History of Ancient Art

by Franz von Reber

Among the remaining monuments of Persian architecture there are no temples; it would be vain to seek such structures; the worship of the land did not demand closed rooms, requiring only sacrifice and prayer upon the summits of mountains or artificial elevations. Herodotos relates that the Persians not only scorned temples, but did not erect images of their deities, nor even altars. This last point is certainly incorrect; the worship of fire particularly called for altars, and these are represented upon the ornamented façades of the rock-cut tombs. (Fig. 83.) It is probable that two pedestals, standing near each other upon the palace terrace of Pasargadæ, are ancient Persian. They are cubes, each about 3 m. high; one is terminated by steps, and has upon one side a straight line of ascending stairs; the platform at the summit was sufficiently large to receive an altar, or may perhaps itself have been used as a receptacle for fire and sacrifices. They are similar to the altar upon the upper story of the Palace of Darius, used for religious devotion. The supposition may be ventured that these two altars, in such vicinity, point to the dualism of the Persian worship of Ormuzd and Ahriman.

Other large monuments of the land may have had something to do with religious observances; but as they lack any characteristic form, this cannot be proved. Such is the case with the cone of Darabgerd, known as Kella Darab, apparently an imitation of a natural mound. It is surrounded by a circular wall, perforated in eight equidistant places, and rises, in two rings of masonry, to a height of 48 m. A similar structure is the massive tower of Firuz-Abad, a rectangular obelisk 27 m. high, measuring 8.5 m. upon each side of its base. Near it is an enormous platform, with broad buttresses upon the four sides, which are directed to the cardinal points of the compass; the foundation of the mass measures 61 by 78 m. The masonry is of carefully hewn stone, of a workmanship not found in the country after the advent of the Christian era; the swallow-tail dowelling of the blocks is similar to that upon the pavement of the terrace at Persepolis.

To the consideration of these structures must be added that of the semi-sacred tombs. Though few other monuments can be traced back to the age of the founder of the Persian sovereignty, the heroic Cyrus, fortune appears to have preserved his tomb almost entirely intact in architectural respects. The description of it by Arrian is not precise, but his account may still be identified with an interesting and evidently ancient Persian monument, now known as Medshed Mader-i-Suleiman, the tomb of the mother of Solomon. Its situation is in Murgab, not distant from the ruins of Pasargadæ, which contain inscriptions with the name of Cyrus, and reliefs commemorating his exploits. The monument consists of a terrace seven times stepped, covering a ground surface of 12.5 by 13.5 m.; it is built of enormous blocks carefully joined, and bears a cella with gabled roof. The simple and gently curved mouldings of the cornice and base of the cella do not betray Greek influence, but it is possible that the form of the roof, rare in the Orient, may be attributed to reminiscences of Hellenic construction observed during the campaigns of Cyrus in Asia Minor. The entrance, described by Arrian as very small, is 0.9 m. broad and 1.2 m. high; the exterior of the cella is 5.2 m. broad and 6.3 m. long; the chamber itself only 3 m. long and 2.1 m. broad and high. There is naturally no longer any trace of the objects once within the interior—the table, coffin, and bier of solid gold; the garments of royal purple. The inscriptions have, unfortunately, also disappeared. The blocks of the chamber floor are swallow-tailed into each other with great exactness; to which circumstance, and to the exact jointing of all the massive masonry, this exceptionally fine state of the building’s preservation is to be ascribed. The whole structure gives the impression of a terraced Chaldæan temple. It is not improbable that the Tomb of Cyrus received this sacred form because the character of a hero of Western Asia was attributed to the king soon after his death. A colonnade appears to have enclosed the sombre pile; several drums of its columns still project above the ground. The accounts of Greek authors refer to buildings erected for the priests to whose care the monument was intrusted; these are believed to have been recognized in the remains of a neighboring caravansary.

The tombs of later Persian kings, which, during the entire dynasty of the Achæmenidæ, were almost alike, are of a totally different nature from that of Cyrus, being cut in and upon the face of the rock. Upon the steep cliff of Naksh-i-Rustam and Persepolis there are seven of these facades, which form an imposing feature of the landscape, whether viewed in the vicinity or from afar. All follow the type of the Tomb of Darius described above, giving a representation of the royal dwelling upon the wall before the grave-chamber. (Fig. 83.) Only the lower half of the door is used as an entrance, the upper part being closed by an imitation of slat-work. It leads to a corridor running parallel to the face of the cliff; in the Tomb of Darius this extends to the left, beyond the breadth of the façade, to three chambers, each of which is arranged for three coffins. All these graves had been plundered when investigated by Coste and Flandin. A rock-cut tomb at Serpul-Zohab is of still simpler disposition; originally it had two columns upon the front, but was not further decorated; the interior consisted of a small chamber, providing only sufficient space for two sarcophagi. It is not certain whether other monuments in the vicinity of Naksh-i-Rustam and of Pasargadæ should be regarded as tombs. They resemble towers; their corners are strengthened by pilasters, and they have oblong niches upon each side, the frames of which are triply stepped. Of the tombs of Persian subjects nothing whatever is known; it may be possible that the people of that nation were accustomed formerly, as at present, to carry down their dead from the highlands to the Necropolis of Chaldæa, where millions of graves still await scientific investigation.

As little is known of Persian domestic architecture. No vestiges of private houses have been found which belong to an historical period earlier than that of the Roman emperors. The habitations of subjects were not to be compared with the magnificent palaces of their despotic rulers, and must have been built of the most destructible materials. We may imagine the Persian house somewhat to have resembled, in disposition of plan, the royal dwellings, though of course greatly simplified by the substitution of an open court for the hypostyle hall, by the omission of terraces, columns, and carvings, and by the reduction of all spaces and dimensions to a minimum.

The Persians developed far less independence in sculpture than in architecture. They showed themselves, in their carvings, to be but meanly endowed scholars of the Assyrians, and gained little by subjecting themselves to the influence of other nations, the spirit of which they did not comprehend or employ towards any possible improvement of Assyrian traditions. The Mesopotamians were, in their artistic development, thrown upon their own resources; they therefore looked earnestly to the fountain-head of nature as the model of their sculptured work; but the Persians, in the wider extent of their kingdom, instead of profiting by the study of nature, so requisite to true progress, depended upon forms and methods inherited from the Assyrians, upon which they engrafted certain peculiarities borrowed from the Egyptians, and also, in still greater measure, from the higher art practised among the Greeks of Asia Minor in the time of Darius and Xerxes. In this adoption of foreign properties, in this mingling of Mesopotamian, Egyptian, and Hellenic manners of expression, they utterly sacrificed originality and simplicity of style, and made of their sculpture a repulsive hybrid of inharmonious elements. It may well be conceived that with this lifeless imitation the creative impulse languished, and art became more and more limited, until it shrank at last into mere ornamental handiwork. The Persians could the more easily forego the revetment of their walls with carved slabs, after the Assyrian fashion, as their architecture itself, far more than that of Mesopotamia, fulfilled its own aim,—accomplished with its own means what was elsewhere effected by sculpture and painting.

With Persian statues in the full round we have no acquaintance. Several examples remain of colossal monsters in the half round, like those met with in Assyrian sculpture. In conception and in detail, in proportion and in situation, they scarcely differ from those of Assyria: they are only somewhat stiffer; their strap-like sinews and veins, their muscles and hair, are conventionalized almost to pure ornament; they have entirely lost the life-like natural truth of the works of Nineveh. The tendency towards decoration is well expressed in the wings of these monsters. The rectilinear feathers of the models upon the Tigris were in Persia transformed into the graceful but unnatural curves seen also in the griffins of Greek architecture. This Colossus is found in the best state of preservation at the Propylæa of Xerxes near the ascent of the terrace of Persepolis. On the front are perfect bulls, with proportionately small heads; on the back are the cherubim already mentioned, with long-bearded, tiara-crowned human heads. These purely Assyrian monsters of the gateway may perhaps be regarded as trophies from Mesopotamia, which, in the course of time, had become naturalized into the Persian practice of palace architecture.