How to Study Architecture by Charles H. Caffin (free reads .txt) 📕

THE PALACES OF PERSEPOLIS

Conjectured Restoration. P. 84

Zoroastrian religion had no use for temples made with hands. Its temple was the universe; the floor of it the mountain tops of Persia from which countless altars, tended continually by the Fire-Kindlers, sent up flames in worship of the element of Fire. Meanwhile it was the desire of every Persian Monarch whom war and government obliged to be absent so much from the homeland, that, when they died, their bodies should be brought home “to the Persians.” Accordingly, when Cyrus erected a palace at Pasargadae, the modern Marghab, he also built himself a Tomb, which still exists.

Its style is a singular mixture of Assyrian and Asiatic Greek. Built of large blocks of white polished marble, it consists of a platform of seven steps, on the top of which is a small shrine or cella, rectangular in plan, covered by a pitched roof that terminates in the front and rear, in a gable-end or pediment. It is, in fact, a Greek temple of very rudimentary simplicity, mounted on a ziggurat. The ruins show that the tomb was surrounded on three sides by colonnades.

Following the Assyrian precedent, the Palace of Cyrus occupied a platform, of about 40,000 square feet, which still exists and is known to the natives as “The Throne of Solomon.” But here the terrace is of natural rock, faced round the sides with cut stone walls distinguished by the beauty of the masonry. It is the earliest instance known of the so-called drafted masonry, of which a magnificent example is found in the terraces of Herod’s temple at Jerusalem. It represents a method of cutting, which leaves the surface of the block of stone rough-hewn, as when it left the quarry, but dresses the edges to a “draft,” or smooth, bevelled surface.

Such scanty remains as have been found suggest that Cyrus’s palace was of the simplest kind, including a central hall, the roof of which was carried by two rows of stone columns, thirty feet high, with porticoes in antis. The latter is a feature borrowed from Greek-Asiatic temple-building; the term, in antis, being used when the columns of the portico are set between the prolongation of the side walls of the main building.

It is, however, from the remains of the group of buildings at Persepolis that the magnificence of Persian architecture can be best appreciated. Here, again, is a terrace of natural rock; but of vast size, covering an area of about one million six hundred thousand square feet. This, like the terrace of the Escoriál of the Spanish Kings, projects from the foot of a rocky mountain side. The Escoriál includes a royal mausoleum, built within the confines of the palace; but, at Persepolis, three tombs, one of them unfinished, are excavated behind the palace in the mountain wall. Two are supposed to be the resting places of later kings, Artaxerxes II and III, while the unfinished one is that of Arses, who reigned only two years.

Meanwhile the Tomb of Darius I, the founder of Persepolis, has been identified as one of four tombs, eight miles distant from the palace. These also are excavated in the mountain side, and at such a height from the bottom of the valley, that they corroborate the account which Ctesias, the Greek historian of Persia, gives of the tomb of Darius, that it was on the face of a rock and only to be reached by an apparatus of ropes. The three other tombs of this group are ascribed to Xerxes I, Artaxerxes I, and Darius II.

The Tomb of Darius I is of special interest because it bears upon its face a sculptured representation of the palace which he built at Persepolis. This mode of decorating a tomb was probably derived from the Lycians, whose custom it was to face their rock-cut tombs with a representation of the house which the deceased had occupied while alive. Meanwhile, there is little doubt that the Lycians derived the idea of the rock-hewn tomb from Egypt.

The sculptured front of Darius’s tomb shows the portico of the palace, and above it, upon the roof, the monarch himself upon his throne. The latter is an immense cube, the face of which is decorated with an upper and a lower row of warriors, or perhaps, tribute-bearers, while the corners are buttressed with baluster-shaped columns, surmounted by bulls’ heads. The monarch stands before the altar, with hands uplifted in worship of the sun and moon. This recognition of the religion of the Babylonians and Assyrians is characteristic of the Persian attitude toward conquered nations, and recalls Cyrus’s proclamation to these nations, guaranteeing them their life and property and designating himself the favourite of their own sun-god, Marduk, Bel-Merodach.

The lower part of the façade of the tomb represents the portico of Darius’s palace. The four columns are set in antis, but we have to imagine the second row of columns as well as the windows which flanked the door, and, like the latter, were constructed, as the ruins of the palace shows, with monolithic jambs and lintels.

The columns suggest two considerations: first, the use of them, as compared with the entire absence of the structural column in Assyrian and Babylonian architecture, and, secondly, the peculiar design of their capitals. The use was derived through the Medes probably from Asiatic-Greek models; but the form of the capital is peculiar to Persian architecture. It is composed of the head and forelegs of two recumbent beasts, which have been called bulls, but bear much more resemblance to horses, and when they have a horn, to the unicorn, a fabled creature that early legend attributed to India. It was identified with strength and fleetness and might well have been used symbolically by a race that derived from the same Aryan source as the Indians; while the use of the horse in decoration would come naturally to a nation of horse-lovers. It is also noticeable that these beasts are embellished with trappings that suggest harness.

However this may be, the tomb carving shows between the heads, the ends of the beams that support the cornice and roof. As these are not found in the case of the columns at Persepolis, it appears that the roofs of the palaces were constructed of wood, which perished in the fire of Alexander. It has been remarked that the character of this whole portico, taken in connection with the wooden columns at Pasagardae, suggests that the style of Persian palace architecture was derived originally from a primitive wooden construction. But, while this may be true, its development into stone construction was not affected by the Persians themselves. They employed Asiatic-Greek workmen whose style of temple-building, like that of the Mainland-Greeks, shows the traces of primitive wood construction.

Before leaving this tomb, there is one other feature to be noticed; namely, that the lintel of the doorway is surmounted by a cavetto-cornice, decorated with rows of conventionalised lotus-petals, derived through Lycia, from Egypt.

The restored plan of the platform of palaces at Persepolis exhibits a monumental approach on the west side, formed of a double flight of marble steps, set in double ramp. The steps are 22 feet wide, with a rise of 4 inches and a tread of 15, so that