Palace of capital of greater Media was Ecbatana. According to the accounts which have conic down to us, all the architec tonic features of the palace were of cedar and cypress overlaid with gold and silver; even the roof was plated with these metals. It is also de scribed as a pyramidal structure of seven stages, recalling the terraced buildings of Babylon. The battlements of the parapets were brilliant with gorgeous coloring. The uppermost buildings were entirely of wood.
Susa, also, lying east of the Tigris, in the level lowlands, was a kingly residence, and enclosed splendid structures, of which the Bible speaks in the Book of Esther.
Persian Archileclur e Palace and Tomb of history of Persian architecture proper begins with Cyrus (559-529 B. c.). Of his palace at Pasargathe there arc extant some remains, consisting principally of an artificial terrace made of great blocks of squared stone resting against the cliffs. A smaller palace, near by, had a colonnade, of which a pillar 5o feet high exists. His tomb (ji,;-. 3) is tolerably well pre served; it is a sarcophagus shaped like a house, and is situated on the summit of a terraced substructure, the whole about 12 metres (39 feet) in height. According to Greek tradition, a hall of twenty-four columns and a garden once surrounded the structure; broken shafts are all that is left of the hall. The interior of the tomb is 5 metres feet) broad by 6 metres (nearly 20 feet) long, and once enclosed a golden coffin, a golden 'couch, a table, chairs, swords, earrings with jewels, drinking-gob lets, and an inscription which read, " Men ! I am Cyrus, who led the Per sians to power and ruled Asia. Grudge me not a grave." But even in the time of Alexander the treasures of the tomb were gone. A pillar in a building near by bears a bas-relief of the king himself.
Rock-tombs of Persepolis: Tomb of Darius.—The most important group of monuments is that of Persepolis, where stood the Persian royal palace which Alexander in his drunken fury delivered to the flames. Not far from this city is the Ding's Mountain, in which are the tombs of the kings. These are not close together: two of them are in the marble-hill of Rahmed, while four others—among them an unfinished one—are about nine miles distant. The rock-face is hewn perpendicularly, and high up is a columned portico sculptured in relief, with a half-blind door placed between two of the columns. Above this is a superstructure richly dec orated with floral ornament, and upon the summit is the king himself praying before a fire-altar. These tombs, of which we show that of Darius (pl. 3, fig. 2), are the most important monuments for guidance in the reconstruction of Persian architecture, since they alone remain intact to show what a Persian building was as a whole.
Royal Palaces at the royal palace at Persepolis a series of ruins remains besides the great terraces upon which it was built. A double staircase of marble broad enough for ten horsemen to ride abreast leads to a terrace whereon stand massive piers against which rest the winged bulls with human heads whose acquaintance we have already made in Assyria (p. 44). Between these stand columns of slender propor
tions. This was the entrance, the propylxa, of the structure, attributed to Xerxes. A second gigantic staircase leads onward to a higher terrace, on which are situated great columned halls. Behind these halls is a struc ture which from the character of its reliefs seems to have served as a cham ber for the reception of ambassadors, and farther back another, which may have been the dwelling-apartments.
The Persian kings inherited from their nomadic life the custom of changing their residence according to the season and the occasion, and, as Persepolis was the royal palace which stood nearest to the burial-place of the kings, it was set apart for royal celebrations of a solemn and imposing character. These grand staircases and terraces form, indeed, a majestic theatre for a pompous ceremonial. The present condition of the propylxa is shown in Figure 4, and in Figure I is Fergusson's restoration of the Great Hall of Xerxes, which we reproduce because he has adhered closely to the façades of the tombs.
ConstYuc/ion: Origin of Architectural slender columns with their fantastic capitals (figs. 5-7) show clearly their descent from the forms of wood-construction; and when we draw conclusions from other analogies between the earlier Assyrian and later Persian art, we can trace our way back to the older wooden structures which were everywhere built on the vast terraces. Wood-construction must have been of long stand ing, and undoubtedly was intimately connected with the national senti ment, since, with the slightest possible modifications, the endeavor was made to imitate it in stone. It can, however, scarcely have been indig enous with the Persians, but must, with other architectural peculiarities, have been the property of an entire group of people, and we prefer to believe that the Persians, whose civilization was acquired from the soil of Mesopotamia and Chaldma, also borrowed thence these wooden forms, rather than that we are in the presence of a construction in no wise related to the more ancient mode and yet possessed of a series of forms so closely related to it. In fact, we cannot fail to perceive the inti mate relationship between the figures of bulls in the Assyrian and Persian portals and those on the capitals on Plate 3 (jigs. 5, 7), and the relation ship of both with those which bore the brazen laver in Solomon's Temple. We may suppose that in the older wooden buildings these double bulls were of metal, perhaps of cast bronze, the columns themselves being covered with beaten metallic plates. The volute as well as the entire por tion of the columns shown in Figure 6 has no other origin than the curl ing shavings produced in working the wooden shafts.