2. Art under Darius, Xerxes and their successors

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In the ruins of Pasargad, the name Cyrus is found only in the inscriptions, in the ruins of Persepolis, it already completely disappears, but the more often there are inscriptions of the names of Darius I and Xerxes I, which only occasionally are joined by the names of later kings. Therefore, there can be no doubt that the ruins of Persepolis contain monuments of the further development of Persian art under Darius. As a matter of fact, of the ruins in the vicinity of ancient Persepolis, only the palace terrace in the residence (Chil Minar, or Takht-i-Jemshid) and the tombs in Nakshi Rustem are interesting for us.

Fig. 236. The royal tomb in the rock near Nakshi Rustem. By delafua

In addition to the tombstone mentioned above, we find in Nakshi Rustem only facade tombs in the rocks. To four such tombs of this locality (fig. 236) one should add three more in the rocks behind the large terrace in Persepolis. The oldest of them is the tomb of Darius in Nakshi Rustem, recognized as such by the length of the inscription on it. Most of this monument is an imitation of the facade of a house or a palace. Above him, in a special field, placed the image of a two-story artistically executed throne stage, on which stands the king, praying to the deity of light. The facade represents a portico on four columns, bounded laterally by walls. The door leading into the tomb occupies the entire space between the two middle pillars. Above the door trim, which looks like a triple frame, is an Egyptian grooved cornice decorated with a triple row of leaves, which plays the role of decorating doors, windows and niches in all Persian buildings. The columns consist of a base in the form of a shaft, lying on two quadrangular plates, from a smooth round rod and from the famous Persian capital with the heads of bulls in its simplest form. On the two sculptures of the front of the bulls, facing their backs to one another, and on the saddle-shaped notch between their necks rests a short, projecting transverse beam, topped with a slab. On it and on the necks of bulls, the upper parts of the facade rest: an architrave consisting of three smooth strips, a cornice with a row of teeth and a frieze stretching above it with images of lions walking. The throne stage of the upper field, regardless of its architectural supports, is supported by two rows of 28 human figures one above the other in different clothes with their hands up. From the inscription it is clear that these figures are the personification of 28 regions of the Persian monarchy. On the stage stands the king in clothes, forming many folds, with a tiara on his head, turning to the right and raising his right hand in prayer; before him is the altar upon which the sacred fire burns; the disk of the sun is floating in the sky - the source of all light and fire; an image of Agura-Mazda (Ormuzd), the ancient Persian god of light, is placed higher in the center of the sacred winged ring in the form of a bearded half-figure in royal attire. This image represents everything that has come down to us from the religious art of the Persians. The construction of the tomb's façade described only very remotely resembles the Egyptian prototypes, which we find in the Beni Hassan mountain tombs and in Asia Minor tombs in the rocks of Paflagoniya; in particular, the use of alien elements is clearly noticeable. Even the Persian capitals with bull heads point to analogies in the Egyptian and Assyrian arts; but these analogies are by no means so striking as to take away from the Persian column with bull heads its artistic independence. The architrave, despite the absence of a crowning cornice, is obviously inspired by an Ionic or more ancient pattern; On the throne stage we find such ornamental forms as a series of so-called ovos, consisting of alternatingly wide and pointed leaves, and the so-called pearl string, consisting of spherical elements, alternately round and elongated, forms that Greek art invented, although the tendency to them is observed in more ancient works of art. This includes the Egyptian grooved door cornice, the Assyrian image of the deity over the figure of the king, the Assyrian general character of the whole sculpture, which, of course, shows the transfer of folds in the spirit of the archaic art of Greece, and Assyrian style, and Pasargad style Cyrus image. Already from this, it is clear that Persian court art was the first to follow an eclectic direction, and that its further development in this direction was probably dependent on the accession of Egypt to Persia, which followed in the meantime; but if, in addition to Darius’s tomb, we turn our attention to six other royal tombs in the rocks, then the sharp boundaries of this development will be immediately determined: these six tombs belong to a later era, and although the newest of them is 150 years younger than Darius’s tomb, similar to this last and to each other like two drops of water. Most of them do not have only a frieze of lions on the architrave.

Fig. 237. Complicated Persian column from Persepoli propylene. According to Flandin and Costa

The further development of the art of Persia is represented by the palaces of its later kings. The name of the great Darius is a huge, terraced building, on which stood the royal palaces of Persepolis. This building, leaning back to the mountain and having 473 meters in width and 286 meters in depth, formed on three sides a wall from 10 to 13 meters high, built of stones, though incorrect, but hewn and well-fitting one to the other. A large, comfortable double staircase leads to the north-western terrace supported by this wall, the marches of which first disperse, then go symmetrically against each other and finally converge again. Of the pillars of the structures on this terrace, only fifteen remained standing, while the rest of the buildings contain only fragments or bases; there are sticking up, like ghosts, stone corner pilasters of walls and numerous frames of niches, doors and windows, sometimes monolithic, while the walls themselves, made of unbaked bricks, have long crumbled into dust. The Persian column, the column of the times of Darius, is here in its full, complex composition (Fig. 237). The bell-shaped base is covered with narrow, hanging down the leaves, connecting at the top with the palmettes and giving it a view that is fluted in the vertical direction. The round shaft serves as a transition from the base to the stem of the column and is covered with numerous longitudinal flutes; its length is twelve or more diameters. The capital is divided into three main parts - lower, middle and upper. The lower part consists of two capitals of the Egyptian character, placed one on another: from the cup-shaped (as in Soleb) and bell-shaped (as in Karnak). Some deny the bell-shaped form of this lower member of the capitals and see it as nothing more than dangling, so-called wilted, palm leaves - a form that could be borrowed from the crown of the leaves of an Aeolian capital belonging to the pre-Greek art of Asia Minor. The middle part consists of a tetrahedral piece, decorated on each face with two pairs of volutes. The prototype of this form could be an eolic capital. The upper part is the capital described above with bull heads (cf. fig. 235). Obviously, the basis of this pile-up of organically-unconnected motifs was the need to more sharply dismember extremely tall columns, for which a single capital with bull-heads was not enough. But the impression of this inorganic combination of forms is concealed by the abundance and variety of ornaments.

The palace of Darius (dwelling) in Persepolis, completed, as the inscription says, only by Xerxes, was rectangular in plan, as were all Persian palaces. Its square central hall had 16 columns arranged in four rows, and the portico - 8 in two rows. Living rooms adjoined to the central hall from three sides. In front of the portico, facing south, lay an open terrace, onto which stairs led from both sides. In each of the two triangles formed on the walls by these ladders, lions were depicted with half-relief work, clutching their teeth in the bull's back, a typical symbolic decoration of all such places on the stairs in Persepolis. The middle wall between the stairs was decorated with rows of warriors; on the side railing of the stairs, equipped with teeth, rising up in the form of ledges, men were depicted, as it were, rising from rung to rung, alternately dressed in short, the other in long clothes and carrying gifts intended for the king. Only a few columns survived from the palace itself, but wall pilasters and frames of niches, doors and windows were preserved quite well. The king himself was represented on them: on one of the door trim we see him majestically entering this door accompanied by a servant who is depicted in smaller form; on the other pilaster, the king, represented calm and impassive, fights a winged unicorn with a lion’s head and bird's claws; the king with his left hand holds the monster by the horn, and with his right, he slings a sword into it To portray the king in a dangerous position for him, in Persian terms, was obviously disrespectful; on the contrary, it was necessary to express visually, with the help of a symbolic image, the superiority of the king, who can jokingly, without the slightest exertion of strength, defeat all the monsters in the world. The prototypes of these images should be considered as scenes of the struggle of epic heroes with lions and bulls found on ancient Dutch cylinders. The entire set of reliefs of the palace in question is repeated with some changes in all other Persian palaces. Everywhere on the walls and parapet of the stairs, we meet warriors who protect the king's person and representatives of the people who honor him and offer him gifts, and inside the palaces we see the king marching or defeating the monsters. All this is proportionate, symbolic, solemn. There are no lively scenes of hunting and battles like the Assyrian kings decorated the walls of their palaces.

Persepolsky Palace Darius for the ceremonial receptions is known as the hall with 100 columns. Its ruins contain enough data in order to be able to mentally restore it. Being intended for solemn occasions, it did not contain any residential, side premises. It was a huge, quadrangular hall 75 meters long and wide, with a ceiling supported by 100 columns 111/2 meters high each. On the north side there was an open portico, into which two doors led from the hall; it was about 56 meters long and 16 meters deep. The ceiling between the side walls was supported by two rows of columns, eight in each. The outer edges of its side walls were decorated with sculptures of winged bulls with a human head, in the nature of such Assyrian figures. The columns all belonged to the category of the luxurious Persian columns described above. The walls of the main hall were divided into parts by doors, niches and windows. On the door frames we found images of the king sitting in his tent on the stage, under the protection of Agura-Mazda hovering above him and receiving honors accorded to him (fig. 238).

Fig. 238. King on the throne. Persepolian relief. According to Flandin and Costa

In relation to the style next to these Persepolian reliefs from the time of Darius should take place a relief image of this sovereign, carved on a rock along the road from Ecbatana to Babylon. It is located at a height of 50 meters above the road and strikes from afar with its long inscription, in which Darius announces his deeds. He rests on his bow and tramples the foot of a captive writhing beneath. Behind the king are two bodyguards. New captives are being brought to him in bonds. Above it hovers Agura-Mazda in its winged ring.

In all these Persian reliefs from the time of Darius, Assyrian style and composition techniques are noticeable; Persian immaturity is found in the constant repetition of the same, once and for all accepted, motives and in the stillness of the depicted figures, which in themselves would be capable of movement; The spirit of Greek freedom is felt in a better understanding of the conditions of the relief, in an abundance of folds, although outlined in the old way, schematically, and in greater purity and softness of the muscles, and, however, the hair on the heads still stand out, as before, monotonous and rough.

Fig. 239. Hall of Xerxes in Persepolis. On the restoration of Shipie

Xerxes built for himself on the southern side of the main terrace of Persepolis a residential palace facing the cool north , much larger than Darius’s palace. According to the plan, the central hall of this building had 36 columns (instead of 16), and in the portico - 12 (instead of 8). Some change in artistic taste is noticeable in the sculptural works that adorned this palace. True, the king and in him is under an umbrella, which is kept over his head by a servant following him, but the king is no longer fighting the monsters, and instead of them appears an image of beautiful bezborodyh young servants, carrying carpets, vessels, baskets; without a doubt, it is a sign of a softening of manners; the relief style also becomes softer: its forms are made more rounded, light and smooth.

Fig. 240. The capital with the unicorns from the hall of Xerxes in Persepolis. By Perrot and Shipie

Further development of architecture will be found in the front door of Xerxes, especially if, together with Perrot, Shipieux and others, due to the complete absence of remnants of walls, door and window parts that would have survived, we conclude that this palace, which served as a brilliant decoration of Persepolis, is not at all it was enclosed by walls, and consisted exclusively of porticos with columns covered on top and open on the sides. The doors in the residential palaces were closed with doors, but the entrances of the palace with 100 columns, as can be seen from their platbands, were only curtained. Xerxes went even further - completely removed the circumferential walls (Fig. 239). Two pairs of stairs, one in front of the other, lead to the north side of the palace terrace; the first two ladders, separated from one another by a wide platform, adjoin directly to the terrace wall; the second, the front pair, which has a narrower platform, is arranged so that this latter falls in the middle of the area of ​​the first pair. On the terrace, in front of a square hall in plan with six rows of columns, six in each, there is a portico standing separately from it with 12 columns arranged in two rows. Two porticoes, each also on 12 columns, rise to the same distance from the sides of the main hall. All columns are approximately 191/2 meters high and placed at a distance of 9 meters from one another, counting from the axis to the axis. Thus, all this construction with its height and width far exceeds the hall of Darius with 100 columns. The desire for diversity and novelty is found in it partly by a return to antiquity. The capitals of the columns of the central hall and the front portico have the full, complex form of Persian capitals; in the remaining parts of the palace, the columns, being cannelized, return to the simple form of capitals with bullish front, as we see in the facades of the tombs. At the same time, in the eastern portico we find a real innovation - the capitals that are found only here with the front of the unicorns, who stretched their lion paws forward (Fig. 240). On the other hand, it should be noted that the columns of the central building return to the three-part bases of the tombs' facades, while the front and both side porticoes retain a newer Persian base shape - bell-shaped.

Fig. 241. Dannies carrying gifts. Persepolian relief. According to Flandin and Costa

Fig. 242. Cypresses and palm trees. Persepolian relief. By Perrot and Shipie

The sculptural decorations of the wide staircases were abundant and magnificent not least of all the buildings. And here in each of the four triangular wall spaces of the stairs were depicted lions, tormenting the bulls, and on the front middle wall - the royal bodyguards. On the parapets of the stairs there were warriors rising from step to step. The wider front wall of the first pair of stairs, which followed the second, was divided by vertical stripes into three fields occupied by images of people and animals, long lines leading to the middle: on the left — courtiers, soldiers and servants of the king, his chariots and horses; on the right are the ambassadors of the provinces with their gifts, fruits, and beasts. An attempt to diversify the presented is found in the fact that the walking figures in some places turn back (Fig. 241); the desire for diversity can also be seen in the image of animals - camels, zebu, horses, sheep, driven by people; the need for greater wealth of forms is manifested in the drawing of trees, which interrupt the rows of animals and people; only cypresses and palm trees are depicted in the trees; при грубости общего очертания кипарисов их ветви и плоды в какой-то степени естественны, но пальмы имеют вид прямо скопированных с египетского "дерева пальметт": цветочные чашечки с завитками, причем из верхней распускается пальметта, как бы умышленно-условно обозначают собой ствол пальмы, а та фигура, которая, собственно, только называется пальметтой, играет здесь роль пальмовой верхушки (рис. 242). Ландшафтных фонов, какие нередко встречаются в египетском и ассирийском искусстве, в персидском придворном искусстве не имеется.

The facilities of Xerxes on the Persepolian terrace are completed with kerfs, with their narrow side facing the main staircase of the terrace, and the long one - to the staircase leading to the palace of the king. Thus, containing passageways in both directions, the cuts served to enter both the terrace and the buildings of Xerxes; they consisted of an architrave resting on four massive pillars and four columns; the aisles were in the long side between these pairs of columns, and in the narrow - between the wall pillars, on the sides of which stood a winged bull with a human head of the Assyrian type already known to us.

Fig. 243. Capital of the column from Susa. From the photo

Other buildings on the Persepolian terrace, of which the Artaxerxes-Okha inscription (362-339 BC) is located at the latest, is less significant and less instructive for us. Persian palaces in Ecbatana and Sousa cannot boast with essentially new forms either. The stone columns, opened during the excavations of Delafoua, started by Darius and the ceremonial palace in Susa, completed by Artaxerxes Mnemon, whose remains can be admired in the Louvre Museum in Paris (fig. 243), represent an excess of forms common to other monuments of fully developed Persian art. We find something new here in friezes made of colored glazed clay slabs. The surviving pieces of these friezes are folded and replenished with great skill; they are also in the Louvre. Suza lay on the edge of the Mesopotamian Plain. The fact that here, as in Babylon, the brick served as material for the performance of some tasks of stone plastics, should be considered not so much evidence of the further development of Persian art under Artaxerxes Mnemon, as a phenomenon depending on geographical conditions. The most famous are the frieze depicting the royal archers (fig. 244) and the frieze with lions, stored in the Louvre (fig. 245). Where, in fact, these friezes were located, it is not quite clear; However, the frieze with lions, distinguished by subtlety in the decoration even lived on their heads, at least decorated the high part of the building. As for the frieze with archers, it should be noted that none of them had a head preserved, and all heads were reproduced again on the scale of the heads on the stone reliefs of Persepolis. The uniformity of the figures in both friezes is striking; it will become clear to us if we recall that these reliefs were made by means of a clay impression in the same form. Nine figures of archers, folded from the fragments of a frieze, are resting with both hands on spears; the bows are thrown over their shoulders, and each one has a quiver behind it. In the clothes, together with the image of folds already known to us, we see patterns consisting alternately of rosettes and rhombuses. Paints are limited to white, black, brown and yellow, except for the bluish-green, prevailing in the background. Red paint does not occur. In the rims around these paintings, as well as on other fragments of similar tiled works of art of Susa, we find all the ornaments of Persia, as if a list of all its motifs: jagged teeth, partly with pointed holes inside, stripes of triangles, ribbons with rosettes, Assyrian rows palmettes, interconnected by continuous arcuate ribbons, and nearby are various variations of the palmette and palm tree motifs (Fig. 246). And in this area the Persian court art has not created anything new.

Fig. 244. Frieze with figures of archers in Susa. On watercolor by Max Kunert (photo) and on the restoration of Dresden Albertinum

Fig. 245. Frieze with figures of lions from Susa. From the photo

On the so-called small art of Persia to report almost nothing. Bronze figures were found only in the Susa region. The figurine of a man kept in the Louvre, who embraced a large dog sitting next to him with a rather vague performance has a Persian rather than a Babylonian character. Persian cylindrical prints resemble Assyrian and often represent more lively hunting and war scenes and more realistic palm trees than those we see in major works of Persian art. One of the cylindrical seals of Darius is in the British Museum. Here we should assume the participation of Babylonian masters, just as in major works of Persian plastic arts - the participation of Asia Minor. Since the Persian influence did not have any prominent past, taking into account its technical perfection, it is difficult to think that it was cultivated by the Persians themselves. It is not without reason that we have information about various Greek artists who worked at the court of the Persian kings, and it is by no means unthinkable that they were so adapted to the desires of their customers, even in relation to the general style of their works, which were preserved only by those Greek features and techniques. striking in the plastic of the Persian reliefs. Obviously, this plastic refers to a later, free and less severe pore than the ancient Egyptian and Old Assyrian art; Of course, it sometimes feels temporary contact with the Hellenic art of the era of its greatest brilliance, but nowhere does it attract our attention to itself with any elegant motive, original thought, folk trait, it is not noticed anywhere in its transition to the freedom and maturity of contemporary Greek art. Plastic Persians invariably remained the court art of the ancient world.

Fig. 246. Suz palms and palms. By delafua

The evaluation of Persian architecture is not so unfavorable. Recognizing where she borrowed most of her individual motives is not difficult; but in all its community, the architecture of the Persian palaces seems to be largely truly local, a peculiarly beautiful product. Spacious terraces that serve as the foundation of buildings, comfortable double staircases, scaffolding of columns consisting of several parts and richly ornamented, colored architraves and ceiling beams merged into one beautiful whole. Not only between the parts of the columns, but also in the decoration of doors and windows there was a strict proportionality, based, as Delafua proved, on certain numerical relations (width refers to height as 1: 2, 2: 3, 2: 5), which are observed for the first time here. and in Greece. Of course, the Persian architecture of the Achaemenid times was not destined to exert a productive influence on European art, which would quickly acquire international significance, but for the Far East, Persepolis’s wonderful buildings were, so to speak, the lights of the cleaner art world. We will see further that the beginnings of India’s Buddhist art are imbued with Persianism.