The portico of the Hall of a Hundred Columns was flanked on either side by a colossal bull, standing at the inner angle of the antes, and thus in some degree narrowing the entrance. Its columns were fluted, and had in every case the complex capital, which occurs also in the great propylaea and in the Hall of Xerxes. It was built of the same sort of massive blocks as the south-eastern edifice, or Ancient Palace—blocks often ten feet square by seven feet thick, and may be ascribed probably to the same age as that structure. Like that edifice, it is situated somewhat low; it has no staircase, and no inscription. We may fairly suppose it to have been the throne-room or great hall of audience of the early king who built the South-eastern Palace.
We have now to describe the most remarkable of all the Persepolitan edifices—a building the remains of which stretch nearly 350 feet in one direction, while in the other they extend 246 feet. Its ruins consist almost entirely of pillars, which are divided into four groups. The largest of these was a square of thirty-six pillars, arranged in six rows of six, all exactly equidistant from one another, and covering an area of above 20,000 square feet. On three sides of this square, eastward, northward, and westward, were magnificent porches, each consisting of twelve columns, arranged in two rows, in line with the pillars of the central cluster. These porches stood at the distance of seventy feet from the main building, and have the appearance of having been entirely separate from it. They are 143 feet long, by thirty broad, and thus cover each an area of 4260 feet. The most astonishing feature in the whole building is the height of the pillars. These, according to the measurements of M. Flandin, had a uniform altitude throughout the building of sixty-four feet. Even in their ruin, they tower over every other erection upon the platform, retaining often, in spite of the effects of time, an elevation of sixty feet.
The capitals of the pillars were of three kinds. Those of the side colonnades were comparatively simple: they consisted, in each case, of a single member, formed, in the eastern colonnade, of two half-griffins, with their heads looking in opposite directions [PLATE XLVII, Fig. 2]; and, in the western colonnade, of two half-bulls, arranged in the same manner [PLATE XLVII., Fig. 3]. The capitals of the pillars in the northern colonnade, which faced the great sculptured staircase, and constituted the true front of the building, were of a very complex character. They may be best viewed as composed of three distinct members—first, a sort of lotos-bud, accompanied by pendent leaves; then, above that, a member, composed of volutes like those of the Ionic order, but placed in a perpendicular instead of a horizontal direction; and at the top, a member composed of two half-bulls, exactly similar to that which forms the complete capital of the western group of pillars. The pillars of the groat central cluster had capitals exactly like those of the northern colonnade.
The bases of the colonnade pillars are of singular beauty. Bell-shaped, and ornamented with a double or triple row of pendent lotus-leaves, some rounded, some narrowed to a point; they are as graceful as they are rare in their forms, and attract the admiration of all beholders. Above them rise the columns, tapering gently as they ascend, but without any swell or entasis. They consist of several masses of stone, carefully joined together, and secured at the joints by an iron cramp in the direction of the column’s axis. All are beautifully fluted along their entire length, the number of the incisions or flutings being from forty-eight to fifty-two in each pillar. They are arcs of circles smaller than semicircles, thus resembling those of the Doric, rather than those of the Ionic or Corinthian order. The cutting of all is very exact and regular.
There can be little doubt but that both the porches, and the great central pillar-cluster, were roofed in. The double-bull and double-griffin capital are exactly suited to receive the ends of beams, which would stretch from pillar to pillar, and support a roof and an entablature. [PLATE L., Fig.1.] We may see in the entrances to the royal tombs the true use of pillars in a Persian building, and the character of the entablature which, they were intended to sustain, Assuming, then, that both the great central pillar phalanx and the three detached colonnades supported a roof, the question arises, were the colonnades in any way united with the main building, or did they stand completely detached from it? It has been supposed that they were all porticos in antis, connected with the main building by solid walls—that the great central column-cluster was surrounded on all sides by a wall of a very massive description, from the four corners of which similar barriers were carried down to the edge of the terrace, abutting in front upon the steps of the great sculptured staircase, and extending eastward and westward, so as to form the antce of an eastern and a western portico. In the two corners between the northern in antae of the side porticos and the antae of the portico in front are supposed to have been large guard-rooms, entirely filling up the two angles. The whole building is thus brought into close conformity with the “Palace of Xerxes,” from which it is distinguished only by its superior size, its use of stone pillars, and the elongation of the tetrastyle chambers at the sides of that edifice into porticos of twelve pillars each.
The ingenuity of this conception is unquestionable; and one is tempted at first sight to accept a solution which removes so much that is puzzling, and establishes so remarkable a harmony between works whose outward aspect is so dissimilar. It seems like the inspiration of genius to discern so clearly the like in the unlike, and one inclines at first to believe that what is so clever cannot but be true. But a rigorous examination of the evidence leads to an opposite conclusion, and if it does not absolutely disprove Mr. Fergusson’s theory, at any rate shows it to be in the highest degree doubtful. Such walls as he describes, with their antae and their many doors and windows, should have left very marked traces of their existence in great squared pillars at the sides of porticos, in huge door-frames and window-frames, or at least in the foundations of walls, or, the marks of them, on some part of the paved terrace. Now the entire absence of squared pillars for the ends of antce, of door-frames, and window-frames, or even of such sculptured fragments as might indicate their former existence, is palpable and is admitted; nor is there any even supposed trace of the walls, excepting in one of the lines which by the hypothesis they would occupy. In front of the building, midway between the great pillar-cluster and the north colonnade, are the remains of four stone bases, parallel to one another, each seventeen feet long by five feet six inches wide. Mr. Fergusson regards these bases as marking the position of the doors in his front wall; and they are certainly in places where doors might have been looked for, if the building had a front wall, since the openings are exactly opposite the inter-columniations of the pillars, both in the portico and in the main cluster. But there are several objections to the notion of these bases being the foundations of the jambs of doors. In the first place, they are too wide apart, being at the distance from one another of seventeen feet, whereas no doorway on the platform exceeds a width of twelve or thirteen feet. In the second place, if these massive stone bases were prepared for the jambs of doors, it could only have been for massive stone jambs like those of the other palaces; but in that case, the jambs could not have disappeared. Thirdly, if the doorways on this side were thus marked, why were they not similarly marked on the other sides of the building? On the whole, the supposition of M. Flandin, that the bases were pedestals for ornamental statues, perhaps of bulls, seems more probable than that of Mr. Fergusson; though, no doubt, there are objections also to M. Flandin’s hypothesis, and it would be perhaps best to confess that we do not know the use of these strange foundations, which have nothing that at all resembles them upon the rest of the platform.
Another strong objection to Mr. Fergusson’s theory, and one of which he, to a certain extent, admits the force, is the existence of drains, running exactly in the line of his side walls, which, if such walls existed, would be a curious provision on the part of the architect for undermining his own work. Mr. Fergusson supposes that they might be intended to drain the walls themselves and keep them dry. But as it is clear that they must have carried off the whole surplus water from the roof of the building, and as there is often much rain and snow at Persepolis, their effect on the foundations of such a wall as Mr. Fergusson imagines would evidently be disastrous in the extreme.
To these minute and somewhat technical objections may be added the main one, whereof all alike can feel the force—namely, the entire disappearance of such a vast mass of building as Mr. Fergusson’s hypothesis supposes. To account for this, Mr. Fergusson is obliged to lay it down, that in this magnificent structure, with its solid stone staircase, its massive pavement of the same material, and its seventy-two stone pillars, each sixty-four feet high, the walls were of mud. Can we believe in this incongruity? Can we imagine that a prince, who possessed an unbounded command of human labor, and an inexhaustible supply of stone in the rocky mountains close at hand, would have had recourse to the meanest of materials for the walls of an edifice which he evidently intended to eclipse all others upon the platform. And, especially, can we suppose this, when the very same prince used solid blocks of stone, in the walls of the very inferior edifice which he constructed in this same locality? Mr. Fergusson, in defence of his hypothesis, alleges the frequent combination of meanness with magnificence in the East, and softens down the meanness in the present case by clothing his mud walls with enamelled tiles, and painting them with all the colors of the rainbow. But here again the hypothesis is wholly unsupported by fact. Neither at Persepolis, nor at Pasargadae, nor at any other ancient Persian site, has a single fragment of an enamelled tile or brick been discovered. In Babylonia and Assyria, where the employment of such an ornamentation was common, the traces of it which remain are abundant. Must not the entire absence of such traces from all exclusively Persian ruins be held to indicate that this mode of adorning edifices was not adopted in Persia?