How to Study Architecture

by Charles H. Caffin

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 they could easily be mounted by horses. The stairs led to a terrace, paved, as was the whole platform, with marble, in the centre of which was the entrance gate, or, to use the later classic term, a Propylæa. This was square in plan, with a portal, front and rear, flanked by winged bulls, while the ceiling was supported by four columns. Its walls, like those of the other buildings, built of sun-dried bricks or rubble masonry, set with clay mortar, have long since crumbled into ruins.

The earliest palace of the group is that of Darius I, to the portico of which we have already alluded. Its plan shows a room, right and left of the portico, in which may have been stairs leading to the roof; then a square hypostyle hall of sixteen columns, set in rows of four, with various chambers, along the sides and at the end.

In one building, the Hall of a Hundred Columns, the roof was carried by ten ranges of ten columns; for the hall, as indeed were all the halls at Persepolis, was square in plan. This can scarcely have been a mere coincidence. Is it fanciful to imagine that a people, trained in Zoroastrianism, found in the principle of the square a fitting symbol of “Creative Strength” and “Right Order”?

But the most important building at Persepolis, “one of the most stupendous relics of antiquity,” is the great Palace of Xerxes. Elevated on a terrace of its own, twenty feet high, which was ascended on the north side by four flights of steps, it occupied an area of one hundred thousand square feet, more than double that of the Great Hall at Karnak, and larger than that of any Gothic cathedral in Europe, Milan and Seville alone excepted. Two rows of six columns supported each of the three porticoes, and six times six the ceiling of the Hall: in which combination one may perhaps detect a symbol of the Six Helpers of Ahuramazda, “the spiritual Wise One” or “Great Wisdom.”

The columns, including base and capital, rose to a height of 65 feet, which may be compared with the 69 feet of the central nave columns in the Hall of Karnak. The latter, however, had a diameter of 12 feet, and were separated by intervals of scarcely twice that width; while those in Xerxes’ palace were set at a comparatively far greater distance from one another and measured in diameter only about 5 feet. Moreover, instead of a minimum of light percolating through a clerestory as at Karnak, the light and air streamed freely through the windows in the walls of Xerxes’ palace, so that in every respect the impression produced by the two halls must have been very different.

The grandeur of Karnak was weighted down with mystery and awe, while Xerxes’ “lordly pleasure house” was an exalted symbol of the Zoroastrian belief in the joy of life. For in addition to the grandeur of its structural features, the imagination must picture the accompanying gladness of marble floors, water basins, fountains, and flowers, and varicoloured rugs and hangings. The walls, also, may have been resplendent with brilliantly enamelled tiles as in Xerxes’ other palace at Susa, where the French explorer, M. Dieulafoy, discovered the magnificent frieze of archers, a frieze of lions, and other decorations executed in bright-coloured enamels on concrete blocks. That Xerxes spared no pains to render his palace at Persepolis as superb as possible may be inferred from the columns in the hall and north portico. For in them the double capital of beasts does not rest directly on the fluted shafts, but is supplemented by two lower members; the first a curious arrangement of scrolls or volutes, the second a sort of conventionalised calyx of the lotus, beneath which, in bell-like form, is a conventionalisation of pendant leaves. In the volutes a suggestion of the Ionic capital has been detected, while the lower points to an Egyptian origin.