Persepolis
Trip Start
Apr 07, 2012
1
38
136
Trip End
Nov 14, 2012
Esafan, Iran
Tuesday, May 22, 2012
Here we are at another ruin
I actually found some information about the place in English
It was originally called Parsa and the first reference to it is by its Greek name of Persepolis meanining both City of Parsa and Destroyer of Cities came after the sacking of the city by Alexander, years later Islam had ago and did even more damage
(if you are wondering how stone buildings can be destroyed, the roofs were made of timber, they caught fire and melted the copper and lead fixings, it also burnt with such heat, the stone carvings and blocks spilt, bringing them down and As they toppled it caused even more damage, but Islam actually hacked at the carvings and reliefs and removed any art paintwork, but they are trying to restore and renovate now, but with so few records of what was there, they are on a losing battle
Very few records exist about the city at the time in foreign records, fuelling speculation that the city was kept a secret from the outside world
The few remaining records focus on the Achaemenid capital, including Babylon, Ecbatana (modern Hamadan) and Shush
It was built during the reign of Darius and Xerxes; it was ruined by Alexander the Great, in 330BC
To me it was very reminiscent of Luxor, but in a worse condition
There were even some graffiti dating back to the 1800's, even Stanley (the bloke who found Livingstone) there were quite a few soldiers names and their regiments scratched into the rocks (even then they liked leaving mementos of their visit (I hope the photos of them I took are visible, it was an awful day for taking photos)
There were many relief carvings, but they had really been hacked about and some scarcely recognisable
I saw 2 tombs that reminded me very much of Petra and the Monastery, I would have liked to climb up and have a decent look at them, but we were only here for 2 hours and then we went in search of a new bush camp
Comments
Getting to be another david attenburough, with journetys.
Very intersting mate
So it shows you nothing does change so they did do drawing on the walls in the early times we found that out when we went to the tombs in luxor but i guess it was really good to see
sounds interesting mate and pity it was a fly by as it would of been interesting to see more an i am sure the pictures will look great when posted
Goodness, they certainly are rushing you through. You seem to stop at the grotty places and rush through the interesting ones. Strange that the Muslims destroy images and paintings, then want to restore them for tourists. According to Google that's Muslim iconoclasm.