Page:History of Art in Persia.djvu/115

 I02 History of Art in Antiquity. dry ; the rainfall is not great, and, as a consequence, the wood does not get rotten by damp heat. It is the same all over the province of Irak Ajemi. Hence the palaces of the Softs at Ispahan, in which supports, ceilings, and lofts were timber, arc standing to this day, although they have been abandoned for the matter of a hundred and fifty years ; the present Kajar dynasty, which resides at Teheran, doing nothing to save them from destruction. The palace at Ecbatana was guarded by the glorious memories con- nected with the old native rulers, who first brought the Aryans into prominence and established tlieir supremacy in the Eastern world. The narratives of Herodotus, and particularly Ctesias, show us to what extent popular fancy had magnified their deeds ; in fact, the tales circulated about them very much resemble those that were subsequently collected in the Shalinamelt. Thanks to these traditions and legends, the edifice they had built was suffered to remain exactly as they left it ; for it was endeared to the Medic people, whose chiefs and priests succeeded in maintain- ing an exalted position under the new rule, their sons being accounted the bravest soldiers of the Persian army. The Achae- menida; did not reside in it when they spent the summer months at Ecbatana, but they kept it in repair, and may on particular occasions have held their court there, so as to keep up their rights as heirs of the Dejoces, I'hraortes, and Cyaxares ; just as the sultan at present quits his palace of Dolma-BjLjtshe, in the new Turkish quarter, to celebrate the Courban-Bairan in the deserted courts and buildings of the Seraglio raised by his ancestors. Timber architecture, which had assumed so brilliant a veil at Ecbatana, had not come to Iran from Babylon. It owed its origin to those aedicula, made of wood, metal, and woven fabrics, which we see ftgured in the sculptures of Assyria, and which we have tried to restore after them.^ The buildings in question, however, no matter the use they might be put to, were always small, and partook more of the character of a tent than of a house ; they might be trellised kiosks set up in the garden, or tabernacles placed over the altar, but tiiere was a wide gap between structures of this description and a palace which was to be in keeping with the new fortunes and reflect the glory of a dynasty that had over- thrown Nineveh and carried its victorious arms to the Halys and the Euxine. If the heirs of the Assyrian and Chaldaean empires Digitized by Google
 * Wst of Artt torn. iL pp. 3oi>2o8, 67, 63, 70.