Tall-e Takht Fortification

The great stone platform on the western slope of the natural hill of Tall-e Takht with 80 m. length and 15 m. hight has been made up of some 20 layers of huge stone slabs having up to six tons weight. The Throne hill was almost certainly intended to serve as a platform for further impressive construction; and this never-finished project might have partly provided an inspiration for the later, elevated palatial compound at Persepolis.

At the time of Cyrus’ early death, however, neither of the two monumental terraced staircases had been completed and relatively few stones in the façade of the great platform had been given the kind of finished, drafted margins and pecked centers that were undoubtedly meant to keep up with its contemporary Lydo-Ionian traditions, and to make a distinction with the whole façade. 

 At a later date, probably during the first half of the reign of Darius, a large strong-walled mud-brick structure was erected on the terrace and the adjoining hilltop.  This dominant location continued to be in use throughout the remainder of the Achaemenid period and beyond; and it is more than tempting to associate it with the “storehouse” at Pasargadae that was surrendered to Alexander, in an intact state, in early 330 BC.  It is noteworthy that the names Batra-katash, Pathragada and Pasar-gadai did very well refer to the storehouse or the treasury chamber of Talli-Thakht.

 Furthermore, on the basis of two separate coin hoards that were found in a destructed level in a later date, it is likely that they have remained under Greek control up to the moment of a local uprising that followed the death of Seleucus I in 280 BC.  Still later on, during a short-lived reoccupation that falls within the first century of Fratadara rule, as the local kings of southern Persia (c. 280-180 BC), a more restricted occupation on the crown of the Tall-i Takht suggests a view of an early, apparently fortified Islamic settlement that is likely to have flourished in the 7th and 8th centuries CE.

 

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