Dekhmeh Rawansar

Rawansar rock-cut tomb

Tagheh Farhad or Dekhmeye Rawansar is a rock-cut tomb located near the town of Rawansar (Kurdish: Rowansar), about 57 km northwest of Kermanshah, at west of Iran. It is known as Tagh-e Farhad among local Kurdish inhabitants of Rawansar, who believe it was cut in the Qola rock by Farhad, a legendary character who fell in love with Shirin, the wife of Khosrau II of Sassanid Iran. This tomb was known to Ernst Herzfeld but he never visited it. The first archaeologist who visited the tomb was Massoud Golzari, an Iranian archaeologist who attributed it to Median period. It is re-visited and examined by Peter Calmeyer, German archaeologist (birth. 5 September 1930 in Halle, death. 22 November 1995 in Berlin) in 1970s, who according to his observations related the tomb to the Achaemenid period.

The old part of the town is built at the foot of the isolated rock of Qola, into its northeastern face the tomb is cut, looking out over the plain and the Weshkaro seasonal river. An area was smoothed to form a vertical facade with a narrow ledge at its foot; and at one side of this facade a rectangular doorway was made, probably to be closed by a single slab of stone. This leads directly into the tomb chamber, which is roughly square and quite plain, there is nothing to indicate how the dead were disposed of in it, but it is large enough to have held several coffins or numerous receptacles for bones. Outside there are carvings in the smoothed area, but are badly weathered. These reliefs consist of a weathered human figure that standing close to the door and his face is toward right. Above is a man on a winged disk that faces left. Under this winged figure there is a parallelogram diagonally laid and divided by 12 longitudinal lines which interpreted by Calmeyer as wood fuel. Above the tomb the cliff is almost sheer, but from below it is accessible. No attempt has been made to smooth away the rock; and this may indicate that it was a family tomb, used repeatedly. Based on its architecture it can be dated to the Achaemenid period, probably after the reign of Darius I.

A column base with probable same age have been found close to the Goni Khani spring that emerge at the western slope of Qola rock. Some Sherds dating to first mill. bc. also have been collected around the Qola rock indicating its importance during Late Iron age to early Achaemenid period.

References

Calmeyer, Peter 1978, “Das Grabrelief von Ravansar,” AMI N.S. 11, pp. 73-85.

Golzari, Massoud., 1994 The Ravansar rock-cut tomb, and three Islamic tombstones. Proceedings of the First Archaeological Symposium in Iran after the Islamic Revolution, Susa, 14-17 April 1994.