[Illustration: Fig. 122.--Gate and windows of the palace of Darius (after Dieulafoy).] than the ruins of Pasargadæ, those of Persepolis enable us to reconstruct more perfectly the principal forms of Achæmenid architecture. The platform of the Persepolitan palaces was ascended by a flight of a hundred and eleven steps, broad enough to be mounted by ten men abreast; a gently inclined roadway, formed on one side of the platform, enabled carriages to reach the summit: here we have precisely, except in point of material and manner of construction, the platform of the Assyrian palaces. The summit of the terrace was crowned, as at Khorsabad, with a row of battlements. The peculiarity of the artificial mound called Takht-i-Jemshid by the Persians is that it is only an immense basement supporting three other terraces of smaller area upon it. These terraces are of unequal height, and communicate with one another; they are reached by stone staircases. The grand staircase, leading to the second platform, is adorned with a colonnade and flanked by gigantic human-headed bulls, similar to those at Nineveh. Upon the highest of these three platforms were built four palaces, upon the walls of which the names of Darius, Xerxes and Artaxerxes Ochus have been found. In the buildings at Persepolis and Susa, the doorways and window-frames take the form of a rectangular parallelogram, and in their architectural decoration, besides the traditional influence of Chaldæa and Assyria, the new exotic element, that we have indicated above, may be recognised; it is the intrusion of Pharaonic art. The doors, framed in three Græco-Ionian architraves, projecting one beyond the other, are surmounted, as well as the windows, by an Egyptian ornament above a line of alternate ovals and disks. In the thickness of the doorway sculptures in relief, copied from those of the Chaldæo-Assyrian palaces, show us the king in close combat with a lion or fantastic animal, or else the king sitting on his throne rendering justice at his palace gate, or again the prince solemnly advancing, surrounded by his officers and dressed in his ceremonial robes. M. Dieulafoy[55] recognised that the greater number of the windows were condemned to lessen the air and light in the interior of the rooms; these windows filled up by a thinner wall, formed, on the exterior, niches which broke the uniformity of the façade. Doors, windows, staircases and the pilasters arranged at the corners, are of white limestone or of grey porphyry with blue veins; but the walls in which these architectural features occur are of baked brick coated with enamelled tiles. [Illustration: Fig. 123.--Persepolitan capital (after Dieulafoy).]