Naqshé Rustam is an excellent location in the province of Fars, located six kilometers from Persepolis. The place is unusually rich in Sassanian historical monuments, as well as monuments of the Achaemenid dynasty, built or carved into the rocks.
The country of Iran is ready to surprise lovers of archeology.
Naqshé Rustam is famous for its rocky relief and royal tombs, made in the form of a depression in the rock. Doesn't this remind you of Petra in Jordan?
There are four royal tombs on the territory of Naksh Rustam. These are the tombs of the kings Darius, Xerxes the First, Artaxerxes the First and Darius II. The belonging of the tombs to these kings was established thanks to the inscriptions made about 500 BC.
After the conquest of Persepolis by Alexander the Great, the tombs were abandoned and plundered by the army of the great commander.
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Unfortunately, the oldest relief of the necropolis (around 1000 BC) was damaged. This relief depicts a person of Elamite descent.
The name of the necropolis, which we know today, came to us from the Islamic era, from those times when the previous kings were forgotten and the people attributed the scenes of the bas-reliefs to the hero of the legends Rustam. "Naqshe-Rustam" literally means "Rustam's drawings".
The rocky terrain is simply amazing to the eye. The brightest seven rocks were named after the seven Sassanian kings. These are the kings Ardashir I, Bahram II, Nars, Ormizd II and Shapur I, celebrating the victory over Philip the Arab and Valerian.
Naqshe-Rustam is also known for the greatest archaeological work - a square structure, twelve meters high. This building contains only one interior space and most of it is underground. The Iranians call this building "Zarathustra's Cube". Most likely, this structure served in ancient times as a Zoroastrian sanctuary of fire. But there is also a mention of the tomb of Cyrus the Great under this building. However, no version has been documented.
By the beginning of the 19th century, when it was decided to study this complex, it was only a covered area of land, and only in 1930 it was finally cleared away with the help of excavators. This made it possible to open the great work of architecture to the curious eyes of tourists.
On one of the special tablets, archaeologists deciphered the saying of King Darius the Great:
The message deserves attention and is relevant even today.
