The historian Arrian calls it "a house upon a pedestal;" and this brief description exactly expresses its general character.

On a base, composed of huge blocks of the most beautiful white marble,1 which rises pyramidically in seven steps of different heights, there stands a small "house" of similar material, crowned with a stone roof, which is formed in front and rear into a pediment resembling that of a Greek temple.

[PLATE LI., Fig.3.] The "house" has no window, but one of the end walls was pierced by a low and narrow doorway, which led into a small chamber or cell, about eleven feet long, seven broad, and seven high.

Here, as ancient writers inform us, the body of the Great Cyrus was deposited in a golden coffin.

Internally the chamber is destitute of any inscription, and indeed seems to have been left perfectly plain.
Externally, there is a cornice of some elegance below the pediment, a good molding over the doorway, which is also doubly recessed--and two other very slight moldings, one at the base of the "house," and the other at the bottom of the second step.