to declare that the earth, the benefactress of man, the fellow- worker of Ahurâ-Mazda was likewise to be kept free from the defilement of the dead ; as to the people, they were suffered to employ an entirely different practice. In the precaution taken, however, to overlay the corpses with wax, as in the flagging of the dakmas, may perhaps be recognized a concession made to ideas that were beginning to prevail : they both virtually prevented direct contact between the pure element and the flesh doomed to dissolution. Under shelter of this tacit convention, which set them right with their religious scruples, the kings built in the plain or excavated in the side of the mountain those tombs of which mention is often made by Greek writers.
If from these we turn to books of travels, in which the monuments that still subsist above ground are described, the impression they create is precisely similar to that which is derived from perusal of classical writers. The first thing to strike the beholder is the fact that several towns, as Yezd-i-cast and many more, were built at the summit of rocky masses which dominate the adjacent country.[1] Such would be Hcbatana and Uaghistan, Persepoiis and Susa, rising close to hilly ranges and lofty ridges ; whilst from the lower slopes where man has established himself, glimpses are caught of the mountainous chain at a little distance. Yet neither in Persia proper nor in Media has a single necropolis been discovered in the flanks of the cliff, as in Egypt and Syria, in Asia Minor and Greece, where so many occur ; no solitary instance is found here of a city of the dead occupying a wider area than any city of the living, with hundreds and thousands of subterraneous chambers arranged in tiers, with staircases and passages communicating with them. Again, in no part of the country, either within the enceinte or at the approaches of the town, do we come across those sepulchral edifices of varied shape, and those groups of sarcophagi scattered with so lavish a hand from one end of Lycia to another. Then, too, naught has been descried akin to those mounds which, in Lower Chaldaa, are due to terra cotta coffins heaped together and piled one upon another in numbers it is impossible to calculate. If during his excavations at Susa Dieulafoy[2] lighted upon many
