PERSIAN, LYCIAN AND JEWISH ARCHITECTURE:Jehovah

<< CHALDÃ†AN AND ASSYRIAN ARCHITECTURE:ORNAMENT, MONUMENTS

GREEK ARCHITECTURE:GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS, THE DORIC >>

CHAPTER V.

PERSIAN, LYCIAN AND JEWISH ARCHITECTURE.

BOOKS RECOMMENDED: As before, Babelon; Bliss, Excavations at Jerusalem. Reber.

Also Dieulafoy, L'Art antique de la Perse. Fellows, Account of Discoveries in Lycia.

Fergusson, The Temple at Jerusalem. Flandin et Coste, Perse ancienne. Perrot and

Chipiez, History of Art in Persia; History of Art in Phrygia, Lydia, Caria, and Lycia;

History of Art in Sardinia and Judæa. Texier, L'Arménie et la Perse; L'Asie Mineure. De

Vogüé, Le Temple de Jérusalem.

PERSIAN ARCHITECTURE. With the Persians, who under Cyrus (536 B.C.) and

Cambyses (525 B.C.) became the masters of the Orient, the Aryan race superseded

the Semitic, and assimilated in new combinations the forms it borrowed from the

Assyrian civilization. Under the Achæmenidæ (536 to 330 B.C.) palaces were built

in Persepolis and Susa of a splendor and majesty impossible in Mesopotamia, and

rivalling the marvels in the Nile Valley. The conquering nation of warriors who had

overthrown the Egyptians and Assyrians was in turn conquered by the arts of its

vanquished foes, and speedily became the most luxurious of all nations. The Persians

were not great innovators in art; but inhabiting a land of excellent building resources,

they were able to combine the Egyptian system of interior columns with details

borrowed from Assyrian art, and suggestions, derived most probably from the general

use in Persia and Central Asia, of wooden posts or columns as intermediate supports.

Out of these elements they evolved an architecture which has only become fully

known to us since the excavations of M. and Mme. Dieulafoy at Susa in 1882.

ELEMENTS OF PERSIAN ARCHITECTURE. The Persians used both crude and

baked bricks, the latter far more freely than was practicable in Assyria, owing to the

greater abundance of fuel. Walls when built of the weaker material were faced with

baked brick enamelled in brilliant colors, or both moulded and enamelled, to form

colored pictures in relief. Stone was employed for walls and columns, and, in

conjunction with brick, for the jambs and lintels of doors and windows. Architraves

and ceiling-beams were of wood. The palaces were erected, as in Assyria, upon broad

platforms, partly cut in the rock and partly structural, approached by imposing

flights of steps. These palaces were composed of detached buildings, propylæa or

gates of honor, vast audience-halls open on one or two sides, and chambers or

dwellings partly enclosing or flanking these halls, or grouped in separate buildings.

Temples appear to have been of small importance, perhaps owing to habits of out-of-

door worship of fire and sun. There are few structural tombs, but there are a number

of imposing royal sepulchres cut in the rock at Naksh-i-Roustam.

ARCHITECTURAL DETAILS. The Persians, like the Egyptians, used the column as

an internal feature in hypostyle halls of great size, and externally to form porches,

and perhaps, also, open kiosks without walls. The great Hall of Xerxes at Persepolis

covers 100,000 square feet--more than double the area of the Hypostyle Hall at

Karnak. But the Persian column was derived from wooden prototypes and used with

wooden architraves, permitting a wider spacing than is possible with stone. In the

present instance thirty-six columns sufficed for an area which in the Karnak hall

contained one hundred and thirty-four. The shafts being slender and finely fluted

instead of painted or carved, the effect produced was totally different from that

sought by the Egyptians. The most striking peculiarity of the column was the capital,

which was forked (Fig. 21). In one of the two principal types the fork, formed by the

coupled fore-parts of bulls or symbolic monsters, rested directly on the top of the

shaft. In the other, two singular members were interposed between the fork and the

shaft; the lower, a sort of double bell or bell-and-palm capital, and above it, just

beneath the fork, a curious combination of vertical scrolls or volutes, resembling

certain ornaments seen in Assyrian furniture. The transverse architrave rested in the

fork; the longitudinal architrave was supported on the heads of the monsters. A rich

moulded base, rather high and in some cases adorned with carved leaves or flutings,

supported the columns, which in the Hall of Xerxes were over 66 feet high and 6

feet in diameter. The architraves have perished, but the rock-cut tomb of Darius at

Naksh-i-Roustam reproduces in its façade a palace-front, showing a banded

architrave with dentils--an obvious imitation of the ends of wooden rafters on a

lintel built up of several beams.

FIG. 21.--COLUMN FROM PERSEPOLIS.

These features of the architrave, as well as the fine flutings and moulded bases of the

columns, are found in Ionic architecture, and in part, at least, in Lycian tombs. As all

these examples date from nearly the same period, the origin of these forms and their

mutual relations have not been fully determined. The Persian capitals, however, are

unique, and so far as known, without direct prototypes or derivatives. Their

constituent elements may have been borrowed from various sources. One can hardly

help seeing the Egyptian palm-capital in the lower member of the compound type

(Fig. 21).

The doors and windows had banded architraves or trims and cavetto cornices very

Egyptian in character. The portals were flanked, as in Assyria, by winged monsters;

but these were built up in several courses of stone, not carved from single blocks like

their prototypes. Plaster or, as at Susa, enamelled bricks, replaced as a wall-finish

the Assyrian alabaster wainscot. These bricks, splendid in color, and moulded into

relief pictures covering large surfaces, are the oldest examples of the skill of the

Persians in a branch of ceramic art in which they have always excelled down to our

own day.

LYCIAN ARCHITECTURE. The architecture of those Asiatic peoples which served

as intermediaries between the ancient civilizations of Egypt and Assyria on the one

hand and of the Greeks on the other, need occupy us only a moment in passing.

None of them developed a complete and independent style or produced monuments

of the first rank. Those chiefly concerned in the transmission of ideas were the

Cypriotes, Phoenicians, and Lycians. The part played by other Asiatic nations is too

slight to be considered here. From Cyprus the Greeks could have learned little

beyond a few elementary notions regarding sculpture and pottery, although it is

possible that the volute-form in Ionic architecture was originally derived from

patterns on Cypriote pottery and from certain Cypriote steles, where it appears as a

modified lotus motive. The Phoenicians were the world's traders from a very early

age down to the Persian conquest. They not only distributed through the

Mediterranean lands the manufactures of Egypt and Assyria, but also counterfeited

them and adopted their forms in decorating their own wares. But they have

bequeathed us not a single architectural ruin of importance, either of temples or

palaces, nor are the few tombs still extant of sufficient artistic interest to deserve

even brief mention in a work of this scope.

In Lycia, however, there arose a system of tomb-design which came near creating a

new architectural style, and which doubtless influenced both Persia and the Ionian

colonies. The tombs were mostly cut in the rock, though a few are free-standing

monolithic monuments, resembling sarcophagi or small shrines mounted on a high

base or pedestal.

In all of these tombs we recognize a manifest copying in stone of framed wooden

structures. The walls are panelled, or imitate open structures framed of squared

timbers. The roofs are often gabled, sometimes in the form of a pointed arch; they

generally show a banded architrave, dentils, and a raking cornice, or else an

imitation of broadly projecting eaves with small round rafters. There are several with

porches of Ionic columns; of these, some are of late date and evidently copied from

Asiatic Greek models. Others, and notably one at Telmissus, seem to be examples of

a primitive Ionic, and may indeed have been early steps in the development of that

splendid style which the Ionic Greeks, both in Asia Minor and in Attica, carried to

such perfection.

JEWISH ARCHITECTURE. The Hebrews borrowed from the art of every people with

whom they had relations, so that we encounter in the few extant remains of their

architecture Egyptian, Assyrian, Phoenician, Greek, Roman, and Syro-Byzantine

features, but nothing like an independent national style. Among the most interesting

of these remains are tombs of various periods, principally occurring in the valleys

near Jerusalem, and erroneously ascribed by popular tradition to the judges,

prophets, and kings of Israel. Some of them are structural, some cut in the rock; the

former (tomb of Absalom, of Zechariah) decorated with Doric and Ionic engaged

orders, were once supposed to be primitive types of these orders and of great

antiquity. They are now recognized to be debased imitations of late Greek work of

the third or second century B.C. They have Egyptian cavetto cornices and pyramidal

roofs, like many Asiatic tombs. The openings of the rock-cut tombs have frames or

pediments carved with rich surface ornament showing a similar mixture of types--

Roman triglyphs and garlands, Syrian-Greek acanthus leaves, conventional foliage of

Byzantine character, and naturalistic carvings of grapes and local plant-life. The

carved arches of two of the ancient city gates (one the so-called Golden Gate) in

Jerusalem display rich acanthus foliage somewhat like that of the tombs, but more

vigorous and artistic. If of the time of Herod or even of Constantine, as claimed by

some, they would indicate that Greek artists in Syria created the prototypes of

Byzantine ornament. They are more probably, however, Byzantine restorations of the

6th century A.D.

The one great achievement of Jewish architecture was the national Temple of

Jehovah, represented by three successive edifices on Mount Moriah, the site of the

present so-called "Mosque of Omar." The first, built by Solomon (1012 B.C.)

appears from the Biblical description6 to have combined Egyptian conceptions

(successive courts, lofty entrance-pylons, the Sanctuary and the sekos or "Holy of

Holies") with Phoenician and Assyrian details and workmanship (cedar woodwork,

empaistic decoration or overlaying with repoussé metal work, the isolated brazen

columns Jachin and Boaz). The whole stood on a mighty platform built up with

stupendous masonry and vaulted chambers from the valley surrounding the rock on

three sides. This precinct was nearly doubled in size by Herod (18 B.C.) who

extended it southward by a terrace-wall of still more colossal masonry. Some of the

stones are twenty-two feet long; one reaches the prodigious length of forty feet. The

"Wall of Lamentations" is a part of this terrace, upon which stood the Temple on a

raised platform. As rebuilt by Herod, the Temple reproduced in part the antique

design, and retained the porch of Solomon along the east side; but the whole was

superbly reconstructed in white marble with abundance of gilding. Defended by the

Castle of Antonia on the northwest, and embellished with a new and imposing triple

colonnade on the south, the whole edifice, a conglomerate of Egyptian, Assyrian, and

Roman conceptions and forms, was one of the most singular and yet magnificent

creations of ancient art.

The temple of Zerubbabel (515 B.C.), intermediate between those above described,

was probably less a re-edification of the first, than a new design. While based on the

scheme of the first temple, it appears to have followed more closely the pattern

described in the vision of Ezekiel (chapters xl.-xlii.). It was far inferior to its

predecessor in splendor and costliness. No vestiges of it remain.

MONUMENTS. PERSIAN: at Murghab, the tomb of Cyrus, known as Gabré-Madré-

Soleiman--a gabled structure on a seven-stepped pyramidal basement (525 B.C.). At

Persepolis the palace of Darius (521 B.C.); the Propylæa of Xerxes, his palace and his

harem (?) or throne-hall (480 B.C.). These splendid structures, several of them of vast

size, resplendent with color and majestic with their singular and colossal columns, must

have formed one of the most imposing architectural groups in the world. At various

points, tower-like tombs, supposed erroneously by Fergusson to have been fire altars. At

Naksh-i-Roustam, the tomb of Darius, cut in the rock. Other tombs near by at Persepolis

proper and at Pasargadæ. At the latter place remains of the palace of Cyrus. At Susa the

palace of Xerxes and Artaxerxes (480405 B.C.).

There are no remains of private houses or temples.

LYCIAN: the principal Lycian monuments are found in Myra, Antiphellus, and Telmissus.

Some of the monolithic tombs have been removed to the British and other European

museums.

JEWISH: the temples have been mentioned above. The palace of Solomon. The rock-cut

monolithic tomb of Siloam. So-called tombs of Absalom and Zechariah, structural;

probably of Herod's time or later. Rock-cut Tombs of the Kings; of the Prophets, etc. City

gates (Herodian or early Christian period).

6. 1 Kings vi.-vii.; 2 Chronicles iii.-iv.

Ebd

Table of Contents: