The Art of the Achaemenids(Part 2.)

Guests and dignitaries who were admitted to the audience in the Apadana probably went in through the two northern entrances, while the king himself doubtless came through an entrance on the east side [4]. After the audience the king and his entourage would take their places on the western portico and its narrow forecourt, which extended to the edge of the terrace and permitted an excellent view of the happenings below.

The order of groups in the procession pictured at the back of the stairs on the socle of the audience hall indicated that the Susian guards in their brilliantly [p. 151] coloured robes came first. We know the beautiful colours and the patterning of these robes from the reliefs of glazed brick discovered at Susa. At Persepolis none of the original colour has been preserved. The garments from Susa show scatter patterns of rosettes, stars, squares, each inscribed with a city gate, and borders of lotus flowers, all in different colour combinations. The guards carry bows and great quivers with arrows and set the globular end of their spears on the forward foot, a gesture which corresponds to that of setting the bow on the foot, seen on the façades of the royal tombs.

The Susians were followed by three groups of royal grooms, horses of the royal stable, and chariots, all led by ushers. After them came interminable rows of Susian guards, followed by a group of Persian and Median nobles or dignitaries in which the Persians seem to have had precedence over the Medes. The Medes wore a tall, rounded felt cap with a ribbon hanging down in the back, a long tight coat which reached to slightly above the knees and was tied by a belt, and long trousers probably made of leather, as well as laced shoes. Most of them have a coat with empty sleeves hanging over their shoulders, as at Qyzqapan. Persians and Medes wear the same type of jewelry, a twisted or plain torque, ear-rings and bracelets. On the reliefs most of the persons in this group carry a blossom. It may have been one of those sweet-smelling flowers which are often used instead of perfume in the Near East and which preserve their fragrance for days.

To judge by the reliefs, the March of the Nations must have begun after these groups of Susians, Persians and Medes had passed. First came the Medes with their fine horses, then the Susians, who brought with them a lioness and her cubs, as well as bows and daggers, the later surely of precious metal. After a few more delegations, all led by ushers, followed the Lydians. They wore short-sleeved long gowns with a wavy pattern, perhaps suggesting wool. Over the left shoulder was draped a scarf with tasseled corners, and on the head they wore a tall turban-like head-dress below which hung a very stylized braid, perhaps no longer made of hair but of ribbon. They had low boots with slightly upturned toes, the age-old characteristic footwear of Asia Minor. Their tribute consisted of two metal vessels with handles ending in winged bulls, two low metal bowls, and two oblong rings each ornamented with two griffins. Finally there was a chariot with a plain body drawn by two stallions led by turbanless grooms.

Other delegations which presumably created much interest were the Sogdians with their broad-tailed Karakul sheep and lamb-skins, probably valuable furs, then the Indians, bare-chested, which was most unusual, though their leader wore a flowing Indian dress which was surely of gay colours and must have been striking. One of the Indians carried a pair of baskets containing pots presumably full of gold dust. [13] The Arabs with their dromedary and the crinkly-haired Ethiopians with an okapi would have delighted the onlookers. [14] After the conclusion of this long procession the king probably left the Apadana and may have passed through the so-called Tripylon on this way to the banquet, the second phase of the festivities. The Tripylon has also been called the 'Central' building or Council Hall. It is a beautiful little building with three monumental doorways which probably indicate its function as 'the main link of communication between the northern area of open courts and spacious public buildings and that portion of the site which was occupied by the residential palaces of the kings.' [15]

The reliefs on the jambs of the northern and southern doorways show the king [p. 152] followed by two attendants, one of whom carries the royal parasol, while the other holds a fly-whisk over the king's head and carries a towel. The banquet probably took place in the principal hall of the palace of Xerxes [24], once that structure was completed. Whether or not it could have been held earlier in the much smaller palace of Darius [18] is difficult to say.

The third and perhaps most important symbolic phase of the festival appears to have been the carrying of the king on his throne by the representatives of the nations from the Tripylon to the Hall of a Hundred Columns. [16] There, perhaps on the large square before the hall, one may reconstruct as a fourth phase an impressive military parade of the Immortals before their king.

This interpretation has been deduced in large part from the reliefs, some of which admittedly come from the time of Darius' grandson, Artaxerxes [465-423 B.C.]. Yet it seems likely that changes occurred only in details and that the ceremonies portrayed corresponded to those instituted in the time of Darius and continued until his last successor.

An exceptional representation is found only in the reliefs on the jambs of the eastern doorway of the Tripylon. These show King Darius and the Crown Prince Xerxes in the same relief, protected by a canopy over which floats the god Ahura Mazda in the winged disk. Nowhere else is there such an expression of a close relationship between father and son.

The plate on page 157 renders the relief on the left jamb of the eastern doorway of the Tripylon; our drawing [Fig. 84] gives a sketch of the opposite right jamb. For reasons that are difficult to explain, every motif at Persepolis had a counterpart.

The colours of the Ahura Mazda symbol on the Tripylon can be reconstructed after those of a similar symbol discovered by Herzfeld in the Hundred Column Hall and sketched by him before they disappeared. [17] They showed turquoise blue, light scarlet red, golden or orange yellow, deep purple, lapis-lazuli blue and a few touches of emerald green, all on a black background. Additional colour in these reliefs would have been provided by the gold or heavily gilded material with which the royal insignia were covered. Traces of such covering can be seen in the damaged Tripylon reliefs, which show slits on the side of the crowns in which metal fittings had been fastened.

To this description of the colours originally used in the decoration of Persepolis may be added that of the glazed reliefs of Susa--given on page 152. This evidence gives us some idea of the blaze of colours presented by the Achaemenid court, especially at the time of the New Year's festival.

To the buildings described in the course of the hypothetical reconstruction of the New Year's festival may be added the unfinished gate opposite the Hundred Column Hall; this gate may have been intended to assure an impressive entrance to the military groups thought to have paraded on the square north of [p. 154] the hall, which measure four thousand s quare metres in area. Furthermore, there was the so-called harem, now identified more convincingly as additional storage facilities. [18]

In its loose grouping of single halls, Persepolis resembles Pasargadae, whereas at Susa, where another Achaemenid palace was excavated, the ancient Near Eastern palace plan seems to have influenced the arrangement of rooms around courts so that the palace was reconstructed--albeit not very reliably--as a coherent complex. [19][p. 156]

NOTES:
1. For the history of the period Olmstead's History of the Persian Empire [Chicago, 1948] still provides the most extensive documentation from cuneiform sources. H. Bengston, Griechische Geschichte von den Anfágen bis in die rómische Kaiserzeit [Handbuch der Altertumswissen-schaft. Dritte Abteilung, vierter Teil. Munich, 2nd ed., 1960], has been used for the relation between Persians and Greeks.

2. Anshan may be assumed to have been located in the Bakhtiari mountains of western Persia; see Hinz, Persia, p. 6.

3. This interpretation of the significance of Persepolis ws summarized by Erdmann in 'Persepolis: Daten und Deutungen,' Mitteilungen der Deutschen Orient-Geselschaft 92 [1960], p. 47.

4. See Godard, 'Les Travaux de Persepolis,' Archaeologica Orientalia in Memoriam Ernst Herzfeld [Locust Valley, N.Y., 1952], especially pp. 122-126, and Godard, L'art de l'Iran, pp. 123-125.

5. For the first preliminary report on the excavations at Pasargadae, see D. Stronach, Iran I [1963], pp. 19-42. On p. 27 Stronach describes the Citadel Area and mentions [Ibid., note 20] Schmidt's speculations about the purpose of the fortifications in Persepolis I, p. 21.

6. A sketch plan of Pasargadae, Stronach, op. cit. in note XII/5, p. 25, Fig. 2, gives a good idea of the layout of these buildings in relation to the other structures of Persepolis. Herzfeld described the remains of these buildings in Archaeologishe Mitteilungen aus Iran I [1928], pp. 4-16.

7. Boardman, 'Chian and Early Ionic Architecture,' The Antiquaries Journal XXXIX [1959], p. 217, points to the difference between colour contrasts in individual structural members and in alternating slabs in a frieze or in courses of a wall. For the colour contrast in individual structural members, he cites examples from Old Smyrna, 'and more than once on Chian buildings': for the simple alternation of slabs, he gives North Syrian and Urartian examples [ibid., note 4]. He does not believe that the latter influenced the achitecture of Pasargadae. Urartian architecture, however, also seems to have sought a colour contrast in structural elements, as is shown by the parapet of dark stone on walls of different colour seen at Karmir Blur; cf. K.L. Oganesian,Karmir Blur IV [Akademia Nauk Armianskoi SSR, 1955], reconstrution on p. 103, Fig. 61. Admitttedly the entire parapet is constructed there in a different colour, not only parts of it.

8. The derivation of the uppermost part of the Achaemenid capital from predecessors in wood was demonstrated by Herzfeld, Iran, pp. 210-211. On Pl. XXXIX [above, right] of the same book he reproduced part of a horse protome from Pasargadae. The griffin protome was published by Godard in ILN [Jan. 2, 1954], p. 18, Figs. 5-8. A protome with lion dragons was also discarded, this one because it had a flaw in the stone, due to which the capital was not only ungainly but also unsafe, though the workmen tried in vain to improve on this condition by applying iron clamps, the traces of which can still be seen in the stone [Ibid., p. 1 9, Figs. 9, 11]. See also Godard, L'art de l'Iran, Fig. 61. These protomes are also reproduced in Ali Sami, Persepolis [3rd ed., Shiraz, 1958], unnumbered plates following p. F.

9. Terraces of the early Achaemenid period were discussed by Ghirshman in 'Masjid-i-Solaiman: résidence des premiers Achéménides,' Syria XXVII [1950], pp. 205-220, and also by Erdmann, Bibliotheca Orientalis XIII [1956], pp. 58, 59.

10. R. Ghirshman, 'Notes iraniennes: VII, A propos de Persépolis,' Artibus Asiae XX/4 [1957], pp. 265-278. The present description, however, also relies on the occasionally varying reconstruction by Erdmann, 'Persepolis: Daten un Deutungen,' cited in note XIII 3 above.

11. This and the following descriptions of architectural features and of the reliefs are taken, often verbally, from E. F. Schmidt in Persepolis I, although quotation marks are occasionally omitted for easier reading. Numbers in parentheses refer to the numbers of the rooms in the plan, Fig. 78, reproduced from Ghirshman's article cited in note XII 14.

12. Quoted from Persepolis I, p. 82.

13. For the description of the Indians, Lydians, and Sogdians, see Barnett, 'Persepolis,' Iraq XIX [1957], pp. 68-70.

14. For the Arabian delegation with its dromedary, see Persepolis I, Pl. 46; for the Ethiopian delegation, see Persepolis I, Pl. 49.

15. Quoted from Persepolis I, p. 107. Schmidt called the building Council Hall; Erdmann refers to it as 'Zentralgeb�ude' [see the article cited in note XII/3]; I retain Herzfeld's term, Tripylon.

16. Here we begin to substitute Erdmann's reconstruction for Ghirshman's.

17. The description of the colours of the Ahura Mazda symbol was given by Herzfeld in Iran, p. 255, where he referred to his water-colour sketch reproduced, ibid., in Pl. LXIV, above. Herzfeld also stated: 'The excavations of the covered parts of the sculptures of the Tripylon also revealed their original colours unchanged: purple red and turquoise blue, with application of metal, possibly gold.' Today no trace of the colours remains.

18. Godard, L'art de l'Iran, pp. 123, 124.