I reckon this to have been the fiercest.  The following, as I understand, was the manner of it:—­First, the two armies stood apart and shot their arrows at each other; then, when their quivers were empty, they closed and fought hand to hand with lances and daggers; and thus they continued fighting for a length of time, neither choosing to give ground.  At length the Massagetse prevailed.  The greater part of the army of the Persians was destroyed.  Search was made among the slain by order of the queen for the body of Cyrus; and when it was found, she took a skin, and, filling it full of human blood, she dipped the head of Cyrus in the gore, saying, as she thus insulted the corse, “I live and have conquered thee in fight, and yet by thee am I ruined, for thou tookest my son with guile; but thus I make good my threat, and give thee thy fill of blood.”  The engagement was not as serious as the legend would have us believe, and the growth of the Persian power was in no way affected, by it.  It cost Cyrus his life, but his army experienced no serious disaster, and his men took the king’s body and brought it to Pasargadae.  He had a palace there, the remains of which can still be seen on the plain of Murgab.  The edifice was unpretentious, built upon a rectangular plan, with two porches of four columns on the longer sides, a lateral chamber at each of the four angles, and a hypostyle hall in the centre, divided lengthways by two rows of columns which supported the roof.  The walls were decorated with bas-reliefs, and wherever the inscriptions have not been destroyed, we can read in cuneiform characters in the three languages which thenceforward formed the official means of communication of the empire—­Persian, Medic, and Chaldaean—­the name, title, and family of the royal occupant.  Cyrus himself is represented in a standing posture on the pilasters, wearing a costume in which Egyptian and Assyrian features are curiously combined.  He is clothed from neck to ankle in the close-fitting fringed tunic of the Babylonian and Mnevite sovereigns; his feet are covered with laced boots, while four great wings, emblems of the supreme power, overshadow his shoulders and loins, two of them raised in the air, the others pointing to the earth; he wears on his head the Egyptian skull-cap, from which rises one of the most complicated head-dresses of the royal wardrobe of the Pharaohs.  The monarch raises his right hand with the gesture of a man speaking to an assembled people, and as if repeating the legend traced above his image:  “I am Cyrus, the king, the Achaemenian.”  He was buried not far off, in the monumental tomb which he had probably built for himself in a square enclosure, having a portico on three of its sides; a small chamber, with a ridge roof, rises from a base composed of six receding steps, so arranged as to appear of unequal height.

[Illustration:  128.jpg CYRUS THE ACHAEMENIAN]

     Drawn by Boudier, from the photograph by Dieulafoy.