Pasargadae

30.253.179444444444Koordinaten: 30 ° 12 '0 "N, 53 ° 10' 46" E

The ancient Persian royal capital Pasargadae (Persian پاسارگاد Pasargad; Πασαργάδαι Greek, Latin Pasargadae ) is located at 1900m altitude in the Zagros Mountains on a plateau in the Persis ( Fars Province ) and was the first residence of the Persian Empire under the Achaemenid Empire, about 130 km north-east of Shiraz.

Name

The Elamite name is Batrakataš. Today's popular term is a Greek transcription of Old Persian name Pâthragâda.

History

Pasargadae was founded by its first king Cyrus II, perhaps as a military camp, and by his successor, Cambyses II between 559 BC and about 525 BC expanded. The city extended over approximately 300 ha city used its time on an elaborate underground irrigation system. Today the ruins of the palaces with monumental gates, Apadana Palace and the reception with rich plastic decorations can be seen. In the sacred precincts of the temple with fire altars and the tomb of King Cyrus II is on a base of six stone steps is a cenotaph in the form of a small stone house attached. The tomb stood in a large garden.

Around 520 BC, the residence of Darius I was moved about 87 km to the southwest. The reconstructed remains of the capital city are known by the Greek name Persepolis.

A third residence of the Persian Empire, which in the years around 331 survived until the attack of Alexander the Great BC, was in Susa, near the present-day city Abadan near the Iraqi border. The three damaged to varying degrees places were once surrounded by residential neighborhoods. More residences were the old Mederhauptstadt Ecbatana and sometimes Babylon.

Archaeology and history of discovery

In 1907, his doctorate, the German archaeologist Ernst Herzfeld ( 1879-1948 ) at the Friedrich Wilhelm University, now Humboldt University in Berlin with a thesis " Pasargadae. Recordings and investigations into the Persian archeology " with Eduard Meyer. Herzfeld had visited the ruins of Pasargadae in 1905 for the first time. The first systematic excavations were carried out in 1928 by Herzfeld and his assistant Friedrich Krefter with the financial support of the Emergency Association of German Science. Later Pasargadae was explored by Iranian and for a short time by British archaeologists. A significant part of the first excavation documentation and fragments of wall paintings from Pasargadae is now in the Ernst Herzfeld estate in the Freer Gallery of Art in Washington, DC.

Gardens

David Stronach identified the gardens of Cyrus residence. They were surrounded by colonnades. It is not certain whether there were here other solid building or whether the king resided in an army camp. Stone Condensed channels defined two adjacent gardens. The channels are probably following a natural river bed and were perhaps used to transport the building materials. Stronach reconstructed a Chahar Bāgh of 145x112, 5 m extent. Its boundaries were defined by smaller channels, which led to the transverse wall of the palace in the north and a small pavilion in the south. Stronach assumed the throne of Cyrus was in the axis of the gardens. Other channels were discovered in the course of a geomagnetic survey by a team of Iranian Cultural Heritage Organization of the Ministry of Research and the Ministry of historic preservation and the French Maison de l' Orient the University of Lyon and CNRS. The pavilion had a stone rectangular base, which measured 11.5 X10.2 m. In the northeast and southwest of the building had each a portico, 17m long and 4.3m wide, the projected beyond the building itself. From the building itself is only a few remnants had received.

A stone bridge led over one of the main channels. She was 15.6 m long and 16 m wide, and provided with three rows of columns which were built in about 4 m and had a diameter of about 90 cm. They were originally about 2 m high and had no capital.

Reception

Thomas Browne published in 1658 an essay on "The Garden of Cyrus, or the quincuncial, lozenge, or network plantations of the ancients, artificially, naturally, mystically considered". It dealt mainly with the quincunx, the arrangement of trees in a plaid pattern, which he likened to the Greek X and connected with the crucifixion of Christ. Browne stressed the importance of clear rules in the art of gardening. Cyrus had trees as his armies arranged ( " Disposing his trees like his armies in regular ordination ").