to those employed in
the Euphrates valley, but these were covered with a facing of enamelled
tiles, disposed as a skirting or a frieze, on which figured those
wonderful processions of archers, and the lions which now adorn the
Louvre, while the pilasters at the angles, the columns, pillars,
window-frames, and staircases were of fine white limestone or of hard
bluish-grey marble.

[Illustration: 262.jpg ONE OF THE CAPITALS FROM SUSA]

Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph taken in the Louvre by
Faucher-Gudin.

[Illustration: 262b.jpg FREIZE OF ARCHERS AT SUZA]

[Illustration: 263.jpg GENERAL RUINS OF PERSIPOLIS]

The doorways are high and narrow; the moulding which frames them
is formed of three Ionic fillets, each projecting beyond the other,
surmounted by a coved Egyptian lintel springing from a row of alternate
eggs and disks. The framing of the doors is bare, but the embrasures are
covered with bas-reliefs representing various scenes in which the king
is portrayed fulfilling his royal functions--engaged in struggles with
evil genii which have the form of lions or fabulous animals, occupied in
hunting, granting audiences, or making an entrance in state, shaded by
an umbrella which is borne by a eunuch behind him. The columns employed
in this style of architecture constitute its most original feature.
The base of them usually consists of two mouldings, resting either on
a square pedestal or on a cylindrical drum, widening out below into a
bell-like curve, and sometimes ornamented with several rows of inverted
leaves. The shafts, which have forty-eight perpendicular ribs cut on
their outer surface, are perhaps rather tall in proportion to their
thickness. They terminate in a group of large leaves, an evident
imitation of the Egyptian palm-leaf capital, from which spring a sort of
rectangular fluted die or abacus, flanked on either side with four rows
of volutes curved in opposite directions, generally two at the base and
two at the summit. The heads and shoulders of two bulls, placed back to
back, project above the volutes, and take the place of the usual abacus
of the capital. The dimensions of these columns, their gracefulness, and
the distance at which they were placed from one another, prove that they
supported not a stone architrave, but enormous beams of wood, which
were inserted between the napes of the bulls' necks, and upon which the
joists of the roof were superimposed. The palace of Persepolis,