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By Robert Tait

LONDON, (CAIS) -- He founded the world's first multinational empire, was celebrated in the Bible and Qur'an and is recognised as ancient Persia's greatest king. But now the 2,500-year-old tomb in which Cyrus the Great rests is at risk from one of the many vast dam projects that Iran's present rulers say is vital to future development.

Conservationists, including the UN's heritage body, Unesco, say the £15.5m Sivand dam threatens the long-term survival of the historic tomb and the remains of several adjoining palaces at Pasargad in southern Iran.

The issue highlights a classic conflict in contemporary Iran. The urgent need for water in a parched region on the one hand, versus the desire to preserve remnants of an ancient civilisation, in which most Iranians express great pride, on the other.

Putting the clash in perspective, cultural heritage campaigners point out that Iran has always had an urgent demand for water and warn that priceless reminders of the glory of historic Persia are being jeopardised needlessly for short-term gain.

They insist the dam, intended to irrigate farming land 40 miles away, will drastically raise local humidity levels and destroy culturally precious structures that have survived from antiquity specifically because of dry conditions. A petition prepared by a conservationist website, savepasargad.com, has gathered more than 50,000 signatures and has been presented to Unesco, which has designated Pasargad a world heritage site.

Work on the project began 11 years ago and is virtually complete. After several delays, Iran's water authority has scheduled next February as the starting date for the 15m gallon capacity facility, which sits just three miles from Cyrus's tomb. The tomb is built on the site where the ancient monarch defeated Astyages in 550BC.

The dam's opening has already been postponed by more than a year to allow international teams of archaeologists to dig in the neighbouring Tange Bolaghi gorge, where civilisation is believed to date back 6,500 years. Excavations have uncovered a wealth of remains, including remnants of a palace belonging to King Darius the Great, a successor to Cyrus, and an iron smelting plant traced back to around 2,500BC. The skeleton of a human female, originating from around 4,000BC was also discovered in a cave.

The gorge, thought to have been a hunting area for kings during the 2,800-year-old Achaemenid dynasty, will be flooded once the dam starts operating. Hundreds of hectares of farmland will also be swamped, necessitating compensation for local farmers.

The water authority insists the tomb will be unaffected but has offered to install humidity measuring devices to monitor possible damage.

Campaigners say the environmental impact has been inadequately studied, however. They believe increased humidity will corrode the stonework of the ancient structures and weaken their stability by softening the soil on which they stand.

"Apart from the dangers of humidity, nobody can assure us that there won't be constant underground tremors from the dam which will affect the buildings' foundations," said Ali Hashemi, secretary of Farpad, a conservationist campaign group. "In areas near a dam, water springs emerge underground and they could easily emerge under Cyrus's tomb. We have these precious historic sites here today but if they are destroyed by water, future generations will only be able to learn about them in books."

The dispute reflects a bitter struggle to preserve symbols of Iran's pre-Islamic heritage in the face of opposition from the country's religious authorities, who have denounced Cyrus and other former monarchs as tyrants.

After the 1979 Islamic revolution, a leading ayatollah, Sadegh Khalkali - a close henchman of the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the revolution's spiritual leader - attacked the ancient emperor's legendary greatness as a "Jewish myth" in a book called The False Cyrus. Cyrus is revered in Jewish history for freeing the Jews exiled in Babylon and ordering the rebuilding of their temple in Jerusalem after the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar destroyed it. Cyrus's deeds are extolled in the Old Testament's book of Ezra.

The government's hostility has prompted some campaigners to denounce the dam as a conspiracy designed to destroy a symbol of Iran's monarchical heritage. They say more than 80 dams have been built since the revolution, inflicting great damage on pre-Islamic cultural artefacts. Dam building was a top priority during the eight-year presidency of Hashemi Rafsanjani, one of the revolution's leaders and still an influential figure in Iran.

But residents in Arsanjan, a town south-east of Pasargad, insist the need for the Savand facility is genuine. By infusing 200 litres of water per second into nearby fields, farmers say the dam will transform a situation that has forced them to dig deep wells or use drinking water to cultivate fields rendered arid by salty soil.

"The people in this town are waiting for water. They believe water is life," said the mayor, Farzad Mirzai. "A farmer who lives here might not go to Pasargad once in 10 years, but he cannot turn a blind eye to water. By building this dam and saving the livelihoods of thousands of people, we have the chance to build things that could turn into historic sites 2,500 years from now."

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