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 Religious Architecture. 249 will dose worthily the list of monuments of this description.* It lies two kilometres south of the ruins of Istakhr (Fig. 103). It is a massive structure made of stone of great bulk, 13 m. 31 c. in one direction and 12 m. 46 c. in the other. Each of the two lower courses has a height of 95 centimetres ; the upper is set back 58 centimetres from the one below, and together they form the plinth of the monument. The stones were laid without cement, and united by dovetails. Of subordinate dis- positions nothing is left save a shaft 90 centimetres in diameter, lying on the ground a little way from the structure ; whence the inference may be drawn that, as at FerQz-Abad, here also was a double-pillared porch, within which rose the altar (see Fig. 1 26). It was doubtless the sanctuary most frequented by the inhabitants of IsUkhr, for it is much nearer the town than that which fronts Nalcsh-i-Rustem. We subjoin Dieulafoy's description of a building situated in the Susian pkdn, which he identifies with a temple : " The edifice was upheld by a substructure of about two metres (in height ?). The form and dimensions of the upper platform were determined on the spot. To the four columns, whose bases have been found, corresponded a porch akin to that of the small palaces of the Achsemenids. I dismiss the hypothesis of an hypostyle hall, because the bases that have been recovered belong to an order always employed externally, and because the ramp by which the building was entered terminates in the axis and the base of the supports. Beyond the porch were first a rectangular hall, then another porch with two pillars, a staircase, and a court, on three faces of which ran a paved walk, which our excavations have un- covered. The buildings that flanked the exterior porch were of no great size. The total depth of those surrounding the court, including the walb, averaged from 9 metres to 9 m. 20 c. The widening (at suted intervals ?) of the paved walk around the court corresponds with the thresholds of the doorways, and the short flights of steps answer to symmetrical vestibules that ran along the first hall and opened upon the external porch. The stony masses found right and left of the staircase, masses that do not reach by a long way the crest of the foundations of the columns, doubtless supported stelas or statues; the gradines situate in the centre of the court supported an altar, akin to the
 * Flandin and Costs, Peru anctMne, pi 73, Plate LXIII.