Page:History of Art in Persia.djvu/370

 348 History of Art in Antiquity. never been incised ; ' stairs the sculptures of which have not all been executed ; * whilst elsewhere, towards the north of the great level, a number of shafts and capitals in an incomplete state lie scattered about, leading to the inference that constructive works were actually in progress at more than one point of the platform, when the downfall of the monarchy put an end to them." The Achaemenidae,^ as kings of the same family, do not seem to have been so utterly indifferent to complete the work or keep in repair the buildings of their predecessors, as the Pharaohs of Egypt,- for example, who struck off the names from sphinxes and temples of former dynasties that they might write their own: or the monarchs of Assyria, every one of whom, on ascending the throne, forthwith had a palace of his own built; when, to go quicker to work, the old materials, alabaster slabs incised with the exploits of their predecessors, were re-used. At Persepolis, on the other hand, Xerxes puts the finishing touches to a palace erected by his father, and Ochus adds an important part thereto. When Artaxerxes Mnemon builds a throne-room at Susa, he declares that he does no more than re-establish in its pristine fairness a palace formerly raised by the son of Hystaspes. All the same, despite^ too, community of interests openly proclaimed, it is just possible that when a king died and left works in a state of pro- gression, delay and suspension may frequently have supervened • during internad turmoils and disturbances brought about by rival claims to the throne. We are too far removed from the scene of events to be able to single out what was left unfinished from what was demolished ; consequently we have supposed all the edifices which appear in our perspective view as having been complete. The structures under consideration have been described sepa- • This is the case in the hyposlylc liall of Xerxes {Hist, of Art, torn. v. p. 696, note i). ' Stoize reports that the figured decoration about the palaces of Xerxes aod Ochus was left unfinished {PirsepoUs, loc. at.). Kcr Porter had also noticed the lacuniu. — Trs. • I landin, i?^/a//<(7/r, torn, il p. 200. SroLZE {Bemerkungfn, L) has asked himself the question whether the pillais intended f<» the hypostyle haU were all set up — ^if there w ere more than those that are still standing or prone on the ground He remarks that none but units of small size are used as head-stones in Moham- medan cemeteries; hence the difficulty in accounting for such masses as these enormous shafts having disappeared is not easily met. • To say that '*the kings of Persia were all descended from Aduemenes" is obviously a lapsus fetinte, which I have left out— Trs. Digitized by Gooqie