Tomb of Cyrus the Great

The tomb of Cyrus the Great is located in Pasargadae, which was the first capital city of his Achaemenid Empire and is now an archaeological site in the Fars Province of Iran. Prior to being identified with Cyrus the Great by the British diplomat James Justinian Morier in 1812, it was attributed to a certain "Mother of Solomon" in legendary accounts that had emerged at some point after the Muslim conquest of Iran; Morier's understanding, drawing upon the works of the German traveller Johan Albrecht de Mandelslo, was that it referred to the Arab woman Wallada bint al-Abbas ibn al-Jaz, who was the mother of Sulayman ibn Abd al-Malik (r. 715–717) of the Umayyad Caliphate. Similar beliefs suggested to the Venetian explorer Giosafat Barbaro in the 15th century asserted that it was the resting place of Bathsheba, who was the mother of Solomon (r. 970–931 BCE) of the Kingdom of Israel and Judah.

Morier ultimately dismissed the tomb's contemporary associations as fallacious, noting that its architecture and atmosphere differed from the Muslim tombs throughout Iran and aligned instead with the descriptions found in the writings of the Greek historian Arrian. The Scottish traveller Robert Ker Porter later came to the same conclusion in 1821.

The mausoleum is a significant historical example of earthquake engineering as it is said to be the oldest base-isolated structure in the world, allowing it great resilience against seismic hazards. It is one of the key Iranian UNESCO World Heritage Sites, as part of the archaeological site of Pasargadae.