History of Art in Antiquity. dispositions, but are closely related to those about which we arc busy. As was saidi the plan of Feriiz-Abad and that of Sarvistan belong to the same sdiool. The main body of the fabric, instead of being destitute of walls, like the houses of the Achaemenidae, and provided with numerous means of access evenly distributed on aU its faces, is entirely enclosed within thick walls ; Sarvistan has several lateral doorways, whilst there is but one for the whole building at FerQz-Abad ; in both monuments, however, the opening in the middle of the main facade is so striking a feature as to rivet the eye and reveal its exceptional importance. It is a very wide, full-centred arcade, whose summit is almost flush with the top of the building and forms a spacious porch which opens into the great state apartments. These, square in shape, are covered by cupolas, and constitute the front and public part of the edifice. Behind are smaller chambers, barrel-vaulted, dis- tributed along three sides of a great court; they were the dwelling-rooms properly so called. Now, these plans are not on the same lines as the palaces at Persepolis and Susa, nor on those of the royal houses of Assyria.' Then, too, there is no coincidence between the construction of these edifices and that of the buildings at Pasaigadce and Persepolis. Nowhere do we find here the employment of blocks of stone which have a grand beauty of their own, from their colossal size, the regularity of the beds, and the care bestowed on the outer face that was never to be disguised by ornament of any sort Here, on the contrary, the stonework of the two palaces is so rude and coarse as to have made, in most instances, some kind of covering indispensable. At
- Wext the edifices of Lower Chaldsea better knoira, it is possible that more
marked resemblances would be found with the tjrpes we have just described. So much, at least, may be inferred from a curious passage of Strabo : " The beams used in the houses were of pahnwood, all other timber being scarce in Babylonia ; and such pillars as the houses could boa£t were of the same material. Around each pillar were twisted wisps of rushes, which were comed with several coatings of paint (coloured plaster ?). The doors were overlaid with bitumen. The houses and docnoays were lofty, and we m^y void that they htid 7(iulteJ roofs" (XVI. i. 5). Strabo goes on to say that a very similar arrangement to this obtained in Susiana and Sittace on the Tigris. Of course we cannot expect to find traces of posts and tirober-lrames of palmwood in the palaces of Fars ; all we wished to do was to draw attention to the vaulted chambers and lofty portaJs referred to above, proving thai the gateway in Cbaldtea had something of the importance it has retained in Persian architecture.
