Posted on 01/11/2005 5:32:52 PM PST by blam
2500-year-old Winged Man of Pasargadae threatened by cold and lichen
Tehran Times Culture Desk
TEHRAN (MNA) -- The director of the Pasargadae Historical Cultural Complex said here on Sunday that the stone relief of the Winged Man at the ancient site has been seriously damaged by the cold and lichen and other environmental factors.
“Experts began to study the detrimental effects two years ago after some cracks were observed on the relief,” added Babak Kial.
The Winged Man, considered to be Cyrus the Great by some archaeologists and historians, is a relief of a standing man with four wings who is praying. He also wears a crown which has two horns on it. Some scholars say that that Cyrus the Great is Zulqarnain, whose story is told in the Holy Qur’an, because Zulqarnein means “one with two horns” in Arabic.
“Frost, lichen, and the growth of some types of fungus have made some cracks on the relief over the past few years,” said Kial, adding that experts are looking for a way to prevent the destruction of the relief.
“We plan to replace the original relief with a replica and to transfer the original to a museum if experts determine that is necessary,” he stated.
Experts have made several attempts to prevent the extension of cracks on the relief over the years but were unsuccessful.
Pasargadae, the first dynastic capital of the Achaemenid Empire, was founded by Cyrus II, the Great, in Pars, homeland of the Persians, in the 6th century B.C. Its palaces, gardens, and the mausoleum of Cyrus are outstanding examples of the first phase of royal Achaemenid art and architecture and exceptional testimonies of Persian civilization.
UNESCO registered Pasargadae on the World Heritage List on July 1, 2004.
The charter of Cyrus the Great (known as the Cyrus Cylinder), a baked-clay Aryan language cuneiform cylinder, was discovered in 1878 during an excavation of the site of Babylon. In it, Cyrus the Great described his humanitarian treatment of the inhabitants of Babylonia after its conquest by the Iranians.
In related news, some parts of the ancient site of Tang-e Bolaghi, four kilometers from Pasargadae, will be submerged by the Sivand Dam, which is scheduled to become operational in March 2006. Experts say the humidity caused by the dam will also damage other parts of Pasargadae
Can't find a picture of the Winged Man Of Pasargadae.
The answer is simple: We must outlaw cold and lichen.
Stone relief at Pasargadae, showing a four-winged guardian figure wearing an Egyptian Crown. The inscription, in Old Persian, Elamite and Babylonian, reads, 'I, Cyrus, the king, an Achaemenian.' The upper part of the slab is now missing. Watercolour painted by Sir Robert Ker Porter in 1818.
Um, global warming, helloooo?
Good! Thanks Rebelbase.
Ozymandias
By Percy Bysshe Shelley
That Egyptian crown makes me suspicious. The Persian Empire had nothing to do with Egypt while Cyrus was alive. He thought about conquering Egypt, but his plans were interrupted by a barbarian invasion from Central Asia. He hurried to the other end of his empire to deal with that, and got killed by a Scythian queen named Tomyris, somewhere in Kazakhstan. It was left to his son Cambyses II to conquer Egypt, four years later (525 B.C.).
Remember the time in 2000 when some folks in Pakistan claimed to have the mummy of a Median princess from about 600 B.C., and offered to sell it for $15 million? A few days later it turned out that while the mummy was probably real, her crown and breastplate were modern creations, put on top of the bandages to drive up the price.
If anything, Cyrus ought to be wearing either a Persian or a Babylonian-style crown.
Well, that fruit basket depicted in the pictures on this thread does not look like a traditional Egyptian crown to me. As I remember it, it used to be depicted as a rather tall and narrow contraption.
It is colder now than it has been in the last 2,500 years?
Interesting.
BTTT
The name "Ozymandias" is from the Greek rendering of the name Usermaetre, one of the names of the Egyptian pharaoh Ramesses II.
You mean the MUllahs have not blown it up yet? It violates Islam!
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not sure what it looks like, but here's something anyway:
http://www.vohuman.org/SlideShow/Pasargadae/Pasargadae-20-S.jpg
http://www.sacred-texts.com/chr/bct/pl01.jpg
http://www.biblepicturegallery.com/Samples/pa/world/nations/rulers_a/Portrait%20sculpture%20of%20Cyrus%20King%20of%20Persia%20which%20.gif
Threatened By Cold And Lichen? Just wait until radical Islam gets a hold of it. It'll go to dust like those huge ancient Buddhist statues.
Allahu-ak-barbarian!
You're right. Most of the time the pharaoh wouldn't wear a crown like that. But they had several crowns, and most were only worn on special occasions. The blue one that appears in some pictures, for instance, was apparently only worn when he was going into battle. The one feature common to all of them was that they had an image of the cobra in the front.
I remember seeing a relief sculpture in a museum that showed Thutmose I wearing this one. Unfortunately I don't remember what he was doing at the time.
Alexander the Great probably stopped and marveled at this statue on his way thru Asia.
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