Page 294 - The Art & Architecture of the Ancient Orient_Neat

NOTES
munication' between the northern area of the tcr- with an oblong narrow main room. The other is a
race and the residential quarters? wide, columned, ceremonial building open to all
53. Dc Mccqucncm, in Mitnoircs de la Mission sides. As so often when one type of building is
Archtologiquc cn Perse, xxx (Paris, 1947)- If we com- said to ‘change* or be ‘converted’ into another, the
pare thc actual remains as shown on pp. 8-9 with statement means no more than that the metamor­
the reconstruction on pp. 24-5, we realize that the phosis can be effected on paper.
cssci itial parts, namely the connecting links between 57. Op. cit., 62.
the separate buildings, arc mere postulates. The plan 58. Hcrzfcld computes the height of the hall at
in A. Upham Pope, A Surrey of Persian Art, 1, 322, thirty feet, denies that there could have been
figure 75 is misleading, because it docs not suggest clerestory lighting and declares that the hall was
the extremely fragmentary state of the remains and therefore ‘completely dark’ (op. cit., 229). This can­
the purely conjectural character of the reconstruc­ not, of course, have been the ease, and since the
tion. Andrac (Arch. Anzeiger, 1923-24. 95-io6) results of his work at Pcrscpolis were never pub­
points out the resemblance of a group of rooms lished in detail one must consider his denial of
south of die western court at Susa, and the Southern clerestory lighting an unproved assertion.
Fortress of Babylon. But perhaps the alleged courts 59. Op. cit., 42. Dr Schmidt aptly refers to a similar
at Susa were pillared halls ? arrangement in the Gulistan Palace of Tehran.
54. At Susa this Audience Hall has six rows of 60. Erich F. Schmidt, op. cit., 165-200. In his pre­
six columns and two porticoes, in front and at the
liminary report, ‘The Treasury of Perscpolis and
back.
other Discoveries in the Homeland of the Achac-
p. 220 55. Hcrzfeld, Iran in the Ancient East, 224, claims mcnians’ (Oriental Institute Communications, no.
that ‘the constituent element of the complex of 2i (Chicago, 1939), he has depicted a number of
buildings on the terrace (viz. of Pcrscpolis) arc objects which sustain his interpretation of this
single houses of the old Iranian type which we have building.
studied*. These houses arc, however, a mere postu­
61. Hcrzfcld, op. cit., 23S. p. 221
late of Hcrzfcld’s, derived first from a study of
tombs of uncertain age which lie believes to be pre- 62. F. W. von Bissing, ‘Ursprung und Wesen dcr p. 222
Achacmcnian, but which may well be later; (see Pcrsischcn Kunst’ (Sitzungsberichtc dcr Baycrischen
p. 49, n. 2), and, secondly, 011 the modern popular Akademie (Munchcn, 1927) has pointed out the
usage of Iran (op. cit., 200-12). It is quite possible importance of this gift, mentioned in Herodotus
that modem mosques and houses with a portico and (1, 92), since it must antedate the defeat of Croesus
two to four roof supports with impost blocks in by Cyrus in 546 b.c.
the main room continued a tradition going back 63. Hcrzfcld, Iran and the Ancient East, 209 ft.; p. 223
3,000 years, and that this type of house was taken figure 319-21.
over by the Aryan invaders of Iran. But there is no 64. Illustrated London News, 2 Jan. 1954, 18,
proof of these contentions, and alternative explana­ figures 5-8, griffins. Hcrzfcld, op. cit., plate xxxix,
tions exist; for instance, that the many-columned shows a piece of a capital which may have con­
hall derives from the huge tents used by some sisted of foreparts of hones, and another of lions,
nomad chiefs. Hcrzfcld’s more explicit statement - unless these belonged to the usual dragons. These
difficult to reconcile with the one we just criticized - capitals arc from Pasargadac. His view (op. cit., 240)
namely, that ‘old Persian architecture descended that this type of impost block derived from Paphla-
from Median, this from Urartacan and this, again, gonia rests on the unproved - and, I think, improb­
from Anatolian architecture’ (op. cit., 247) refers to able - assumption that various Persian and Ana­
entities which arc either unknown or badly known- tolian rock tombs are prototypes and not imitations
What we do know, however, suggests that the of Greek and Anatolian forms (op. cit., 201 ft'.). In
statement is fallacious. his Archaeological History of Iran, 51, second para­
56. F. Wachsmuth, reviving a view put forward graph, Hcrzfcld formulates concisely why his al­
by Koldcwcy in 1898 (Ausgrabungen in Scndschirli, leged ‘proto-ionic’ should, on the contrary, be
!9i ffi), has connected the Achacmcnian Audience recognized as ‘bad Ionic*, i.c. derivative, degener­
Halls with the north Syrian bit-hilani. This equation ate, and rather late than early. An excellent record
disregards the characteristics of buildings which
of one of these tombs, with a relief of two Modes
can sooner be regarded as each other’s opposites; flanking a fire altar and bastard Ionic columns, is
the north Syrian building is a severely closed unit C. J. Edmonds, ‘A Tomb in Kurdistan’ (Iraq, 1
but for its single portico; it is essentially residential,
(i934). 183-92).
265