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CAIS ARCHAEOLOGICAL & CULTURAL NEWS© ARCHAEOLOGICAL & CULTURAL NEWS OF THE IRANIAN WORLD |
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Recent Claims about the Tomb of Cyrus the Great is Being Submerged Confirmed to be Fictitious
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02 September 2006 |
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Superimposed Pictures of the the tomb of Cyrus the Great is being submerged and Aerial map of the region (Click to enlarge) |
LONDON,
(CAIS - edited by Shapour Suren-Pahlav) -- Recent rumours over the alleged submergence of the Tomb
of Cyrus the Great have been circulated on an international scale. The news has been confirmed as being bogus.
The pseudo-tellers of this story claimed that the Sivand
Dam was blown-up, which was later confirmed as baseless. The tomb of Cyrus the
Great situated behind the dam would never be under threat, since damage to the
dam would cause a flooding away from the monument rather than towards it.
The perimeters of the future artificial lake behind the
dam at its largest reach is 7 kilometres from Pasargadae site and 9 kilometres
from Cyrus the Great’ Tomb located 45 meter above water level after
inundation; -Persepolis is ten times farther than Pasargadae which is located 70
kilometres from the lake. Therefore, there are no threats to these two
historical sites from submersion aspect of Dam’s inundation.
Nevertheless,
the humidity changes, which artificially would be created by the dam, are going
to be the key threat. No
preliminary environmental research has been carried out to assess the affects of
humidity upon the constructions at Pasargadae. Therefore, the extent of the
future damages to the site remains unknown.
The catastrophe for Iranian heritage is that after the dam reservoir is filed,
the Bolaghi Valley which contains well over 130 (according to some experts 147) ancient settlements from
pre-Historic to Sasanian dynastic era will be submerged including a section of
the Achaemenid Imperial’s Road (Rāh-e Šāhī) and the recently discovered
Achaemenid palace denoted to Darius the Great.
Pasargadae and Persepolis historical sites have special
places in Iranian hearts and minds, which are sacred as Kaba in Mecca for
Muslims.
“The Tomb may not be the house of god [khāneh khodā, i.e. Ka'aba], but
it is the house of our father and founder; we are today as a nation because of
him [Cyrus the Great], and they [Islamic regime] should have respect that; I am
a Muslim, but before that I am an Iranian and this place is dear to me, possibly
more than Ka'aba – this is our Ka'aba - in fact this is our nation's most
sacred place - they
had no right to built a dam near his tomb”, was saying Mostafa a concerned and
furious twenty-years-old Iranian visiting the monument.
"I like to see someone build a dam near al-Aqsa Mosque in Qods [Jerusalem], the regime would have sacrifice all Iranians to prevent that - they claim to be Iranian therefore they should care about us and our heritage, but instead the only thing that they care about is Palestinian and Arabs - this dam is an insult to our nation - if this dam resolves all the country's water problem, I prefer to die of thirst than see any danger comes to our Pasargadae", saying Masumeh another young-Iranian visiting Pasargadae.
Sivand dam project has been one of the most condemned
projects in post-revolution Iran due to its' immense threat to Iranian cultural
heritage. Most Iranians are furious about the construction of the dam and argue
that there is no objective in the world worthy to justify the construction of a
dam, so close to Pasargadae.
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"History is the Light on the Path to Future" |
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Encyclopaedia Iranica
The British Institute of Persian Studies "Persepolis Reconstructed"
The British Museum
The Royal Asiatic Society
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