Persia.—The Neo-Babylonian empire was founded in an inse cure age and perished, with all its splendour, in 538 B.C., only 66 years after the final collapse of Assyria. The real masters of western Asia during this period were the Medes in the first in stance, followed by the Persians, to whom they were allied but by whom they were subsequently conquered (55o B.c.). The Medes overran Asia Minor and subdued the great Ionian State of Lydia—an important event, as it brought western Asia into direct contact with Greek culture. The 6th century temple of Artemis at Ephesus was built by Croesus, king of Lydia; and Cyaxares, the Mede, may have seen this as well as the temple of Sardis, the capital. There are comparatively few architectural remains from this warlike period and from the succeeding one of Cyrus, the great Persian, conqueror of Media and Babylonia. The most important is the "tomb of Cyrus" at Passargadae a very interesting stone-built monument recalling the tombs of Lycia and certainly foreign to its district ; though it has been sug gested that it may be a Persian adaptation of the stepped towers of Mesopotamia. Cambyses, son of Cyrus, effected the complete conquest of Egypt, and his successor Darius (521 B.C.) con solidated the empire and founded Persepolis. Xerxes, following him, continued building at Persepolis, invaded Greece and after a ten years' conflict was finally routed at Plataea (479 B.C.).
We note the geographical position of Media and Persia on the Iranian plateau, at a high elevation above and to the east of the Tigris valley. Stone of superb quality was abundant in this region and may partly account for the entirely new plan principle that is discovered in Persian architecture. The Persian palaces at Persepolis and Susa were built on raised platforms enclosed by terrace walls and approached by step-ways, recall ing in this way those of Mesopotamia; but the structures above were columnar halls, like those of Egypt. The largest of these— the hall of the ioo columns at Persepolis—is 225 ft. square, though its columns were only 37 ft. high as against 67 ft. in the smaller hall of Xerxes on the same site. In many respects also the details were partly Egyptian and partly Greek. The gateways of the hall of Xerxes have the colossal winged genii associated with Assyrian palaces and the staircase leading to the terrace has wild-beast reliefs on its balustrade (though these are not purely Mesopotamian in feeling), but the cornices over the doors are Egyptian in form and the side posts of the doors in the hall of ioo columns have a surface decoration in low-relief set in panels, the idea of which is strongly reminiscent of Egypt.
The much discussed columns of the hall of Xerxes are frankly bizarre. They had no permanent influence on future work. But the halls of the Persians were probably the finest that have ever been built and their decorative craft work of the early 5th century B.C. was equal to any Greek work of similar technique.
The Hittites.—Hittite architecture must be considered an anti climax after the developments previously described, but it con stituted an element of stability influencing the whole of the east Mediterranean region at a most important period, from c. 150o-
moo B.C., a period in which Mesopotamia was comparatively qui escent and which survived the zenith and decline of Aegean art. The earlier Hittite palace of importance was at Boghaz-Keui in north Anatolia; the later was at Carchemish, on the Upper Euphrates, and on the same latitude as the Assyrian sites but some 30o miles to the west. The architectural evidences were of a rude and primitive kind and the sculpture similarly so ; but there are abundant examples of the latter in vigorous reliefs. At Carchemish, also, there were some carved lions of a rather fine though archaic type, which appear to have carried columns, though this is not certain; but of their decorative function as guardians of an entrance there can be no doubt.
The vital force of Minoan building development lies in its amazing output of palace construction which reached its culmi nating point during the third Middle Minoan period (c. 17oo 1580 B.C.). Many centuries before history and in a remote island of the Mediterranean there were building developments which were not matched in a domestic sense till the era of the greatest palaces of the Renaissance. There was a certain amount of faced masonry but a thorough system of wooden construction pre vailed as a framework to a general infilling of—for the most part—such very rough rubble that it survives practically as mere earth. The inner walls, where not faced with large, thin gypsum slabs, were covered with lime plaster of superb quality, varying in thickness from 2 or more in. to the thinnest possible coating of stucco. The ultimate finish was colour, on a slip of the finest stucco, forming a true fresco. It is remarkable that so much of this apparently flimsy construction and finish should have sur vived for more than 2,50o years in a semi-northern climate by no means altogether dry.