Page:History of Art in Persia.djvu/374

352 History of Art in Antiquity. were no longer looked after and repatred» the waters ere long percolated the earth and reached the wood architraves, rotting them ; a little sooner or a little later, they gave way under the heavy beds of earth they carried. Elsewhere the mud walls may have been the first to shrink and split, and thus induced the dislo-' cation of the woodwork. Unlike the temples of Egypt and Greece, where entablatures are stone, these buildings could not be endowed with the same degree of solidity, the same possibilities of duration, as the former. Fifty years, perhaps, sufficed to reduce them to a state not far removed from that in which they now appear; for later generations, it would seem, were not given to come here on pirating errands. Had they been so inclined, would they not have begun to remove loose stones ready to hand, rather than trouble themselves with demolishing very resisting materials and splitting up the enormous monoliths of frames and antx ? Yet, as already observed, lying on the ground, at several points of the esplanade, are hewn stones — drums — which, though complete, have never been set up. Moreover, the difficulties of transport would have been considerable. The approaches to the plateau are staircases, which do not lend themselves readily to cartage. If the inhabitants of Istakhr required hewn stone, there was no need to go any distmce for it; enough and to spare could be got close at hand, out of their own antique buildings. Yet not a few of these, the fortified gate and fire-altars for instance^ are almost intact. This may, perhaps, be ascribed to the fact that the traditions of the royal architecture of the Achaemenidae were speedily forgotten after the fall of the dynasty. Henceforward brick, a material at once inexpensive and more easily procured, was universally employed in the province. Istakhr has ceased to exist for the last nine hundred years; to-day, what would the miserable peasantry of the plain do with those stupendous blocks of stone? What situation would they give them about their hovels, whose walls are made of pisd f What they wrenched away from the pn f ment of the platform during centuries are, now and again, a few slabs to set over their graves, and, oftener still, a fragmentary shaft, turned into a roller to keep in form the bed or beds of earth which form the covering of their houses. The roller is an institution which obtains all over the East, where the roofs are flat. Perhaps this may account for all the pillars of feeble calibre having disappeared from the inhabited palaces. Digitized by Google