The ornaments in these and in all the other buildings of the Sassanians having been executed in plaster, we should hardly be able to form an idea of the richness of detail they once possessed but for the fortunate discovery of a palace erected in Moab by Khosru Purviz, the last great monarch of this line.[[206]]
As will be seen from the woodcut (No. [265]), the whole building is a square, measuring above 500 ft. each way, but only the inner portion of it, about 170 ft. square, marked E E, has been ever finished or inhabited. It was apparently originally erected as a hunting-box on the edge of the desert for the use of the Persian king, and preserves all the features we are familiar with in Sassanian palaces. It is wholly in brick, and contains in the centre a triapsal hall, once surmounted by a dome on pendentives like those at Serbistan or Firouzabad. On either side were eight vaulted halls with intermediate courts almost identical with those found at Eski Bagdad[[207]] or at Firouzabad. So far there is nothing either remarkable or interesting, except the peculiarity of finding a Persian building in such a situation, and in the fact that the capitals of the pillars are of that full-curved shape which are first found in the works of Justinian, which so far helps to fix the date of the building.
It seems, however, that at a time when Chosroes possessed all Asia and part of Africa, from the Indus to the Nile, and maintained a camp for ten years on the shores of the Bosphorus, in sight of Constantinople, that this modest abode no longer sufficed for the greatest monarch of the day. He consequently determined to add to it the enclosure above described, and to ornament it with a portal which should exceed in richness anything of the sort to be found in Syria. Unfortunately for the history of art, this design was never carried out. When the walls were raised to the height of about twenty feet, the workmen were called off, most probably in consequence of the result of the battle of Nineveh in 627; and the stones remain half hewn, the ornament unfinished, and the whole exactly as if left in a panic, never to be resumed.
266. Interior of ruined triapsal Hall of Palace.
The length of the façade—marked A A in plan, Woodcut No. [265]—between the plain towers, which are the same all round, is about 170 ft.,[[208]] the centre of which was occupied by a square-headed portal flanked by two octagonal towers. Each face of these towers was ornamented by an equilateral triangular pediment, filled with the richest sculpture. In that shown in Woodcut No. [267], two large animals are represented facing one another on the opposite sides of a vase, on which are two doves, and out of which springs a vine which spreads over the whole surface of the triangle, interspersed with birds and bunches of grapes. In another panel one of the lions is represented with wings, evidently the last lineal descendant of those found at Nineveh and Persepolis, and in all are curious hexagonal rosettes, carved with a richness far exceeding anything found in Gothic architecture, but which are found repeated with very little variation in the Jaina temples of western India.
267. One Compartment of Western Octagon Tower of the Persian Palace at Mashita.
The wing walls of the façade are almost more beautiful than the central part itself. As on the towers, the ornamentation consists of a series of triangles filled with incised decorations and with rosettes in their centres; while, as will be observed in Woodcut No. [265], the decoration in each panel is varied, and all are unfinished. The cornice only exists at one angle, and the mortice stones never were inserted that were meant to keep it in its place. Enough however remains to enable us to see that, as a surface decoration, it is nearly unrivalled in beauty and appropriateness. As an external form I know nothing like it. It is only matched by that between the arches of the interior of Sta. Sophia at Constantinople, which is so near it in age that they may be considered as belonging to the same school of art.
