The wonders of the world

by John Loraine Abbott

THE RUINS OF PERSEPOLIS.

The most striking feature, on a first approach to these splendid ruins, is the staircase and its surrounding walls, and the tall slender columns which stand out so prominently to view. Two grand flights of stairs, facing each other, lead to the principal platform. To their right is an immense wall of the finest masonry, and of the most massive stones; to the left, are other walls, equally well built, but not so imposing. On arriving at the summit of the staircase, the first objects which present themselves directly facing the platform, are four vast portals and two columns. Two portals first, then the columns, and then two portals again. On the front of each are represented, in bass-relief, figures of animals, which, for want of a better name, may be called sphinxes. The two sphinxes on the first portals face outwardly, i. e., toward the plain and the front of the building. The two others, on the second portals, face inwardly, i. e., toward the mountain. From the first, (to the right, on a straight line,) at the distance of fifty-four paces, is a staircase of thirty steps, the sides of which are ornamented with bass-reliefs, originally in three rows, but now partly reduced by the accumulation of earth beneath, and by mutilations above. This staircase leads to the principal compartment of the whole ruins, which may be called a small plain, thickly studded with columns, sixteen of which are now erect. Having crossed this plain, on an eminence are numerous stupendous remains of frames, both of windows and doors, formed by blocks of marble of sizes most magnificent. These frames are ranged in a square and indicate an apartment the most royal that can be conceived. On each side of the frames are sculptured figures, and the marble still retains a polish which, in its original state, must have vied with the finest mirrors. On each corner of this room are pedestals, of an elevation much more considerable than the surrounding frames: one is formed of a single block of marble. The front of this apartment seems to have been to the south-west, for few marks of masonry are to be seen on that exposure, and the base of that side is richly sculptured and ornamented. This front opens upon a square platform, on which no building appears to have been raised. But on the side opposite to the room just mentioned, there is the same appearance of a corresponding apartment, although nothing but the bases of some small columns, and the square of its floor, attest it to have been such. The interval between these two rooms, (on those angles which are the most distant from the grand front of the building,) is filled up by the base of a sculpture, similar to the bases of the two rooms, excepting that the center of it is occupied by a small flight of steps. Behind, and contiguous to these ruins, are the remains of another square room, surrounded on all sides by frames of doors and windows. On the floor are the bases of columns: from the order in which they appear to have stood, they formed six rows, each of six columns. A staircase, cut into an immense mass of rock, leads into the lesser and inclosed plain below. Toward the plain are also three smaller rooms, or rather one room and the bases of two closets. Everything on this part of the building indicates rooms of rest or retirement.

In the rear of the whole of these remains, are the beds of aqueducts, which are cut into the solid rock. They occur in every part of the building, and are probably, therefore, as extensive in their course, as they are magnificent in their construction. The great aqueduct is to be discovered among a confused heap of stones, not far behind the buildings described above, on that quarter of the palace, and almost adjoining to a ruined staircase. Its bed in some places is cut ten feet into the rock. This bed leads east and west; to the eastward its descent is rapid, about twenty-five paces; it there narrows, but again enlarges, so that a man of common hight may stand upright in it. It terminates by an abrupt rock.

Proceeding from this toward the mountains, situated in the rear of the great hall of columns, stand the remains of a magnificent room. Here are still left walls, frames and porticos, the sides of which are thickly ornamented with bass-reliefs of a variety of compositions. This hall is a perfect square. To the right of this, and further to the southward, are more fragments, the walls and component parts apparently of another room. To the left of this, and therefore to the northward of the building, are the remains of a portal, on which are to be traced the features of a sphinx. Still toward the north, in a separate collection, is the ruin of a column, which, from the fragments about it, must have supported a sphinx. In a recess of the mountain, to the northward, is a portico. Almost in a line with the center of the hall of columns, on the surface of the mountain, is a tomb. To the southward of that is another, in like manner on the mountain’s surface; between both, and just on the point where the ascent from the plain commences, is a reservoir of water. These, according to Mr. Morier, in the account of his embassy to Persia, constitute some of the principal objects among the ruins of Persepolis; and this is confirmed by Sir Robert Ker Porter, who gives still more copious accounts of these ruins, as may be seen in the very interesting narrative of his travels.