Page:History of Art in Persia.djvu/304

 394 History op Art in Antiquity. conventional type created by Chaldaean plastic art, whilst those on the other side (towards the staircase) have no wings surmounting the back, nor high tiara crowning a man's head, nor long curly beard falling on the breast. Here the sculptor was content to represent real bulls, as he has done elsewhere, either where the fore parts alone are figured, as about the capitals, or the whole animal with his powerful development of force, as in the compartments of the balustrade of the stairs leading to the palace. The elements that still remain of these supports are quite sufficient to enable us to restore them with certainty (Plate HL). The four stone pillars formed the piers of a brace of great portals, pierced right through two boriics of buildings, whose width is given by the stones that are visible at the back of the west facade (fronting the stairs). A few blows of the spade on the opposite side would uncover blocks which, like these, served as substructures. That they are the foundation walls whereon reposed the brick mass of this and the other buildings on the platform, is proved by the spurs ("waiting stones") at the side of each pillar, which helped the clay to marry the limestone. As to the pillars, they were not isolated like those in front of the temples of Phoenicia or the temple of Solomon at Jerusalem, where they replaced Egyptian obelisks.* Study of the plans of Persian architecture shows that this art has always assigned the part of support to its column ; and this was precisely the function it fulfilled here, where it upheld an entablature which connected the two pavilions ; thus consti- tuting a whole in which the elegance and lightness of the central porch were in pleasing contrast with the massive amplitude of the two frontispieces. The whole character of the building, the position it occupies in front of the stairs, near the edge of the esplanade, give us the key as to its arrangement. It cannot have been a throne-room or a domestic dwelling, because it is widely open on its four faces, and has neither the size nor the inner arrangement offered by edifices where the king held his court or lived surrounded by his wives.' It is no more than a monumental entrance, somewhat analogous to those pylons that adorn the front of Egyptian temples, and it is likely that here, as in the royal tombs, we have a reminiscence of Egyptian architecture, a clever and discreet copy of one of its favourite themes. The main ' Hist, of Art, torn. iii. pp. 1 19-122; torn. iv. pp. 291, 29a. " The total length of the building is 37 m. 37 c Digitized by Google