A Fortnight in N.W. Luristan
The Valley of Gatchenah is lined from end to end with
graveyards of every date and description, and one need only
explore a few hundred yards up either of its sides to find the
looted and open remains of ancient tombs.
He himself had never done so illegal a thing as to open a
grave, said 'Abdul Khan, picking at his opium pipe with a
bronze bodkin two or three thousand years old, and looking
at me with the calm innocence of a Persian telling lies. " But
as it is the wish of my friend, the Sardari Naib, that you should
see one, I will set my tribe to hunt for you, and if God wills
we may find something to-day or to-morrow."
I said I would give three tomans to anyone who found a
grave with the skull intact inside it. A wave of enthusiasm
swept over the Nuralis. They scattered up every hillside
within sight, in little parties led by men with long skewers,
which they dug into the earth in an expert way to feel for the
flat stones that roof the graves. It did not look as if it were
their first effort of this kind. The graves are not usually
more than two or three feet underground and seem to lie
on the sides of low foothills near springs of water.
The earliest go far back to times when flints and rough
earthenware alone were buried with the skeleton crouching
in its narrow bed lined with stones: later come graves with
flint and bronze together; and round graves where the dead
were seated, surrounded with potteries and bronzes; and the
Lihaqs, which really belong to central Luristan, in which,
they told me, twenty skeletons or more are found together.
I am not convinced whether this latter kind exist in Gatchenah
or no: two of the tribesmen offered to show me some if I
would ride back four miles, and we did so, trotting at a brisk
pace over the empty downs, for the sun was very low. But
when we reached die place, the Lihaqs had vanished: the
stones which had been their penthouse roofs, and which my
[38]