The most ancient[52] monuments of Persia date from no earlier period than the reign of Cyrus (B.C. 549-529). If any Persian art existed in the previous epoch, when the country was no more than a satrapy of the Median empire, its traces have not yet been found. Median art is scarcely known at all, except by a cylindrical seal at the British Museum, bearing a Medic inscription, upon which a rider is seen fighting with a lion: the rider’s high tiara is characteristic, but the lion is copied from a Ninevite cylinder (fig. 119). No doubt this monument would not be enough by itself to prove that Median art was tributary to Assyrian art; but the description given us by Herodotus of the fortress of Ecbatana confirms the hypothesis. On the other hand, it is natural to suppose that the Persians, who were the vassals and consequently the political and religious heirs of the Medes, should have borrowed from the latter certain artistic traditions, if Median art had any originality of its own. Now, while a threefold foreign influence—that of the ChaldÆo-Assyrians, the Egyptians, and the Ionic Greeks, is conspicuous in Persian works of art, there is nothing that can be referred to Media.

The monuments of the AchÆmenid dynasty are gathered together upon three principal sites, the ruins of which have been explored in a fairly complete manner: Susa, where the AchÆmenids, including Darius and his successors, erected their palaces at the spot on which the old capital of Elam, destroyed by Assurbanipal, formerly stood; Persepolis, the imposing remains of which form two groups, called at the present day Takht-i-Jemshid and Nakhsh-i-Rustam; lastly, the pile of ruins at Meshed-Murgab and Madar-i-Soleiman, two Persian villages in the valley of the Polvar, on the road from Ispahan to Shiraz, where, without doubt, the ancient city of PasargadÆ must have been.

§ I. Civil Architecture.

When Cyrus had his new capital, PasargadÆ, built in the valley of the Polvar, he had completed the destruction of the kingdom of Croesus, finished the conquest of Asia Minor, and made himself master of Babylon. The precise date of the monuments of Meshed-Murgab is fixed by the cuneiform inscriptions, which, while they are all composed in honour of Cyrus, are written in three versions, Persian, Medic, and Assyrian, and consequently we cannot place them earlier than the conquest of ChaldÆa in B.C. 538. In his victorious expeditions through regions remote from the table-land of Fars, his native country, such as Mesopotamia, Lydia, and the coasts of Asia Minor, Cyrus had the opportunity of observing monuments which must have astonished him by their architecture, and palaces which seemed to him far finer than those inhabited hitherto by his ancestors, princes of proverbial austerity and simplicity. He conceived the idea of constructing for himself a royal residence as sumptuous as those of Croesus and Nabonidus, and of importing into the heart of Persia the architecture of Babylon and the Hellenic architecture of Asia Minor. His military successes assisted him wonderfully in this undertaking. The prisoners of war whom he captured at Babylon and in the Greek cities of Ionia became the workmen who built his palaces; and he allured the architects, whom he could not carry away by force, by loading them with wealth and honours. The successors of Cyrus continued, like him, to appeal to the artists of Greece, whose voluntary exile from their native country has often been remarked by historians. Pliny, for instance, cites a worker in bronze, Telephanes of PhocÆa, who passed among his contemporaries as a worthy rival of Polycletus, Myron, and Pythagoras, and whom the kings of Persia, Darius and Xerxes, attracted to their court, where he exercised his craft during the greater part of his career.[53]

The structures begun by Cyrus at PasargadÆ, which were never finished on account of his death, which abruptly ended the work, receive their inspiration both from Greek and Assyrian art; there is nothing to be referred to the architectural types of Egypt, not yet invaded by the Persian conquerors. The palaces stand upon platforms like those of Nineveh and Babylon; but these substructures follow the Greek method of building.

The monument called by the modern Persians Takht-i-Madar-i-Soleiman (“throne of the mother of Solomon”) is nothing more than the platform of Cyrus’ palace (fig. 120). It is a structure built of large stones, in which mortar is replaced by iron clamps. The facings are seldom trimmed, but only rough hewn, and surrounded by a double moulding like rusticated stonework with marginal draftings. The courses are alternate rows of headers and stretchers. The nucleus of the structure is a mass of blocks arranged in horizontal layers, always level with the facing courses. M. Dieulafoy[54] observes that the Lydians practised this method of building from the eighth century before our era. The Assyrians did not proceed in the same manner. At Khorsabad, for instance, no clamps bind the stones of the facing to one another; the wall is straight and absolutely vertical, while in the Takht-i-Madar-i-Soleiman the upper courses recede from one another like steps, in order to give greater thickness to the base. Over the greater part of the facing, position marks have been detected, carved upon them by the stone-cutters, in order to know the place of each hewn stone. These marks are conventional signs, which do not belong, it is true, to any alphabet, but which—a matter worthy of remark—are the same as those discovered in Greek buildings.

The palaces of Persepolis were erected by Darius and Xerxes only fifty years after those at PasargadÆ; but in this short interval Egypt had been conquered by Cambyses; and after that event the monuments of the Pharaohs were destined, for the same reason as those of Assyria and Asia Minor, to exercise a direct influence upon Persian art. The latter, however, could never fuse these heterogeneous elements together and assimilate them to its own character, but could only group them in a hybrid style. The buildings of Persepolis are still standing to a considerable extent, and its ruins, rising in the midst of a vast amphitheatre of grey marble rocks, are an object of enthusiastic admiration to all travellers. The palaces rest upon a platform built on the model of that of Takht-i-Madar-i-Soleiman. The outer coating of this basement is formed of carefully trimmed ashlar, and the blocks, fitted together without mortar, are fixed by iron clamps. Better preserved

than the ruins of PasargadÆ, those of Persepolis enable us to reconstruct more perfectly the principal forms of AchÆmenid architecture. The platform of the Persepolitan palaces was ascended by a flight of a hundred and eleven steps, broad enough to be mounted by ten men abreast; a gently inclined roadway, formed on one side of the platform, enabled carriages to reach the summit: here we have precisely, except in point of material and manner of construction, the platform of the Assyrian palaces. The summit of the terrace was crowned, as at Khorsabad, with a row of battlements. The peculiarity of the artificial mound called Takht-i-Jemshid by the Persians is that it is only an immense basement supporting three other terraces of smaller area upon it. These terraces are of unequal height, and communicate with one another; they are reached by stone staircases. The grand staircase, leading to the second platform, is adorned with a colonnade and flanked by gigantic human-headed bulls, similar to those at Nineveh. Upon the highest of these three platforms were built four palaces, upon the walls of which the names of Darius, Xerxes and Artaxerxes Ochus have been found.

In the buildings at Persepolis and Susa, the doorways and window-frames take the form of a rectangular parallelogram, and in their architectural decoration, besides the traditional influence of ChaldÆa and Assyria, the new exotic element, that we have indicated above, may be recognised; it is the intrusion of Pharaonic art. The doors, framed in three GrÆco-Ionian architraves, projecting one beyond the other, are surmounted, as well as the windows, by an Egyptian ornament above a line of alternate ovals and disks. In the thickness of the doorway sculptures in relief, copied from those of the ChaldÆo-Assyrian palaces, show us the king in close combat with a lion or fantastic animal, or else the king sitting on his throne rendering justice at his palace gate, or again the prince solemnly advancing, surrounded by his officers and dressed in his ceremonial robes.

M. Dieulafoy[55] recognised that the greater number of the windows were condemned to lessen the air and light in the interior of the rooms; these windows filled up by a thinner wall, formed, on the exterior, niches which broke the uniformity of the faÇade. Doors, windows, staircases and the pilasters arranged at the corners, are of white limestone or of grey porphyry with blue veins; but the walls in which these architectural features occur are of baked brick coated with enamelled tiles.

The architecture of the AchÆmenid palaces includes the pier and the column as the supports of the structure. Among the ruins of PasargadÆ at present only three piers and one column, the height of which still exceeds 36 feet, are standing. But at Persepolis and at Susa, the Persepolitan capital, with all its elegance and

originality, has been studied in all its varieties. It is found in every part, but notably in the great state saloon or apadÂna of the palaces. It is thirteen times as high as its diameter at the base: its slender form reveals the imitation in stone of an original structure supported by light trunks of trees. The apadÂna of the palace of Xerxes at Persepolis, situated on the middle platform, covered an area of nearly an acre and a quarter, and its roof was sustained by a hundred columns. Before the anterior faÇade rose a portico guarded by two gigantic bulls with human heads, partly built into the structure like those in the Assyrian edifices. The apadÂna of the palace of Artaxerxes at Susa (fig. 124) was of no less gigantic proportions, and had a double portico on three of its sides; it covers an area of an acre and a half. The columns are not less than 18 feet 4 inches in diameter; slightly conical in shape, they are composed of long cylindrical drums, placed end to end, the base and capital being separated from the shaft. Two varieties may be distinguished.[56] The simplest type is to be seen in the interior halls of the palace of Xerxes at Persepolis. The base is formed of two tori placed one above the other on a square pedestal; the shaft is decorated all round with forty-eight flutings; the capital includes a series of ornaments borrowed from the architecture of Egypt; it is

developed in a succession of bells and inverted volutes, above which two bulls’ heads are arranged, even with the intercolumniations; this is the bicephalic capital, characteristic of the AchÆmenid architecture, which has never been employed except in Persia. Other columns differ, but only in the base, from that which we have just described; the double torus supporting the shaft is sometimes placed, not on a square pedestal, but on a cylindrical drum, decorated with twenty-four vertical lines and growing gradually broader in the lower part, so as to present the form of a much elongated ogee or of a bell. At Susa, instead of lines, the ornament of the base is sometimes formed of elegant inverted foliage (fig. 126). The comparative study of the AchÆmenid column, together with the monuments of Egypt and Greece, has led M. Dieulafoy to conclude that the outlines of the Persepolitan column are Egyptian, but that its structure is composed of GrÆco-Ionian elements. These volutes, strings of ovals, and tori at the base, had already become classical in the Hellenic world long before Cyrus, since they are found everywhere, at MycenÆ, Segesta and Selinus, in Attica and in Ionia: here again we are forced to recognise that the architect, even when he copies motives derived from Egypt or Assyria, is imbued with the principles of Hellenic art.

Besides columns, the Persepolitan and Susian palaces had pilasters placed at the extremities of the porticoes, as continuations of the faÇades. In the faÇades of the palace of Darius at Persepolis two square pilasters of porphyry are seen, so perfectly preserved that in the upper part they still have holes, cut to receive the ends of the entablature. They would suffice to prove, if any proof were wanting, that in these structures, the columns, which are placed at long intervals and are tall and slender, did not support stone but wooden architraves. These were enormous beams which formed a line even with the tops of the columns, and, running from capital to capital, and placed in grooves contrived with this object, contributed to give homogeneity and solidity to the structure. Upon these great beams the rafters of the roof were arranged, and then a flat ceiling supporting neither a terrace nor a second story.

It is important not to lose sight of the fact that the palaces, the elements of which we have just described, constitute an official kind of architecture implanted in Persia by the “kings of kings” who were pleased with the monuments that they had observed in Egypt, Assyria, and Asia Minor. Springing from the caprice of sovereigns, this foreign architecture never took root in the country, and was not required by the nature of the ground and the necessities of existence on the mountainous table-land of Persia; it disappeared with the AchÆmenid dynasty. But by the side of this conventional architecture there was that created by the natives of the country, because it had been imposed upon them as a condition of life. As well as the people of ChaldÆa and Assyria, the Persians must have known how to build vaulted houses, alone capable of protecting them from the rays of a too ardent sun; they also built, at least in the cantons of Susiana, houses with terraces, supported by palm beams and trellis-work arranged over the rooms which were narrow like passages. Strabo tells us this while speaking of Susiana: “To protect the rooms from the excessive heat, the roofs are covered with two cubits’ depth of earth; the weight of this earth obliges the people to build all the houses long and narrow, because, although the beams must not be very long, nevertheless the rooms must be spacious; otherwise the people would be stifled.” Even at the present day, since the climatic conditions of the country have not changed, the method of building houses is the same as that practised by the ancient inhabitants of Iran. Travellers find houses, according to the wealth of the owner, surmounted by vaults, domes, and terraces, wonderfully suited to local requirements. It is, then, quite certain that the Iranians in the time of the AchÆmenids knew the vault and the cupola as well as their neighbours on the banks of the Tigris.

But have the vaults and domes of Persia, more fortunate than those which rose above the Mesopotamian edifices, come down to us, at least in a few instances? M. Dieulafoy believes so. The ruins held to be of the Sassanian epoch at Sarvistan, Firuzabad, and Ferashbad, would date, in his opinion, from the AchÆmenid period. A certain reserve, however, is required, from the chronological point of view, in speaking of these monuments in which the traveller can still see brick cupolas supported by pendentives,[57] these cupolas being 97 ft. high and 49 ft. in diameter, semicircular vaults, pointed vaults nearly similar to those of our Gothic churches of the thirteenth century—in short, all the elements of Sassanian and Byzantine architecture. On the other hand, the decoration of these buildings seems to have been remarkably poor; at Sarvistan the interior columns are heavy and badly hewn, the cornice placed at the foot of the vaulting is composed of nothing but a serrated ornament; the interior walls must have been coated with red paint; the exterior walls were smooth, and even the faÇade showed no decoration except groups of half-columns buried in the masonry. Not the smallest trace has been remarked among these ruins of bricks, whether enamelled or bearing figures in relief, or of those slabs imitating the wall sculptures of Assyria which were such characteristic elements of AchÆmenid art. The same reflections are applicable to the monument of Firuzabad, the architectural decoration of which has preserved, perhaps only by tradition, elements of Persepolitan origin.

§ II. Sculpture.

In sculpture, even more than in architecture, the triple influence, ChaldÆo-Assyrian, Egyptian and GrÆco-Ionian, which is dominant among the works of the AchÆmenids, is to be traced. Like the

sculptures of Ninevite palaces, those of PasargadÆ and Persepolis are in low relief, the figures being always placed in profile, and arranged for the purpose of lining the lower portion of the walls. In the execution, however, the chisel of a Greek artist is felt, or at least of one who has studied under Greek masters. M.L. Heuzey[58] reminds us that an archaic Greek school existed in Thessaly, which was remarkably flourishing, and the productions of which, such as the bas-relief known under the name of the Exaltation of the Flower, were closely analogous in the details and the finish of the work to the Persepolitan and Susian sculptures; there are the same draperies with broad flat folds, and the same methods of treatment in the muscles of the face and limbs. The most ancient Persian sculpture known is the famous bas-relief in which the full-length portrait of Cyrus himself has been preserved for us (fig. 128). Cyrus, of Iranian origin, has a face like that of an European; he has nothing in common with Egyptian and Assyrian faces; the top of his head is bald or shaved, his beard is slightly curled, his hair is short and matted. But everything else in this royal figure is of foreign importation. His head is crowned with a triple disk surrounded by UrÆi, in the fashion of Egyptian deities; the king is furnished with wings, like the genii of Assyria and ChaldÆa, and these wings, with rows of well-marked feathers, are like those of the Ninevite monsters. Even the border of the robe is decorated with a broad Assyrian fringe; finally, the king holds in his right hand a statuette, the headdress of which is surmounted by the Egyptian UrÆus.

After the portrait of Cyrus in chronological order come the bas-reliefs of Persepolis. These are sometimes episodes in the ChaldÆo-Assyrian epic of Izdubar, which, imitated not only in Persia but also in the Greek world, gave birth to the legends of Heracles and Theseus, so often represented on archaic Greek monuments. In other bas-reliefs the court-officers walk in procession with the tributary satraps, or else (fig. 129) the “king of kings” himself, calm and impassive like a Colossus whom nothing can terrify, plunges his dagger, without moving a muscle

of his face, into the heart of a lion, a bull or a fantastic animal, which rises erect upon its hind legs, ready to devour him. Do not the exaggerated muscles of the beast betray a servile copy of the Assyrian monsters? Elsewhere, on the wall which borders the staircase of the palace of Darius, a lion devours a bull (fig. 130); he bites him on the thigh, and furiously digs his powerful claws into his haunches. Though the lifelike attitude of the two animals strikes us, it reminds us, at the same time, of the ChaldÆo-Assyrian cylinders in which a similar subject is reproduced. Farther on, on the same wall of the staircase, servants appear to mount the stairs, with their hands loaded with presents of all kinds which they are about to offer to the “king of kings”; Assyrian sculptures contain analogous scenes. The same must be said of the bas-relief of the central door

of Darius’ palace, in which the prince is seen attended by two servants, one holding the umbrella and the other the fly-flap (see fig. 122); how many times this subject is repeated on the Ninevite walls, with the same naÏve representation of the king, like a Greek hero, as of colossal stature in comparison with the persons of his suite, in order to exhibit his superiority and strength! On one of the walls of the apadÂna of Xerxes’ palace, the prince sitting on a high throne, with a canopy above his head and his feet upon a footstool, is seen surrounded by his guards. He is receiving a personage of high rank, doubtless a satrap, who is bringing on his shoulder the tribute of his

province. In the compartments below rows of Persian soldiers are drawn up in line, probably those that composed the famous guard of the Immortals; they carry lances, bows and quivers, and have swords at their sides. The throne is of a truly Assyrian form. “The canopy, made of woven stuff,” says M. Dieulafoy,[59] “is decorated with a very curious design. Each strip is composed of two similar bands heavily embroidered. A band covered with rosettes is followed by a band adorned with bulls like those which decorate the cornice of the royal tombs; in the centre appears the winged emblem of Ahura-Mazda. The lower band ends in a trimming covered with rosettes, and a thick fringe; round patches adorn the angles. The position of the winged emblems on the top give this piece of drapery the appearance of an Egyptian tent, but the procession of bulls, the trimmings, the fringes, and the rich embroidery are of Assyrian origin.”

The symbolic figure of Ormuzd, with his winged disk, is a reproduction of the similar divine figure so often seen hovering over the king and his soldiers on the Assyrian bas-reliefs. Scenes of most significant cruelty also passed from ChaldÆo-Assyrian sculpture into Persian sculpture. On the bas-relief which Darius caused to be carved upon the rock of Behistun, to recount his exploits to distant posterity, the king is holding his bow as Sennacherib does, and placing his foot on the breast of a prisoner who holds out his hands in supplication, while nine other kings stand bound with chains, with their hands behind their backs and cords around their necks[60].

Like the porticoes of Ninevite palaces, those of Persepolis are garnished with human-headed bulls; the latter have preserved the walking attitudes, the curled hair, and often even the high tiara decorated with rosettes and feathers, which characterise their elder brothers on the banks of the Tigris. Only, while the Assyrian bulls are sometimes placed even with the surface of the faÇade and facing one another in the doorway, the Persepolitan bulls, on the contrary, are always placed parallel on each side of the opening and look outwards, facing the terrace. Finally, in the sculpture of these gigantic monsters the Persian artist shows himself superior to the Assyrian artist: while preserving the animals in the same hieratic posture, he has had the skill to soften the modelling of the limbs, and to give to the wings a more elegant and graceful curve; the bulls have only four legs instead of five; their flanks are more supple and plumper; the horns, emblems of strength, which surround the head of the Ninevite monsters, are suppressed; the anatomical forms and the respective proportions of the different parts of the body are more closely studied; we have here Assyrian art interpreted by artists formed in the school of the Greeks.

§ III. Painting and Enamelling.

The art of enamelling brick, invented by the ChaldÆans, did not perish with Babylon. The AchÆmenids

adopted it, and seem to have brought it to perfection; the same is true, as it seems, of that ingenious and delicate process which consisted of stamping scenes in relief upon bricks, a number of which thus formed an enamelled frieze, intended to replace the sculptured slabs of Nineveh. It was at Susa that this system of decoration seems to have reached its ideal perfection; at any rate, it is only among the ruins of this capital that we can study it in detail, thanks to the discoveries of M. Dieulafoy, which add a new chapter to the history of art. It has been possible to reconstruct at the Louvre two entire friezes disinterred at Susa before the faÇade of the apadÂna of the palace of Artaxerxes Mnemon. That of the lions (fig. 135) is composed of bricks in relief, 1 ft. 2 in. long by 7 in. high and 9 in. thick. The lions, nine in number, are each 11 ft. 3 in. long by 5 ft. 6 in. high. The ground, on which the figures stand out, is a flat surface of a turquoise-blue colour; the lions, which are, for the most part, of a greyish-white colour, have certain parts of their body, for instance the mane, of a watery greenish blue; and others, for instance the swell of the muscles, of a deep yellow. They are treated in the Assyrian manner, to such an extent that, if it were not for the relief, they would exactly resemble the enamelled lions on flat bricks at Khorsabad. As at Nineveh, the muscles are exaggerated, the head and forepart of the lion too small. The procession of wild beasts is framed in several lines of elegant symmetrical designs: rows of chevrons, of Egyptian palmettes, and of Assyrian daisies.

The frieze of the archers (fig. 136) represents a procession of warriors in relief, like those on the marble slabs of Persepolis; this is the most wonderful specimen of polychrome Persian enamelling. The materials of which the composition is formed, instead of being, as in the lion frieze, baked bricks in the form of elongated parallelopipeds, are little squares, of which each side is 1 ft. 1 in. long, and 3 in. thick, made of artificial concrete, which combines the whiteness of plaster with the resistance of limestone. The soldiers are represented in profile and on the march. They carry on the left shoulder a bow coloured yellow, and a quiver of reddish brown. They hold in their hands a pike, the shaft of which ends in a silver knob. Their tunics, the colour of which alternates from one figure to another, is golden yellow or white; the shape of it is the same for all,—narrow, open at the side, with very broad gathered sleeves; it falls to the ankles and shows a certain variety of ornament; the stuff is spangled sometimes with green or blue daisies, sometimes with designs in the form of lozenges; the border is embroidered. A greenish turban, twisted into rolls, is placed on the head of these oriental soldiers, who wear bracelets, ear-rings, and yellow or sky-blue leather boots; their beard and hair are dressed in ringlets, in the Assyrian fashion. This is doubtless the rich costume which provoked the declamations of Greek rhetoricians against the effeminacy and corruption of the Persians. According to the testimony of Herodotus (vii. 83), the twisted turban on the hair, the golden ornaments, and the silver knob on the javelin, were the distinctive marks of the thousand knights and the ten thousand immortals who formed the escort of the “king of kings.” There can be no doubt, then, that we are in presence of a group of this famous troop of janissaries, whom the AchÆmenpi monarchs recruited in great part from among the blacks of India; a certain number of the figures on the frieze acquired by M. Dieulafoy actually have a skin coloured of a deep brown.

It is observed, from a technical point of view, that all the figures of one frieze came out of the same mould, and that they are exact repetitions one of another, though variously coloured. The vitreous coat is transparent and iridescent, like the enamel on porcelain; the gamut of the colours is poor: blue, green, yellow, black, and white. These decided tints must, on account of their brilliancy, have produced a striking effect; and under the hot sun of Susiana, the portico walls of Artaxerxes’ palace sparkled more marvellously than even the richly decorated tiles of Mussulman mosques and palaces. The interior of the apadÂna seems to have been simply coloured by means of a red monochrome stucco, almost completely concealed, however, by the rich carpets and embroidered draperies with which the walls of all the chambers were hung.

§ IV. Religious and Sepulchral Monuments.

Ormuzd (Ahura-Mazda), the great deity of the Persians, was not to have, according to the regulations in the Avesta, either temples or statues. The conception of the supreme and only God, perfect in all things, was too vast to suggest any shelter for him except the vault of heaven in which he dwelt. Herodotus did not fail to observe this characteristic of Mazdeism and this absence of temples among the Persians: “The custom of the Persians,” he says, “is not to raise statues, temples and altars to the gods; on the contrary, they treat those who do so as madmen: in my opinion, this is because they do not believe, like the Greeks, that the gods have a human form.” However, Ormuzd is often represented on the monuments of the AchÆmenid dynasty; he has the form of a man crowned with the tiara and enclosed in a winged disk (fig. 141). This is exactly, except in the modifications brought about by the progress of art, the figure of the deity in the Assyrian monuments.[61] Thus this symbol, borrowed from Mesopotamia, is a transgression of the precepts of the Avesta, and an act of tolerance which only penetrated into the monumental sculpture of palaces and tombs, and into the glyptic art. The only symbol admitted by the Avesta is the all-purifying flame. Hence the cultus of the sacred fire and the fire-altars, called pyrea or atesh-gahs, erected in the open air on heights. The atesh-gahs are the only monuments which represent the religious architecture of the Persians. Their remains are numerous, but they do not present many features of archÆological interest. Several of them are seen at a short distance from Nakhsh-i-Rustam which seem to be earlier than the time of Cyrus. On a platform reached on all sides by a few steps, an altar is erected in the form of a truncated pyramid, with four sides. At the corners small columns, attached to the structure, support semicircular arches, which sustain the stone slab on which the sacred fire was lighted.

After the conquest of Asia the AchÆmenids generally gave to the fire-altars the form of GrÆco-Lycian chapels. In the sculptures of a royal tomb at Nakhsh-i-Rustam we see a king in adoration before Ormuzd, and a fire-altar, which has the form of a square block of masonry with projections in imitation of pilasters, supporting an entablature formed of three steps one above the other; the highest, larger than the other two, forms the platform on which the fire is lighted (fig. 141).[62]

The architectural influence of Assyria is manifest in the construction of certain fire-altars. Near Firuzabad are the ruins of Jur, particularly interesting on account of the remains of an atesh-gah ninety-one feet high, described by travellers, and apparently a copy of the staged towers (zikkurat) of ChaldÆa and Assyria, a type of which, the most complete in existence, is here handed down to us. M. Dieulafoy remarks that the atesh-gah at Jur resembles the minaret of the mosque of Ibn TÛlÛn, one of the oldest Mussulman edifices. Thus types of religious architecture invented by the ChaldÆans exercised their influence even on the modern art of the East.[63]

The funeral rites imposed by the Avesta had another consequence—that of creating a kind of architecture unknown in any country besides Persia. Human corpses might neither be committed directly to the ground, nor burnt, nor thrown into the river, for this would have caused pollution to water, earth, and fire. Cities of the dead had been established in remote and deserted spots: these were tall round towers called dakhmas, built of masonry, and showing no architectural ornament even round the top. These towers supported a wooden trellis-work on which the corpses were laid; birds of prey came and tore these abandoned bodies to pieces: they often carried off separate limbs to a distance, where wild beasts devoured what was left of them. That which remained in the charnel-house was buried, but previously covered with wax to avoid all direct contact with the ground. Herodotus has preserved a reminiscence of these distressing practices. “The corpse of a Persian” he says, “is not buried until it has been torn to pieces by dogs or birds of prey.... The Persians cover the dead body with wax, after which they inter it.” There is still at the present day in Persia a certain number of ruins of the sepulchral towers of the Mazdeans, and one of the best known is not far from Teheran.

But the dakhmas only served for popular burials; for the AchÆmenid kings, at any rate, broke the Mazdean law, which perhaps itself made in practice an exception in favour of the royal family. The tombs of the AchÆmenid princes can be divided, from the architectural point of view, into two large classes, according as they are or are not anterior to the conquest of Egypt. The former are conceived according to the style and plan of GrÆco-Ionian tombs, the latter according to the Egyptian hypogÆa.

In the valley of Polvar-Rud, two and a half miles to the south of Takht-i-Madar-i-Soleiman, stands a small rectangular edifice, the probable burying-place of Mandane, the mother of Cyrus; the Persians call it Gabr-i-Madar-i-Soleiman, “tomb of the mother of Solomon” (fig. 139). The archaic Greek character of this monument is striking. Constructed of large blocks in regular courses, without mortar, the stones being cut and fitted with the greatest exactness, it is provided with a triangular pediment, the only one ever observed in a monument of ancient Persia; it is reached by six steps running all round the little building. The roof is formed of flat slabs, sloping on each side according to the inclination of the pediment. Round the roof is a cornice composed of a reversed ogee enclosed within two fillets, an architectural decoration found repeated round the door, the double frame of which is copied from that of the Greek buildings in the Ionian style. The inner chamber measures scarcely six square yards. Round Gabr-i-Madar-i-Soleiman was a courtyard surrounded by a portico; the chapel was not exactly in the centre of the courtyard, but stood at the bottom of it; so that an open space was left in front.

Not far from this is the tomb of Cambyses the First, the father of Cyrus. It is so dilapidated that only one faÇade is almost intact; this is enough, however, to enable us to compare it with another tomb at Nakhsh-i-Rustam in a good state of preservation. Both of them were square towers, constructed of fine and regular masonry, the mortar being replaced by iron clamps. The tower, solid at the base, contains in its upper part a chamber, the ceiling of which is formed of large slabs fitted together; a staircase built outside gave access to a small door. The exterior faÇade is furnished on its four sides with false windows; the idea has even been adopted of building the back of these niches of black basalt, in order to give them the appearance of true apertures. The summit of the edifice is composed of a cornice adorned with a row of denticulations.

When to all these details we add the rustication of the stones and the position-marks found on the blocks, it will be recognised that the architect and workmen came from Asia Minor and copied in servile fashion the sepulchral structures of that country. The architectural form of these towers reminds us of the Lycian tombs at Telmessus, Antiphellus, AperlÆ, and Myra, and above all of the celebrated Harpy tomb at Xanthus.

Fig. 140.—Tomb of Cambyses I. (Restoration by M. Dieulafoy).