Page:Ainsworth's Magazine - Volume 1.djvu/195

Whether this portal has bееп covered or not may remain a matter of doubt, but most likely the columnar supports were not there for merely ornamental purposes.

While the congregation of human habitations which constituted the great cities of Babylon, Nineveh, Sus, and Persepolis, have passed away from the surface of the earth, the last alone has preserved its most remarkable and ornamental structures, from their having been happily executed in marble or hewn out of the solid rock; and by this accident, while the houses of the rich and poor, cottages and mansions, have been swept from the now naked plain below, the domestic manners of the people have been preserved to us, and almost rendered familiar, by a series of beautiful and imperishable sculptures, which bring their arts, their dress, and even their food, before the eye; while their power and magnificence, their means and their skill, are attested by the beauty and perfection of these monuments, recording as they do, in so striking a manner, the resources of the people, the pride of their theocracy, and the greatness of their monarchs.

The style of these works of art is much above mediocrity, but still they cannot be considered so remarkable for beauty as they are for extreme accuracy. The figures of animals are, however, sometimes admirable; the chariots, with their wheel-spokes, start from the stone, but the figures want spirit and passion; and while much time and care has often been bestowed upon the elaborate carving of the wing of a sphinx, where every feather is traced with a mathematical pencil, an upright monarch is to be seen combating huge monsters with the stiffness of a wooden doll. In this respect the Persepolitan bas-relieis cannot be compared with the delineations of the Elgin marbles and the eloquent expression of the Grecian friezes.

The figure of the unicorn, which is met with in other parts of the ruins, is observed here under circumstances which suggest a remark.

Our countrymen have been often not a little ridiculed, for their British partiality to this anormal creature, which supports the escutcheon of their monarchs; and this even by very high authority, (see Cuvier, in the notes to Pancouckes' edition of Pliny.) The theorists of the accidental production of this animal assert that it sprang, in a very early condition of the arts, from an attempt to represent the bull in profile, which circumstance brought the two horns into one; now it so happens that in the same bas-relief at Persepolis, we have the bull in profile with two horns, the form and features of the animal carefully executed, and near to it the unicorn, differing in physiognomy and general characters as much as in its one-horned front. It is impossible to suppose, that the intelligence which delineated the bull so accurately, would have wilfully, in another figure, have transformed the same animal into a unicorn: we must suppose an intent and object; while the great antiquity of the same figures forbid the supposition of the mere handing down of an error of early Egyptian artists, without some cogent reason. Laying aside the researches made after the original of the unicorn, in the blue antelope of Thibet and other animals, as has been done, with too creative a fancy and with too little judgment to carry the reluctant opinions of the sceptic, there is some probability that the unicorn is, in reality, a now extinct animal, like the ox, that still inhabited the mountains of Caledonia in the thirteenth century— the urus of the Romans, and the thur of Poland, where it still existed in the fifteenth century. The monstrosity of the licorne, as it is called by continental writers, has also been remarked upon, as inconsistent with the laws of symmetry, which are preserved throughout the animal kingdom; but have we not a one-horned rhinoceros, and equally remarkable, the narwhal, or monodon monoceros?

It is difficult to imagine that these great processional representations had reference to any given act of the people, either in perpetuation of the grand religious procession of Cyrus the Great, which happens to be transmitted to us by Xenophon, or that of Darius, at the festival of Ur Roz, or the Vernal Equinox, receiving presents from the numerous nations of the empire; but that they were representations of processions which were common at certain seasons, and at which the king presided, and in perpetuating which by sculpture, the anxiety to preserve both the memory of the custom and the custom itself is indicated. Of what advantage would be the presentation of fruit and milk on one occasion? It is evident that such offerings must have been frequent and constant, and were probably a part of the revenue of the priesthood.

An observation which suggests itself strongly on viewing these sculptures, is the remarkable simplicity of the manners of the people, compared with the refinement and the knowledge of the arts which is displayed in their execution. The food of the people appears, as in the present day, to have consisted of melons, bread, and milk, and the offerings which they bore, were of the same kind; removing the luxuries of their priests to a great distance from those of the monks of Albocaca. Such discrepancies have suggested the idea that Egyptian artists may have been brought by Cambyses or others into Persia, an argument favoured by the appearance of the lotus among the sculptures, by the portals or propylæ, &c., and which is contra-indicated by the appearance of a peculiar weapon of war—a two-sided wedge.

There are strong objections to the supposition of the Persepolitan ruins having been the