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No sculpture, so far as appears, adorned this apartment, excepting in the doorways, which however had in every case this kind of ornamentation. The doorways in the back wall exhibited on their jambs figures of the king followed by two attendants, one holding a cloth, and the other a fly-chaser. [PLATE XLV., Fig. 3.] These figures had in every case their faces turned towards the apartment. The front doorway showed on its jambs the monarch followed by the parasol-bearer and the bearer of the fly-chaser, with his back turned to the apartment, issuing forth, as it were, from it. On the jambs of the doors of the side apartments was represented the king in combat with a lion or a monster, the king here in every case facing outwards, and seeming to guard the entrances to the side chambers.

At the back of the hall, and at either side, were chambers of very moderate dimensions. The largest were to the rear of the building, where there seems to have been one about forty feet by twenty-three, and another twenty-eight feet by twenty. The doorways here had sculptures, representing attendants bearing napkins and perfumes. The side chambers, five in number, were considerably smaller than those behind the great hall, the largest not exceeding thirty-four feet by thirteen.

It seems probable that this palace was without any second story. There is no vestige in any part of it of a staircase—no indication of its height having ever exceeded from twenty-two to twenty-five feet. It was a modest building, simple and regular, covering less than half the space of an ordinary palace in Assyria. [PLATE XLV., Fig. 2.] Externally, it must have presented an appearance not very dissimilar to that of the simpler Greek temples; distinguished from them by peculiarities of ornamentation, but by no striking or important feature, excepting the grand and elaborately sculptured staircase. Internally, it was remarkable for the small number of its apartments, which seem not to have been more than twelve or thirteen, and for the moderate size of most of them. Even the grand central hall covered a less area than three out of the five halls in the country palace of Sargon. The effect of this room was probably fine, though it must have been somewhat over-crowded with pillars. If these were, however (as is probable), light wooden posts, plated with silver or with gold, and if the ceiling consisted (as it most likely did) of beams, crossing each other at right angles, with square spaces between them, all likewise coated with the precious metals; if moreover the cold stone walls, excepting where they were broken by a doorway, or a window, were similarly decked; if curtains of brilliant hues hung across the entrances; if the pavement was of many-colored stones, and in places covered with magnificent carpets; if an elevated golden throne, under a canopy of purple, adorned the upper end of the room, standing against the wall midway between the two doors—if this were in truth the arrangement and ornamentation of the apartment, we can well understand that the coup d’oeil must have been effective, and the impression made on the spectator highly pleasing. A room fifty feet square, and not much more than twenty high, could not be very grand; but elegance of form, combined with richness of material and splendor of coloring, may have more than compensated for the want of that grandeur which results from mere size.

If it be inquired how a palace of the dimensions described can have sufficed even for one of the early Persian kings, the reply must seemingly be that the building in question can only have contained the public apartments of the royal residence—the throne-room, banqueting-rooms, guard-rooms, etc.,—and that it must have been supplemented by at least one other edifice of a considerable size, the Gynaeceum or “House of the Women.” There is ample room on the platform for such a building, either towards the east, where the ground is now occupied by a high mound of rubbish, or on the west, towards the edge of the platform, where traces of a large edifice were noted by Niebuhr. On the whole, this latter situation seems to be the more probable; and the position of the Gynaeceum in this quarter may account for the alteration made by Artaxerxes Ochus in the palace of Darius, which now seriously interferes with its symmetry. Artaxerxes cut a doorway in the outer western wall, and another opposite to it in the western wall of the great hall, adding at the same time a second staircase to the building, which thus became accessible from the west no less than from the south. It has puzzled the learned in architecture to assign a motive for this alteration. May we not find an adequate one in the desire to obtain a ready and comparatively private access to the Gynaeceum, which must have been somewhere on the platform, and which may well have lain in this direction?

The minute account which has been now given of this palace will render unnecessary a very elaborate description of the remainder. Two grand palatial edifices seem to have been erected on the platform by later kings—one by Xerxes and the other by Artaxerxes Ochus; but the latter of these is in so ruined a condition, and the former is so like the palace of Darius, that but few remarks need be made upon either. The palace of Xerxes is simply that of Darius on a larger scale, the pillars in the portico being increased from two rows of four to two rows of six, and the great hall behind being a square of eighty instead of a square of fifty feet, with thirty-six instead of sixteen pillars to support its roof. On either side of the hall, and on either side of the portico, were apartments like those already described as abutting on the same portions of the older palace, differing from them chiefly in being larger and more numerous. The two largest, which were thirty-one feet square, had roofs supported on pillars, the numbers of such supports being in each case four. The only striking difference in the plans of the two buildings consisted in the absence from the palace of Xerxes of any apartments to the rear of the great hall. In order to allow space for an ample terrace in front, the whole edifice was thrown back so close to the edge of the upper platform that no room was left for any chambers at the back, since the hall itself was here brought almost to the very verge of the sheer descent from the central to the low southern terrace. In ornamentation the palaces also very closely resembled each other, the chief difference being that the combats of the king with lions and mythological monsters, which form the regular ornamentation of the side-chambers in the palace of Darius, occur nowhere in the residence of his son, where they are replaced by figures of attendants bringing articles for the toilet or the table, like those which adorn the main staircase of the older edifice. Figures of the same kind also ornament all the windows in the palace of Xerxes. A tone of mere sensual enjoyment is thus given to the later edifice, which is very far from characterizing the earlier; and the decline of morals at the Court, which history indicates as rapid about this period, is seen to have stamped itself, as such changes usually do, upon the national architecture.

A small building, at the distance of about twenty or twenty-five yards from the eastern wall of the palace of Xerxes, possesses a peculiar interest, in consequence of its having some claims to be considered the most ancient structure upon the platform. It consists of a hall and portico, in size, proportions, and decoration almost exactly resembling the corresponding parts of Darius’s palace, but unaccompanied by any trace of circumjacent chambers, and totally devoid of inscriptions. The building is low, on the level of the northern, rather than on that of the central terrace, and is indeed half buried in the rubbish which has accumulated at its base. Its fragments are peculiarly grand and massive, while its sculptures are in strong and bold relief. There can be little doubt but that it was originally, like the hall and portico of Darius, surrounded on three sides by chambers. These, however, have entirely disappeared, having probably been pulled down to furnish materials for more recent edifices. Like the palaces of Xerxes and Artaxerxes Ochus, and unlike the palace of Darius, the building faces to the north, which is the direction naturally preferred in such a climate. We may suppose it to have been the royal residence of the earlier times, the erection of Cyrus or Cambyses, and to have been intended especially for summer use, for which its position well fitted it. Darius, wishing for a winter palace at Persepolis, as well as a summer one, took probably this early palace for his model, and built one as nearly as possible resembling it, except that, for the sake of greater warmth, he made his new erection face southwards. Xerxes, dissatisfied with the size of the old summer palace, built a new one at its side of considerably larger dimensions, using perhaps some of the materials of the old palace in his new building. Finally, Artaxerxes Ochus made certain additions to the palace of Xerxes on its western side, and at the same time added a staircase and a doorway to the winter residence of Darius. Thus the Persepolitan palace, using the word in its proper sense of royal residence, attained its full dimensions, occupying the southern half of the great central platform, and covering with its various courts and buildings a space 500 feet long by 375 feet wide, or nearly the space covered by the less ambitious of the palaces of Assyria.

Besides edifices adapted for habitation, the Persepolitan platform sustained two other classes of buildings. These were propylaea, or gateways—places commanding the approach to great buildings, where a guard might be stationed to stop and examine all comers—and halls of a vast size, which were probably throne-rooms, where the monarch held his court on grand occasions, to exhibit himself in full state to his subjects. The propylaea upon the platform appear to have been four in number. One, the largest, was directly opposite the centre of the landing-place at the top of the great stairs which gave access to the platform from the plain. This consisted of a noble apartment, eighty-two feet square, with a roof supported by four magnificent columns, each between fifty and sixty feet high. The walls of the apartment were from sixteen to seventeen feet thick. Two grand portals, each twelve feet wide by thirty-six feet high, led into this apartment, one directly facing the head of the stairs, and the other opposite to it, towards the east. Both were flanked with colossal bulls, those towards the staircase being conventional representations of the real animal, while the opposite pair are almost exact reproductions of the winged and human-headed bulls, with which the Assyrian discoveries have made us so familiar. The accompanying illustration [PLATE XLVII., Fig. 1.], which is taken from a photograph, exhibits this inner pair in their present condition. The back of one of the other pair is also visible. Two of the pillars—which alone are still standings appear in their places, intervening between the front and the back gateway.

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