PERSEPOLIS TO ISPAHAN. 
145 
Around it, besides a great profusion of broken marbles, are the shafts 
of fourteen columns, once perhaps a colonnade, but now arranged in the 
square wall of mud which surrounds the whole remains. To the 
present day all the space within the enclosure is a place of burial, and 
is covered indeed with modem tomb-stones. 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 Carme¬ 
lites of Shiraz suggested to Mandelsloe,) Siiaii Soleiman, the 
fourteenth Caliph of the race of Ali. But though this supposition is 
more probable than that it is the monument of Bathsiieba, 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. [Plate XXI.] 
If the position of the place had corresponded with the site of 
Passagardce as well as the form of this structure accords Avith the 
description of the tomb of Cyrus near that city, I should have been 
tempted to assign to the present building so illustrious an origin. That 
tomb was raised in a grove; it was a small edifice covered with an 
arched roof of stone, and its entrance was so narrow that the slenderest 
man could scarcely pass through: it rested on a quadrangular base of 
a single stone, and contained the celebrated inscription, 44 O mortals, 
44 1 am Cyrus, son of Cambyses, founder of the Persian monarchy, 
44 and Sovereign of Asia, grudge me not therefore this monument/' 
