Page:Ainsworth's Magazine - Volume 1.djvu/194
The great plain of Merdúsht extended before us, and beyond the river, as far as the extreme verge of the horizon, except in one direction, where were the Seh Gumbedan, or the three domes—isolated and craggy masses of rock, and a low rocky range beyond, at the foot of which were the ruins of Persepolis. On the plain itself were occasional villages, with gardens, all walled in, like forts; the residue was clad with a thin vegetation of saline plants, with a few tamarisks, rest-harrow, and liquorice. There were also to be seen at remote distances the dusky encampments of Eelhiauts, who led their cattle where there was herbage.
The glowing sun had now risen high up in the heavens, and we were glad to canter across the plain, and take refuge in one of the walled-in gardens, which we found to be divided into straight walks, shaded by rows of chinars, beneath which were bushes of roses. Various fruit-trees grew up in the intervening spaces, beneath which gourds, cucumbers, melons, and esculent vegetables were cultivated.
Colonel Shee amused himself, through the heat of the day, by shooting small birds. He was an excellent shot, and would strike the head off a sparrow with a single ball in his rifle. I was sketching the singular forms of the rock that bore Istakhar castle and its twin sisters, Shekusteh and Shemgan, with their respective forts; beyond all of which, and yet not not far from us, was another insulated cliff, bearing the castle of Shahreek, a king or governor of the province, who was killed in defending it against the Arabs in the seventh century.
When the evening became a little cooler, we started for Persepolis; and my heartbeat with anxious expectation, which was soon succeeded by surprise and wonder, when the long platform, hewn from the rocky mountain's side, with sculptured front and surface crowded with columns and colossal structures, burst upon my view with so much variety of form and such profusion of beauty, as at once to perplex and overwhelm the mind.
There was no necessity for dismounting on our arrival; a broad flight of stairs, hewn out of solid rock, led from the plain to the terrace above, up which the horses could canter with facility. The staircase consists of two double flights, meeting at a first landing-place, from which point springs a second double series of steps, often ten or fourteen steps cut out of a single block of marble, which terminate on the terrace. I sought for, and found here, the holes mentioned by Neibuhr, but could not satisfy myself that they had ever sustained the hinges of gates.[1]
A gigantic portal now presented itself before us, formed of two massive walls, with the front and interior faces sculptured into the resemblance of colossal animals, which have some affinity to the extinct mammoth, but mammoths ornamented with collars of roses and short curled hair.[2]
Eastward of this portal, two handsome fluted columns remain out of four, the original number; and in the same direction is a second portal, similar to the first, except in the attached figures, which are commuted into diadem-bearing sphinxes, with beards and wings of curiously minute sculpture.
The Chehel Minar, or hall of forty columns, stands at right angles to the direction of the last passage, and upon a more elevated platform, the basement of which is ornamented by those remarkable bas-reliefs which have been the admiration of every traveller. This disposition suggests, in a forcible manner, that the farther portal was erected for the sake of symmetry, while the grand entrance was carried directly from the central group of pillars by a marble fountain or tank, the ruins of which still exist, to the staircase leadmg to the Chehel Minar. Such an arrangement serves to illustrate what is also presented to us in the disposition of Egyptian and Hindoo temples, the love for mystic arrangements that predominates in such edifices when of high antiquity, and which formed, indeed, no inconsiderable appendage to the power of an early hierarchy.
The second set of figures are decidedly sphinxes, and examples of a combination that have not been met before, while they are the only Persian examples of the human and bestial form combined. Anquetil de Perron declared them the symbols of Noah—De Sacy, the emblem of the first of the Paishdadian dynasty: but they are now more generally admitted to be the hieroglyph of Cyrus, whose successes were prophesied by Ezekiel (i. 7—10,) under almost the same figure; and Daniel foretold the reign of the same prince, under a similar union of the human with the bestial form, (vii. 4.)
- ↑ According to Hamilton, although no vestiges of doors have been found in Egypt, similar holes have been met with. Herodotus has testified to the existence of gates of brass at Babylon.
- ↑ These solid masses, with huge colossal animals, are evidently the same as the Egyptian propylæ, with their Dromi, or avenues of sphinxes, enclosing walls and colossal statues, and these again have their analogies in the pyramidal entrances of the Indian pagodas. It would occupy more space than can be afforded to contrast the various opinions of travellers upon the nature of these "Bucolic sentinels," as they have been called. Herbert and Chardin saw something of the rhinoceros and the elephant; Sir W. Ousely and Sir R. K. Porter both saw bulls; Neibuhr considered them as unicorns. On these propylæ are also some of the longest and most perfect inscriptions among the ruins.