How to Study Architecture

Temple of Nebo, rebuilt by Nebuchadnezzar at Borsippa. Only four stages of the latter survive, but a record discovered in the ruins shows that the original number was seven, dedicated to the seven planets and decorated with the colours sacred to each. The ground story of this temple was 272 feet square and 45 feet high, while the total height of the structure was about 160 feet. It is noteworthy that the tomb-pyramid of Medum also consisted of seven stories.

In a ziggurat at Tello, opened up by the French savant, de Sarzac, was discovered a magnificent collection of statues of diorite—a mixture of granite, felspar and hornblende—dark grey in colour—which is now in the Louvre. One of these, which has lost its head, represents a certain Gudea, priest-king and architect of Lagash. He is seated and carries on his lap a tablet, on which a fortified enclosure is engraved, while in the corner appear a dividing scale and a stylos.

Sargon’s Castle.—The oldest palace remains have been discovered at Nimroud, the ancient Calah. They belong to the palace of Assur-nazar-pal (885-860 B.C.). Ten miles to the northeast, at Khorsabad, the French explorer P. E. Botta, discovered in 1843 the remains of a tower and palace, which subsequent excavations have proved to be the ruins of Dur-Sharrukim, “Sargon’s Castle,” built by Sargon as a royal residence (705-702 B.C.). The remains of the palace, being the most extensive of those hitherto explored, can be studied as a type of Assyrian palace architecture.

The platform on which the palace stood, constructed of sun-dried bricks and faced with cut stone, reaches the immense size of nearly a million square feet, raised forty-eight feet above the surrounding level country. The total platform, therefore, measured about 23 acres, as compared with the 3½ acres occupied by the Capitol at Washington, or the 8 acres occupied by the Houses of Parliament in London. Making allowance for the fact that the Assyrian Palace did not extend over the whole of the platform space, its actual dimensions must have been approximately twice as large as the Houses of Parliament and four and a half times those of the Capitol.

Leading up from the level on the northeast side appears to have been a double ramp, for the use of chariots and for general service, while the state entrance was at the southeast by a double flight of steps. These mounted to a terrace that extended the whole length of the palace front, some 900 feet. In the centre of this façade was the principal gate, which was small in actual size, but flanked by two tower-like projections of masonry. These, for the moment, may recall the pylons that flanked the entrance to an Egyptian temple. But the latter stately structures, built with a batter and crowned with a cavetto cornice, were designed for monumental dignity. On the other hand, the towers of Sargon’s Castle were pierced near the top with loop-holes and surmounted by battlements. They were designed to serve the purpose of warlike defence and suggest appropriately that the entrance is not only to a palace but also to the castle or stronghold of a feudal chieftain. The same suggestion is prolonged in the battlemented walls, free of windows and only occasionally pierced with loopholes, which seem to have surrounded the entire structure.

Gateway.—The towers were embellished with a notably structural decoration, a system of rectangular panelling, filled with semi-circular shafts. The ornamental details were derived from the Chaldæan use of glazed tiles, decorated with rosettes, palmettes, lotus-flowers and the guilloche or repeat of intertwined bands, arching round a central button. Similarly decorated is the archivolt which surrounds the arch of the entrance, the latter being a barrel- or semi-circular-vaulted passageway, carried right through the thickness of the walls.

Colossal Bulls.—In Egypt the entrance to the temples was made solemn and magnificent by colossal statues of the monarch. Here, the beholder must have been filled with awe by the colossal monsters that stood as guardians of the portal, projecting from the side-posts of the gateway and ranged in pairs at the foot of each tower. These monsters, which are now in the British Museum, fitly embody the warlike ideals of the Assyrian nation. They loom up in height to twelve feet. Their bodies are those of bulls, mighty in bulk and thews; yet they are quick to attack, having eagle’s wings, while dominating them is the head of a man, large-eyed, thick-lipped, square of jaw and hairy, implacably sensual and cruel.

The modeling of these monsters is for the most part as broad as a Barye bronze; though minute detail is attained in the sculpturing of the beards, hair and head-dresses. But, while their treatment is in the main naturalistic, their motive is not representation of nature, but the representation of an idea through natural suggestion. Accordingly, each embodiment has five legs; the two forelegs, planted side by side, being supplemented by another in the act of walking; so that whether the monster be viewed from the front or the side, the full significance of the legs is emphasised—the forelegs representing firmly established power; the side view showing the legs in free and powerful movement.

No Columns.—The arched entrance leads into a large open court that corresponds to the great court of an Egyptian temple, although here the sides are not embellished with colonnades. For, nowhere in Assyrian architecture has the column been found as a structural member. The single example which has been excavated, measured only three feet four inches in height and, it is conjectured, was used for a pavilion, possibly to support an awning. The absence of columnar construction in the early buildings of the Lower Kingdom is easily accounted for by the scarcity of stone; and the northern builders in dispensing with columns were only following their usual habit of imitation.

No Windows.—Meanwhile, another reason for the absence of columns may be found in the fierce heat of Mesopotamia, against which colonnades would prove no protection. The same cause explains the absence of windows in Assyrian palaces, for none have been found or shown in any of the bas-reliefs. It has been considered possible that such light as was needed was admitted through terra-cotta pipes or cylinders, for many of the latter have been come upon in the ruins and this method is still employed in the East for the lighting of domes.

?Barrel Vaults?—Another feature of the interior construction was the immense thickness of the walls, which varied from nine to twenty-five feet in solid brickwork. The object may have been to secure additional coolness, but this reason will scarcely afford a complete explanation of the extreme measurement. It is significant that the latter occurs in the halls of state which are also distinguished by their great length of 150 feet as compared with the width, 30 feet. When the narrow width of the halls is considered in relation to the immense thickness of the walls, it seems reasonable to conclude that the latter were intended to support the downward strain of barrel-vaulted ceilings. Additional probability is given to this conclusion by La Place’s discovery of great blocks, curved like the soffits of a vault, which had apparently fallen from a height. Moreover, in a bas-relief found by Layard in Koyunjik some of the buildings are shown to be roofed on the outside by domes. Accordingly, it is now the generally accepted belief that the usual style of ceiling employed by the Assyrians, was the barrel-vault.

The origin of the latter may be found in the culverts by which the mounds were drained; but how, considering the scarcity of timber, it was possible to construct vaults of thirty feet span, is purely a matter of conjecture. It has been suggested that, while timber was costly, slave-labour was cheap, and it is possible that temporary structures of brick were erected as an underpinning to support the vault while in process of construction. On the other hand, we shall note later on that the architects of Gothic cathedrals, in countries where timber was scarce, adopted the method of rib-vaulting. Can it be possible that this invention was anticipated by the Assyrians?

Decorations.—The walls of these halls of state were decorated up to a height of nine feet with sculptured slabs of delicate white alabaster or brilliantly yellow limestone, on which traces of paint have been discovered. As in the case of the Egyptian temples, scenes of everyday life, as well as of war or hunting, are represented, with a vividness that shows how closely nature had been studied by the sculptors, who, however, were more intent upon representing the spirit of the scene and preserving the feeling of decoration than in imitating nature.

Thus, when they represented an archer, stretching his bow, neither the string nor the arrow was allowed to cut the lines of the figure. Both were shown as if the hand which held them were on the opposite side of the body. It is needless to say that this could not have been due to ignorance or negligence on the part of the sculptor, who otherwise proved his knowledge and observation of nature; but was a deliberate kind of conventionalisation, adopted, like the five legs of the colossal bulls, for a well-considered purpose—perhaps, not to interfere with the action of the figure.

Above the dado of sculpture the walls were embellished with glazed tiles, decorated with winged figures of the King, and occasionally with animals, especially lions, framed with borders of rosettes. The usual colours were yellow, blue, green, and black. Coloured tiles also, as well as slabs of alabaster, formed the paving of the floors, which, in the case of smaller rooms, were formed merely of stamped clay, covered, no doubt, while in use, with mats or rugs.

Wall paintings of figures and arabesques seem to have been an exceptional form of decoration, found at Khorsabad only in the larger rooms of the harem.

Yet for all this brilliance of decoration, the effect of the interiors must have been one of subdued richness. The imagination, indeed, pictures the vast palace with its labyrinth of seven hundred rooms, surrounding three sides of the entrance court, where the glare of sunshine would be pitiless, as a sort of subterranean arrangement of tunnel-like passages and chambers.

Their distribution can be studied in the ground plan restoration. There were three groups, each disposed around its own central court. On the left of the main court lay the harem, with its separate provision for four wives, while on the opposite side was accommodation for the service, including kitchen, bakery, wine cellars, and stables. Fronting the main entrance were the King’s suite of rooms and the quarters of his official staff, beyond which were the halls of state. In the open space, adjoining the royal rooms, rose the ziggurat, or terraced temple, the three lower stories of which still exist, connected by a winding ramp.

The conception that one gathers of this huge pile is, externally, of a stronghold, somewhat forbidding; internally, of a crypt-like maze, offering perhaps comfort, but little beauty—the lair of the absolute monarch of a race to whom the market-place and fields of battle and hunting represented the chief ideals of existence.

CHAPTER V

PERSIAN CIVILISATION

For a distance of 50 miles from the Persian Gulf it is flat, swampy, and unhealthful. Then it rises to a system of mountain ranges that average five thousand feet in height, broken up with valleys, lakes, and countless streams. It was a country admirably adapted to rear a hardy and industrious race of men and fine breeds of cattle and horses. The Aryans seem to have always been cattle breeders, from which fact is supposed to be derived the reverence of the cow, which still exists in India. They were also great lovers of the horse and it was not until after 1700 B.C. when advanced posts of the Aryan migration came in touch with the Semitic nations of the West, that the horse made its appearance in Babylonia, Egypt, and Greece. But, while the bas-reliefs of the Egyptians after this date show the horse used only in chariots, its general use among the Persians was for riding purposes. So the love of the modern Aryan races for the horse and horse exercise is an inherited instinct that knits them like their language to their earliest ancestors.

Of the Assyrian Kings, Shalmaneser II was the first to come in conflict with the Medes, and from this date (836 B.C.), the Medes are frequently mentioned in Assyrian records as paying tribute. Finally, in 626 B.C., the fortunes of war began to be reversed. The Median King, Cyaxares, as we have seen in a previous chapter, formed an alliance with Nabopolassar that resulted in the ousting of the Assyrian domination from Babylon and the establishment of the New Babylonian Empire. The Medes followed this up by a vigorous campaign against Assyria which resulted, in 606 B.C. in the taking and destruction of Nineveh. New capitals were built at Susa and Ecbatana and the sway of the Medes extended over Northern Mesopotamia, Armenia, and Cappadocia.

Then in 550 B.C. the Median supremacy ceased. Cyrus, King of Persia, of the clan Achæmenian, rebelled against his suzerain, Astyages, the son of Cyaxares, conquered him in battle and became the founder of the Persian Empire. He captured Babylon in 538 B.C. and gradually extended his sway from the Indus River to the Ægean Sea and the borders of Egypt. In his homeland of Persia he founded the city of Pasargadae, the modern Murghab, where he built himself a palace and a tomb. For it was here that his Persians, urged on by their women-folk, had struck the final blow that conquered the Medes. Accordingly, each king of the Achæmenian dynasty was here, in the temple of the warrior goddess, invested with the garb of Cyrus and partook of a meal of figs, terebinth, and sour milk; and, whenever he visited the city, gave a gold piece to every woman.

Darius I, fourth of the Achæmenian dynasty, founded Persepolis, about forty miles northeast of the modern Shiraz, commenced building the famous palace and constructed for himself a tomb. Xerxes I added a palace and a tomb of his own, while tombs also were built by Artaxerxes III and Darius II. But, while Persepolis remained the favourite resort of the Persian Kings, it was too remote a spot to be the seat of government, which continued to be divided between Babylon, Susa, and Ecbatana.

Meanwhile, under Xerxes I the Persian power came into conflict with the Hellenic and was worsted in the battles of Platæa and Thermopylæ and the sea-fight at Salamis. Henceforth the advance of the Persian Empire was checked; dissensions began to weaken it; the central authority relapsed into feebleness, with lurid intervals of cruelty, until finally it succumbed to the rising tide of Macedonian conquest. In 331 B.C. Alexander the Great crushed the army of Darius III near Arbela; took in turn the cities of Babylon, Susa, and Ecbatana and stripped them of their treasure, finally capturing Persepolis, and setting fire to it.

This act of vandalism has been variously explained. One story, which forms the subject of Dryden’s “Ode to Saint Cecilia’s Day,” had it that the wanton act was instigated by the courtezan, Thais. Another story is that it was an act of revenge for the destruction of Greek temples by Xerxes I; while still another relates that in this destruction of the very heart of Iran, Alexander wished to impress the Oriental imagination with the absoluteness of his supremacy.

After being subject to the rule of the successors of Alexander and to the domination of the later Parthian Empire, Persia once more became an empire under the Sassanian Dynasty, Ctesiphon being one of its chief cities. In the seventh century A.D. it was conquered by the Saracens and entered into the Mohammedan civilisation, which we shall discuss in a later chapter.

The rapid rise of the Persian power was due to the hardiness of this mountain race and its highly organised preparation for war. Every Persian able to bear arms was bound to serve the King: the great landowners on horseback, the commonalty on foot. The army, therefore, unlike those of the Oriental nations it encountered, was composed of cavalry as well as infantry; and, while the latter, armed with bows, kept the enemy at a distance and harassed them with storms of arrows, the cavalry, operating on their flanks and rear, completed the rout. It was only when the power had become unwieldy by its very vastness, that this method of warfare proved useless against the Greek hoplites and the massed formation of the Macedonian phalanx.

In its beginning the Persian system was a beneficent feudalism. The nobles, excused from personal cultivation of the soil, were pledged to appear at Court as frequently as possible. Their children were brought up in company with the princes “at the Gate of the King,” instructed in riding, hunting, and the use of weapons, educated to the service of the State and a knowledge of the law, as well as to the commandments of religion. Under Darius, who completed the vast structure of empire which Cyrus had founded, the organisation of government and society was on broad and free lines; an empire established in righteousness, following the precepts of Zoroaster.

It is concluded from various testimony that this great prophet of the Aryan peoples lived about 1000 B.C. He taught that in this world there is a continual conflict between the Powers of Good—Light, Creative Strength, Life, and Truth—and the Powers of Evil—Darkness, Destruction, Death, and Deceit. At the head of the Good Powers is the Great Wisdom Ahuramazda, whose helpers are the six powers of Good Thought, Right Order, Excellent Kingdom, Holy Character, Health, and Immortality. At the head of the Evil, Ahriman. Midway between these Powers is Man, who has to make his choice on which side he will take his stand. He is called to serve the Powers of Good; to speak the truth and fight a lie; to obey the command of law and true order; to tend his cattle and fields; to practise the Good and True in thought, word, and deed, and to keep from pollution the elements of the earth, water, and particularly fire. For Zoroaster preserved the old Aryan belief in the element of fire. Altars were erected upon the hills, tended by fire-kindlers, who were the ministers of the true religion and the intermediaries between God and man.

Moreover, Zoroastrianism was a proselytising religion. Ahuramazda, whom king and people alike acknowledged, had given them dominion “over the earth afar, over many peoples and tongues.” Yet, while they felt it to be their destiny to rule the whole world, the Persians believed that it was the will of Ahuramazda that they must govern it aright. Hence they treated the conquered with clemency and employed their leaders as administrators and generals. Cyrus, for example, permitted the Jews to return to Jerusalem and restored to them the temple vessels of gold and silver which had been taken by Nebuchadnezzar.

Thus, the religion of Iran had to do with practical life, this world and the joy thereof, and moral conduct; and as long as it retained its character of plain living and high thinking—of which the simple coronation ritual of the kings was symbolical—the Empire continued strong. Luxury, however, gradually crept in; the Persian Kings vied with the Kings they had conquered in magnificence of living and slowly but surely the strength of the Empire was sapped.

Cruelty also became part of the Persian religion, as indicated by remains of human sacrifices taken from ash-heaps that stood beside Zoroastrian altars. This also caused a degeneration to devil-worship, which in some localities survives to-day.

CHAPTER VI

PERSIAN ARCHITECTURE

Zoroastrian religion had no use for temples made with hands. Its temple was the universe; the floor of it the mountain tops of Persia from which countless altars, tended continually by the Fire-Kindlers, sent up flames in worship of the element of Fire. Meanwhile it was the desire of every Persian Monarch whom war and government obliged to be absent so much from the homeland, that, when they died, their bodies should be brought home “to the Persians.” Accordingly, when Cyrus erected a palace at Pasargadae, the modern Marghab, he also built himself a Tomb, which still exists.

Its style is a singular mixture of Assyrian and Asiatic Greek. Built of large blocks of white polished marble, it consists of a platform of seven steps, on the top of which is a small shrine or cella, rectangular in plan, covered by a pitched roof that terminates in the front and rear, in a gable-end or pediment. It is, in fact, a Greek temple of very rudimentary simplicity, mounted on a ziggurat. The ruins show that the tomb was surrounded on three sides by colonnades.

Following the Assyrian precedent, the Palace of Cyrus occupied a platform, of about 40,000 square feet, which still exists and is known to the natives as “The Throne of Solomon.” But here the terrace is of natural rock, faced round the sides with cut stone walls distinguished by the beauty of the masonry. It is the earliest instance known of the so-called drafted masonry, of which a magnificent example is found in the terraces of Herod’s temple at Jerusalem. It represents a method of cutting, which leaves the surface of the block of stone rough-hewn, as when it left the quarry, but dresses the edges to a “draft,” or smooth, bevelled surface.

Such scanty remains as have been found suggest that Cyrus’s palace was of the simplest kind, including a central hall, the roof of which was carried by two rows of stone columns, thirty feet high, with porticoes in antis. The latter is a feature borrowed from Greek-Asiatic temple-building; the term, in antis, being used when the columns of the portico are set between the prolongation of the side walls of the main building.

It is, however, from the remains of the group of buildings at Persepolis that the magnificence of Persian architecture can be best appreciated. Here, again, is a terrace of natural rock; but of vast size, covering an area of about one million six hundred thousand square feet. This, like the terrace of the Escoriál of the Spanish Kings, projects from the foot of a rocky mountain side. The Escoriál includes a royal mausoleum, built within the confines of the palace; but, at Persepolis, three tombs, one of them unfinished, are excavated behind the palace in the mountain wall. Two are supposed to be the resting places of later kings, Artaxerxes II and III, while the unfinished one is that of Arses, who reigned only two years.

Meanwhile the Tomb of Darius I, the founder of Persepolis, has been identified as one of four tombs, eight miles distant from the palace. These also are excavated in the mountain side, and at such a height from the bottom of the valley, that they corroborate the account which Ctesias, the Greek historian of Persia, gives of the tomb of Darius, that it was on the face of a rock and only to be reached by an apparatus of ropes. The three other tombs of this group are ascribed to Xerxes I, Artaxerxes I, and Darius II.

The Tomb of Darius I is of special interest because it bears upon its face a sculptured representation of the palace which he built at Persepolis. This mode of decorating a tomb was probably derived from the Lycians, whose custom it was to face their rock-cut tombs with a representation of the house which the deceased had occupied while alive. Meanwhile, there is little doubt that the Lycians derived the idea of the rock-hewn tomb from Egypt.

The sculptured front of Darius’s tomb shows the portico of the palace, and above it, upon the roof, the monarch himself upon his throne. The latter is an immense cube, the face of which is decorated with an upper and a lower row of warriors, or perhaps, tribute-bearers, while the corners are buttressed with baluster-shaped columns, surmounted by bulls’ heads. The monarch stands before the altar, with hands uplifted in worship of the sun and moon. This recognition of the religion of the Babylonians and Assyrians is characteristic of the Persian attitude toward conquered nations, and recalls Cyrus’s proclamation to these nations, guaranteeing them their life and property and designating himself the favourite of their own sun-god, Marduk, Bel-Merodach.

The lower part of the façade of the tomb represents the portico of Darius’s palace. The four columns are set in antis, but we have to imagine the second row of columns as well as the windows which flanked the door, and, like the latter, were constructed, as the ruins of the palace shows, with monolithic jambs and lintels.

The columns suggest two considerations: first, the use of them, as compared with the entire absence of the structural column in Assyrian and Babylonian architecture, and, secondly, the peculiar design of their capitals. The use was derived through the Medes probably from Asiatic-Greek models; but the form of the capital is peculiar to Persian architecture. It is composed of the head and forelegs of two recumbent beasts, which have been called bulls, but bear much more resemblance to horses, and when they have a horn, to the unicorn, a fabled creature that early legend attributed to India. It was identified with strength and fleetness and might well have been used symbolically by a race that derived from the same Aryan source as the Indians; while the use of the horse in decoration would come naturally to a nation of horse-lovers. It is also noticeable that these beasts are embellished with trappings that suggest harness.

However this may be, the tomb carving shows between the heads, the ends of the beams that support the cornice and roof. As these are not found in the case of the columns at Persepolis, it appears that the roofs of the palaces were constructed of wood, which perished in the fire of Alexander. It has been remarked that the character of this whole portico, taken in connection with the wooden columns at Pasagardae, suggests that the style of Persian palace architecture was derived originally from a primitive wooden construction. But, while this may be true, its development into stone construction was not affected by the Persians themselves. They employed Asiatic-Greek workmen whose style of temple-building, like that of the Mainland-Greeks, shows the traces of primitive wood construction.

Before leaving this tomb, there is one other feature to be noticed; namely, that the lintel of the doorway is surmounted by a cavetto-cornice, decorated with rows of conventionalised lotus-petals, derived through Lycia, from Egypt.

The restored plan of the platform of palaces at Persepolis exhibits a monumental approach on the west side, formed of a double flight of marble steps, set in double ramp. The steps are 22 feet wide, with a rise of 4 inches and a tread of 15, so that they could easily be mounted by horses. The stairs led to a terrace, paved, as was the whole platform, with marble, in the centre of which was the entrance gate, or, to use the later classic term, a Propylæa. This was square in plan, with a portal, front and rear, flanked by winged bulls, while the ceiling was supported by four columns. Its walls, like those of the other buildings, built of sun-dried bricks or rubble masonry, set with clay mortar, have long since crumbled into ruins.

The earliest palace of the group is that of Darius I, to the portico of which we have already alluded. Its plan shows a room, right and left of the portico, in which may have been stairs leading to the roof; then a square hypostyle hall of sixteen columns, set in rows of four, with various chambers, along the sides and at the end.

In one building, the Hall of a Hundred Columns, the roof was carried by ten ranges of ten columns; for the hall, as indeed were all the halls at Persepolis, was square in plan. This can scarcely have been a mere coincidence. Is it fanciful to imagine that a people, trained in Zoroastrianism, found in the principle of the square a fitting symbol of “Creative Strength” and “Right Order”?

But the most important building at Persepolis, “one of the most stupendous relics of antiquity,” is the great Palace of Xerxes. Elevated on a terrace of its own, twenty feet high, which was ascended on the north side by four flights of steps, it occupied an area of one hundred thousand square feet, more than double that of the Great Hall at Karnak, and larger than that of any Gothic cathedral in Europe, Milan and Seville alone excepted. Two rows of six columns supported each of the three porticoes, and six times six the ceiling of the Hall: in which combination one may perhaps detect a symbol of the Six Helpers of Ahuramazda, “the spiritual Wise One” or “Great Wisdom.”

The columns, including base and capital, rose to a height of 65 feet, which may be compared with the 69 feet of the central nave columns in the Hall of Karnak. The latter, however, had a diameter of 12 feet, and were separated by intervals of scarcely twice that width; while those in Xerxes’ palace were set at a comparatively far greater distance from one another and measured in diameter only about 5 feet. Moreover, instead of a minimum of light percolating through a clerestory as at Karnak, the light and air streamed freely through the windows in the walls of Xerxes’ palace, so that in every respect the impression produced by the two halls must have been very different.

The grandeur of Karnak was weighted down with mystery and awe, while Xerxes’ “lordly pleasure house” was an exalted symbol of the Zoroastrian belief in the joy of life. For in addition to the grandeur of its structural features, the imagination must picture the accompanying gladness of marble floors, water basins, fountains, and flowers, and varicoloured rugs and hangings. The walls, also, may have been resplendent with brilliantly enamelled tiles as in Xerxes’ other palace at Susa, where the French explorer, M. Dieulafoy, discovered the magnificent frieze of archers, a frieze of lions, and other decorations executed in bright-coloured enamels on concrete blocks. That Xerxes spared no pains to render his palace at Persepolis as superb as possible may be inferred from the columns in the hall and north portico. For in them the double capital of beasts does not rest directly on the fluted shafts, but is supplemented by two lower members; the first a curious arrangement of scrolls or volutes, the second a sort of conventionalised calyx of the lotus, beneath which, in bell-like form, is a conventionalisation of pendant leaves. In the volutes a suggestion of the Ionic capital has been detected, while the lower points to an Egyptian origin.

This medley of motives has a certain decorative value, but lacks the supreme beauty of architectural relationship between the parts and the whole. That is to say, the use of the various parts has not been regulated by constructive logic, necessity, or fitness; but represents a purely whimsical and arbitrary multiplication of motive. The student may assure himself of this by comparing the Persian column with the Doric Order. In the latter he may observe a superior quality of fitness in the relationship of the parts and of the sense of an inevitable logical growth in the composition as a whole.

The fantastic elaboration of the columns at Persepolis, as well as the general conglomeration of motives in Persian architecture, points to the fact that the latter was the work of foreign artists, imported from various parts of the great Persian Empire. It represents the character of the empire—a variety in unity; a unity, however, not of natural growth, but one that, having no artistic traditions of its own, puts the world under tribute to supply motives for the exploitation of its magnificence.

CHAPTER VII

MINOAN OR ÆGEAN CIVILISATION

The classical writers of Greece pointed to Mycenæ and Tiryns in Argolis as being the principal evidence of a prehistoric civilisation, which was assumed to belong to the Homeric period or even farther back to a rude heroic beginning of Hellenic civilisation. This opinion continued to be held by scholars until A.D. 1876. In this year, however, Dr. Schliemann, opening up the graves which are just inside the Lion Gateway of the citadel at Mycenæ, came upon a quantity of objects which proved the high state of civilisation to which the prehistoric inhabitants of the city had attained. Furthermore, they corresponded in character to the vases and gold, silver, and bronze objects which, three years earlier, he had dug from the ruins of the “Burnt City” (Troy) at Hissarlik in the Troad. These objects from the peninsula of Peloponnesus and the mainland of Asia Minor were not only similar in character but also of a fabric and decoration which differed from those of any known art. But a relation between the objects of art described by Homer and these “Mycenæan” treasures was generally allowed.

In 1884-1885 Schliemann and Dörpfeld, exploring the ruins of Tiryns, came upon a building which offers the most complete example in Greece of a palace of the “Mycenæan” age, belonging to a period probably between 1400 and 1200 B.C. During the subsequent years of the nineteenth century, when exploration was extended to other parts of the Peloponnesus and Northern parts of Greece, dome or beehive tombs, such as had been found at Mycenæ, were discovered in Attica, Thessaly, and elsewhere. By degrees, exploration was carried beyond the mainland of Greece to the Ionian Islands and the islands of the Ægean, particularly to Cyprus and Crete and the mainland of Asia Minor. This resulted in further discoveries of objects, related in a common family, distinct from that of any other art division. Meanwhile, objects of similar character were met with in Egypt, Italy, Sicily, Sardinia, and Spain.

Finally, the culmination of all this mass of corroborative evidence was reached by the explorations of Dr. A. J. Evans, at Cnossus in Crete, which have been followed up by explorations in Phæstus, and other Cretan sites. The net result is to establish the knowledge that Crete was the centre of a civilisation which had dealings with Egypt and Mesopotamia and extended to the sea-coast of Asia Minor and Phœnicia, the other islands of the Ægean Archipelago, the Ionian Islands, and the mainland of Greece and spread its offshoots along the west shores of the Adriatic, into Sardinia and Spain and took deep root in Sicily. To the far-extending ramifications of this civilisation has been given the comprehensive name of Minoan or Ægean.

In a most remarkable way the discoveries in Crete have corroborated the Greek legends of the Cretan King Minos. It is conjectured that a Minos may have been the founder of a dynasty and that the name passed into a title of all the rulers, corresponding to the title, Pharaoh, in Egypt. Scholars, therefore, have given the name Minoan to the civilisation of Crete; dividing it into Early, Middle, and Late Minoan.

In the Early Minoan Period, represented in the contents of early tombs and dwellings and such objects as stone vases and seal-stones, there is evidence that the Cretans had already reached considerable cultivation and had opened up communications with the Nile Valley. The date of this period is conjectured to have centred around 2500 B.C., and to have corresponded, roughly speaking, with the earlier of the Egyptian dynasties. Most remarkable of Dr. Evans’s discoveries was the finding in 1900 of whole archives of clay tablets in the palace of Cnossus, which prove that the Cretans had a highly developed system of hieroglyphics and lineal script 2000 years before the time when the Phœnicians introduced writing into Greece. Incidentally, this knowledge corroborates the statement of the historian Diodorus, that the Phœnicians did not invent letters, but only altered their forms.

The Middle Minoan Period centres round 2000-1850 B.C., and corresponds with the Twelfth Dynasty in Egypt. It was the age of the earliest palace building. Already appears the beginning of a school of wall-painting, while a manufactory of fine faience was attached to the palace at Cnossus.

The Late Minoan Period covers the period of the Hyksos usurpation in Egypt and reached its own culmination about the time of the Eighteenth Dynasty when the New Egyptian Empire or Second Theban Monarchy commenced. We have already noted the appearance in Egypt of this Cretan influence, inducing a habit of naturalistic representation in place of the old conventionalised forms of sculpture and painting. To this late Minoan period belongs the greatest development of palace building, as seen at Cnossus, Phæstus, and Tiryns, while the painting on walls and vases becomes more free and animated than anything of the kind in Egypt.

Toward 1400 B.C. a period of decline becomes apparent in Cretan art, which is reflected all over the Ægean area. The conclusion is that the islands and mainland of Greece had been invaded by less civilised conquerors, who, having no cultivation of their own, adopted the art they found and spoiled it. Probably they came from the North of Greece and were precursors of the later “Hellenes.”

Finally, about 1000 B.C., the palace at Cnossus was again destroyed, never again to be rebuilt; and at the same time the “Bronze Age” of Minoan and Mycenæan civilisation came to an end. It fell before a nation, barbarous, but possessed of iron weapons; probably the tribes which later Greek tradition and Homer knew as Dorians. Then followed a period of several centuries of unrest, as, successively, Achaæn, Æolian, and Doric migrations came from the North through the mainland of Greece and the islands of the Ægean, while an Ionian migration from Armenia spread to the west shore of Asia Minor. Finally, when the Ægean area emerges into history, it is dominated by Hellenes.

The Ægean Archipelago has been called the ancient bridge between the civilisations of the East and West, and the imagination pictures Crete at the southern end of it, within easy distance of three continents and engaged in peaceful intercourse with all; the head of a maritime confederacy of sea-rovers who planted their trading stations throughout the Mediterranean, their art everywhere following their trade. She herself was protected from aggression by her island walls; while the outposts of culture on the mainland of Greece—Mycenæ and Tiryns—were compelled to erect their palaces within citadels.

From the fact that no remains of Minoan and Mycenæan temples have been found, but only shrines within the precincts of the palaces, it has been concluded that, as in Assyria and Babylonia, the monarchs were also priests. Evidence points to the principal Minoan divinity being a kind of Earth Mother, who was associated with a satellite god. One part of her religious attributes survived in the later Aphrodite, the other in Rhea, the mother of the Olympian Zeus. While images of the deity were made as early as 2000 B.C. the principal objects of worship, or fetishes, in the Minoan age were natural objects: rocks and mountain peaks, trees, and curiously shaped stones, and even artificial pillars of wood and stone. Sometimes, as in the famous instance of the Lion Gate at Mycenæ, the fetish object—here a pillar—was guarded by animals.

A special form of fetish for the two principal divinities was that of the double axes: one double-headed axe above another on the same handle. “It has been discovered,” says the Encyclopædia Britannica (11th edition), “that the great Minoan foundation at Cnossus was at once a palace and a sanctuary of the Double Axe. We can hardly any longer hesitate to recognise in this vast building, with its winding corridors and subterranean ducts, the Labyrinth of later tradition. It is difficult, also, not to connect the repeated wall-paintings and reliefs of the palace, illustrating the cruel bull sports of the Minoan arena, in which girls as well as youths took part, with the legend of the Minotaur, or Bull of Minos, for whose grisly meals Athens was forced to pay annual tribute of her own sons and daughters.” Actual figures of a monster with a bull’s head and man’s body have been found on seals in Crete, and evidence points to these bull sports being part of a religious ceremony.

Even the smaller houses were of stone, plastered within, while the palaces suggest a luxurious mode of living; being richly decorated, with separate sleeping apartments and large halls, fine stairways, bath-chambers, windows, folding and sliding doors, and remarkably modern arrangements for water supply and drainage. The furniture included thrones, tables, seats, constructed of stone or plastered terra-cotta; a great variety of cooking utensils and vessels of all sorts from stone wine jars, ten feet high, to the tiniest ointment-holders.

Ladies, in curiously modern costumes, formed a favourite subject both for wall-decoration and miniature painting; many of the latter showing groups with architectural and landscape surroundings, done with remarkable spirit and naturalness.

The clay tablets are almost exclusively concerned with inventories and business transactions, and prove that a decimal system of numeration was used.

Next to Cnossus the most important sources of knowledge concerning this ancient civilisation have been Hissarlik, Mycenæ, Phæstus, Hagia Triada, and Tiryns.