It is to this last edifice, or group of edifices, that the reader’s attention will be specially directed in the following pages. Here the greatest of the Persian monarchs seem to have built the greatest of their works. Here the ravages of time and barbarism, sadly injurious as they may have been, have had least effect. Here, moreover, modern research has spent its chief efforts, excavations having been made, measurements effected, and ground-plans laid down with accuracy. In describing the Persepolitan buildings we have aids which mostly fail us elsewhere--charts, plans, drawings in extraordinary abundance and often of high artistic value, elaborate descriptions, even photographs. [PLATE XXXVIII., Fig. 3.] If the describer has still a task of some difficulty to perform, it is because an overplus of material is apt to cause almost as much embarrassment as too poor and scanty a supply.
The buildings at Persepolis are placed upon a vast platform. It was the practice of the Persians, as of the Assyrians and Babylonians, to elevate their palaces in this way. They thus made them at once more striking to the eye, more dignified, and more easy to guard. In Babylonia an elevated habitation was also more healthy and more pleasant, being raised above the reach of many insects, and laid open to the winds of heaven, never too boisterous in that climate. Perhaps the Assyrians and Persians in their continued use of the custom, to some extent followed a fashion, elevating their royal residences, not so much for security or comfort, as because it had come to be considered that a palace ought to have a lofty site, and to look down on the habitations of meaner men; but, however this may have been, the custom certainly prevailed, and at Persepolis we have, in an almost perfect condition, this first element of a Persian palace. [PLATE XXXIX.]
The platform at Persepolis is built at the foot of a high range of rocky hills, on which it abuts towards the east. It is composed of solid masses of hewn stone, which were united by metal clamps, probably of iron or lead. The masses were not cut to a uniform size, nor even always to a right angle, but were fitted together with a certain amount of irregularity, which will be the best understood from the woodcut overleaf. Many of the blocks were of enormous size; and their quarrying, transport, and elevation to their present places, imply very considerable mechanical skill. They were laid so as to form a perfectly smooth perpendicular wall, the least height of which above the plain below is twenty feet. The outline of the platform was somewhat irregular. Speaking roughly, we may call it an oblong square, with a breadth about two thirds of its length; but this description, unless qualified, will give an idea of far greater uniformity than actually prevails. [PLATE XL., Fig. 1.] The most serious irregularity is on the north side, the general line of which is not parallel to the south side, nor at right angles with the western one, but forms with the general line of the western an angle of about eighty degrees. The cause of this deviation lay probably in the fact that, on this side, a low rocky spur ran out from the mountain-range in this direction, and that it was thought desirable to accommodate the line of the structure to the natural irregularities of the ground. In addition to the irregularity of general outline thus produced, there is another of such perpetual occurrence that it must be regarded as an essential element of the original design, and therefore probably as approving itself to the artistic notions of the builder. This is the occurrence of frequent angular projections and indentations, which we remark on all three sides of the platform equally, and which would therefore seem to have been regarded in Persia, no less than in Assyria, as ornamental.