Page:History of Art in Persia.djvu/284

 Royal Buildings at Pasargad.*;. 275 apply to the unsquared units constituting the core of the mass a rev^tement of blocks of great sixe. dressed with a care scarcely to be imagined (Figs. 140-142) ? Would they* have been at the pains of chiseUing all the edges and making all the beds of unequal height, an irregularity that was studied so as to provide the only kind of decoration it was possible to apply to these great surfaces? On the other hand, nothing is more natural than the carefully wrought ashlar work we find here» if we see in it a platform prepared for a palace tlutt should command the plain and be at the gates, as it were, of the town.^ It then becomes fig. hi.— The Takht. showing detail »r _r ^1 I ^t. ^ ^1. i.*^ ^ omneii Flandin and Costs, Ptru perfectly dear that the architect ameimm,naeccii. wished his substructure to look elegant, noble, and in harmony with the magnificent edifice he intended to erect upon that grand plinth. If he made the angles to jut out, it was because against these saliences would lean wide staircases leading to the level where the royal apartments were to be grouped. This point being settled, we must try and dispose of the following: — ^Was this a kind of diminutive outline of the Persepolitan esplanade, or did the latter serve as model for the reduced copy of the Takht-i-Soleiman, ordered by a sove- reign desirous to endow Pasargads mth a monument akin to that which ever)'- body admired in the new capital of the kingdom ? Of the two hypotheses, the first appears far the most likely. Neither on the platform around it, nor at the foot of the mass, are there fragments from which it might be inferred that the in petto buildings were ever completed. ^ DiBULAFOY, VArt antipUf torn. i. 13* Fig. 14a.— The Takht. Sectkn of itU. Digitizeu l> ^oogle