l62 History of Art in Antiquity. Vaulted Structures. The buildings vc have described up to tliis point, whereon the Achsemenida: have engraved their signature, belong one and all to what may be termed the architrave system — that in which the jambs of doorways uphoUl a lintel, whilst horizontal ceilings and walls rest upon stone supports. Rut at Sarvistan and Feruz-
- bad, in the province of I*"ars (ancient Persia), remains of edifices
occur in which quite a different arrangement obtained ; the door- ways being arched over, and square halls roofed in by cupolas ovoid in shape. V The explorers who first lighted upon and pointed out these ruins recognized in them monuments of the Sassanid period, closely related to the great Takht-i-Khosru palace at Ctesiphon.' This opinion, universally endorsed by the learned, does not find acceptance with Dieulafoy.' His conclusions arc based upon a ruinous structure, I'^erash-Abad, which he sii^dited near I'Vruz-Abad and Sarvistan during a visit he paid to the sites between i8Si and 1882, and which, though on a smaller scale, offers a disposition akin to that of the larg^er buildings of the places last named.' Like his predecessors, he sees in the monuments at FerOz-Abad and Sarvistan ancient palaces, but palaces that would be coeval with the Persepolitan and Susian examples. The latter, in his estimation, represent an alien architecture due to the whim of royalty served by Egyptian and Greek artists. On the contrary, in the cupola buildings erected at about the same period by the grandees and hereditary satraps, we are confronted by the relics of a true national architecture, whose origin may be traced back to the vaulted edifices of Assyria, but which, when transferred to Iran, improved its methods, not only during the Achaemenid, but through the whole of the Sassanid period, when it may be said to have been in full possession of all its means, to produce later the beautiful mosques of the first centuries of Islam, whose remains ' Flandin and Costk, IWs^ aadenng, pp. 23-97, 36-45, Plates XXVIIJ., XXIX., XXXVlil.-XLU. " We accepted the hypothesis referred to above^ with regard to the vaulted ediHces of Assyria (ffisf. of Art, torn. ii. pp. 174, 175, ate). So Fbrgusson, Hist. of Archilcduif, etc., 2nd edit, 1874, vol. 1. pp. 377-30 ?, *' Sissanian Architecture.'* ■ DiEULAFOY, L'Art antique, etc, Part iv., " Les monuments vofitds dc I'epoque ach^m^iide.'* Digitized by Google
