When to all these details we add the rustication of the stones and the position-marks found on the blocks, it will be recognised that the architect and workmen came from Asia Minor and copied in servile fashion the sepulchral structures of that country. The architectural form of these towers reminds us of the Lycian tombs at Telmessus, Antiphellus, Aperlæ, and Myra, and above all of the celebrated Harpy tomb at Xanthus.
Fig. 140.—Tomb of Cambyses I. (Restoration by M. Dieulafoy).
The descriptions given by Strabo (x. 3, 7), and Arrian (vi. 29), following Aristobulus, of the tomb of Cyrus, enable us to assert that it was like the square towers of Meshed-Murgab and Nakhsh-i-Rustam: “The tomb stood in the middle of the king’s gardens; it was surrounded by trees, running water and soft turf. It was a square tower, low enough to be hidden under the thick trees which surrounded it. The base was solid and composed of large cubical blocks. In the upper part was the sepulchral chamber, covered with a stone roof. It was entered by a narrow door. Aristobulus saw in it a golden couch, a table with cups for libations, a gilded tub for washing and bathing, and a quantity of garments and ornaments. There was a communication, by means of an inner staircase, with the chamber in which lived the priests who guarded the tomb.” It is not permissible, then, to doubt that, in the time of Cyrus, the kings of Persia had tombs built like those of Lycia, and that the towers which we have described preserve for us specimens of them.
Fig. 141.—Façade of tomb at Nakhsh-i-Rustam (after Flandin and Coste, Perse ancienne).