering to the ancient British barrows, which that people piled over the corpses of their deceased kings and chiefs, who were deposited in them with all their ornaments and weapons of war. In the region supposed to be indicated, we have observed great numbers of such mounds or artificial hills, generally in the form of a broad cone, more or less obtuse—that is, rounded at top; and distinguishable only from natural hills by the uniformity of their shapes, being generally overgrown with fine herbage, and sometimes garnished with trees and bushes. They are seen in the open steppes, where no natural hills occur; and also in the beautiful enclosed plains of the Caucasian region, bordered by a belt of natural mountains. Their isolation in such enclosed plains gives them their distinctive character; and the view always impressed us with the idea, that we witnessed in these mounds, so situated, the grandest cemetery the mind of man had ever devised.

The Zidonian or Phoenician sepulchers are alluded to, but not very distinctively, perhaps because they differed but little from those of the Jews. In the country by the coast, there are found various sepulchral chambers, with very elegant sarcophagi or chests of stone, with movable covers, which have generally been cast off and broken, probably in the search for treasure. These sarcophagi were no doubt intended for, or may have been removed from, the sepulchral chambers below, in the sides of which there are narrow cells, wide enough to admit one of these stone coffins, and long enough to contain two or three of them. They are found to the north of Zidon in the way between that place and Beirut. Note: See Illustration in Evening Series: Fourth Week—Thursday.

Autor: JOHN KITTO