BOOKS RECOMMENDED: As before, Babelon; Bliss, _Excavations at Jerusalem_. Reber. Also Dieulafoy, _L’Art antique de la Perse_. Fellows, _Account of Discoveries in Lycia_. Fergusson, _The Temple at Jerusalem_. Flandin et Coste, _Perse ancienne_. Perrot and Chipiez, _History of Art in Persia_; _History of Art in Phrygia, Lydia, Caria, and Lycia_; _History of Art in Sardinia and Judæa_. Texier, _L’Arménie et la Perse_; _L’Asie Mineure_. De Vogüé, _Le Temple de Jérusalem_. +PERSIAN ARCHITECTURE.+ With the Persians, who under Cyrus (536 B.C.) and Cambyses (525 B.C.) became the masters of the Orient, the Aryan race superseded the Semitic, and assimilated in new combinations the forms it borrowed from the Assyrian civilization. Under the Achæmenidæ (536 to 330 B.C.) palaces were built in Persepolis and Susa of a splendor and majesty impossible in Mesopotamia, and rivalling the marvels in the Nile Valley. The conquering nation of warriors who had overthrown the Egyptians and Assyrians was in turn conquered by the arts of its vanquished foes, and speedily became the most luxurious of all nations. The Persians were not great innovators in art; but inhabiting a land of excellent building resources, they were able to combine the Egyptian system of interior columns with details borrowed from Assyrian art, and suggestions, derived most probably from the general use in Persia and Central Asia, of wooden posts or columns as intermediate supports. Out of these elements they evolved an architecture which has only become fully known to us since the excavations of M. and Mme. Dieulafoy at Susa in 1882. +ELEMENTS OF PERSIAN ARCHITECTURE.+ The Persians used both crude and baked bricks, the latter far more freely than was practicable in Assyria, owing to the greater abundance of fuel. Walls when built of the weaker material were faced with baked brick enamelled in brilliant colors, or both moulded and enamelled, to form colored pictures in relief. Stone was employed for walls and columns, and, in conjunction with brick, for the jambs and lintels of doors and windows. Architraves and ceiling-beams were of wood. The palaces were erected, as in Assyria, upon broad platforms, partly cut in the rock and partly structural, approached by imposing flights of steps. These palaces were composed of detached buildings, propylæa or gates of honor, vast audience-halls open on one or two sides, and chambers or dwellings partly enclosing or flanking these halls, or grouped in separate buildings. Temples appear to have been of small importance, perhaps owing to habits of out-of-door worship of fire and sun. There are few structural tombs, but there are a number of imposing royal sepulchres cut in the rock at Naksh-i-Roustam.