Dates: 612: the Medes conquer the Assyrian empire.

550: Cyrus the Great and the Persians conquer and assimilate the medes, and found a great empire under the Achaemenid dynasty; they govern all the territoriers you have so far studied except some of the Aegean islands, Crete and southern Greece. Darius and Xerxes will lead the invasions of mainland Greece whose repulse, under the leadership of Athens and Sparta, so startled and energized the Greeks; they invaded because of the troubling assitance the mainland gave to the restive conquered cities of the Anatolian coast (nothing much chnages in the Balkans today ...), and would have at Athens re-installed its ousted tyrant Hippias to be a "client-king".

Naqsh i Rustam H&F 3.34: Tomb of Darius. This tomb complex is very near Persepolis, to whose palace its architecture, program and details have strong analogies.

View of the accumulated kings' rock-cut tombs;

view, the "Tomb of Darius";

detail, the great throne;

detail, left end throne and side figures; upper left corner under throne seat, an Ionian Greek in a chiton.

The facade is cut back into the rock, to look like a palace module, carrying two more zones:

1. a platform reached by stairs (right), carrying a columned porch before a great door, bearing upon projecting beams (you see their ends) a heavy entablature. The columns, cut in low relief, have capitals which look in outline something like the protome-capital columns of the Persepolis halls.

2. On top of the "palace" sits the enlarged image of a great throne, a third the size of the building in which it would have "reall" stood, with griffins (like those at Persepolis, capital) at each end of the seat. Two rows of figures up hold the throne strut and throne seat, as if they too made a structural lattice: they wear costumes representing all the different subject peoples of the empire, like the tribute bearers of the Persepolis platform. Next to the throne, and on the side walls of the niche, are carved in corresponding registers figures of the royal bodyguard, like the soldiers on the Persepolis platform and stair walls.

compare: at H&F 82, the inscription Darius I (521-486) on his palace at Susa (for its polychrome brick decoration with animals and bodyguard see p. 83), noting the nationalities of all the different workmen for particular materials, including Ionian masons and architects.

Compare: the Achaemenid royal title, "Great King, King of Kings".

3. On top of the throne is a scene where the ruler worships his god: the Persian emperor at left, far right a fire altar, and floating in mid-air the winged symbol of Ahura Mazda, "God" in Iranian solar monotheism (Zoroastrianism).

Persepolis: Palace terraced into the mountain range that holds Naqsh i Rustam, begun by Darius I (518), completed by his son Xerxes and grandson Artaxerxes I. H&F p. 83-84.

View, site with tents from the Shah's anniversary celebrations (comparison for p. 84)

H&F 3.36 Plan. Notice the perfectly square multi-comuned halls (hypostyle halls), with their multiple entrances and exits on each side, and their colonnaded porches. The heavy squares of wall interlace at the corners mark foundations for towers. The northern part of the complex is for formal reception; the southern half, behind the public section, for less public living and entertainment quarters. You can see on the plan the monumentality and bent axes of approach - the foreigners nb had to go further, to get to their throne room! The great gate house at top left is the Gate of Xerxes.

Doors & gates:

Hall of 100 Columns/ Throne room, SE door jamb: great throne (just like Naqsh i Rustam) - an identical image carved on each side of one of the great SE doors (bottom of room, in your plan).

Lamassu Gate of Xerxes, view, with protome columns of the Apadana/Audience Hall beyond.

Hall of 100 Columns, another of the door decoration systems: the Hero vs. Lion (Gilgamesh motif), modified: the lion is a winged evil demon, the hero has Persian costume, turning King Gilgamesh into the Persian Great King.

H&F 3.35 View across platform from inside the "Hall of 100 Columns" or "Throne room" (Throne room to receive foreigners) past fluted column shafts (that had animal capitals) to the columns still standing in the "Apadana" or "Audience Hall" (Throne room for Medes & Persians), and beyond to the standing portals of one of the great gate complexes.

Animal & tree (paradeisos) columns: All the many columns of the two throne rooms had early Ionian-style forms; tall fluted shafts, on bell-shaped bases, the trunk-like shafts leading up to stylized srooping-leaf capitals, over these stone forms criss-crossing like elements of wood archutecture, and over those, the two-faced protome capitals carrying the actual roof beams. Because of the emphasis on a crowd of animals, the tree references of the column forms and ornament seem to be deliberate, not only ornamental. (cf. H&F 84). You can see their outlines in all the site views.

H&F 3.37 Detail, Bull protome

3/4 View, whole bull capital

profile View Griffin capital

The finely laid stones of the platform surface were elaborately carved with processions, in multiple registers, moving around the platform and right on up the great stairs. They were plainly meant to be seen by visitors and inhabitants moving to and around the palace core (like the Assyrian courtyard processions turned inside out), in the planted surround of the palace which is depicted in the stairway friezes. Just as the throne rooms served different audiences, ranking the Medes & Persians over foreigners, so the platform facades showed different groups:

Views N & S facades - Persians and Medes, and (3 registers) tribute bearing peoples of the empire; Stair walls (H&F 3.38), the royal bodyguard. Notice the lines of ornamental trees "beyond" the "walls" of the row right on top of the stir risers.

Context: Reconstruction, View with inhabitants, of the SW ("left") palace facade, with the great stairs to Xerxes' gate and the outer porch of the Apadana.

- View, stairs today with climbing Iranians in local, draped costume.

Ionian architects: we know from both inscriptions (see above and the site studeis of Carl Nylander about the tems of Ionian masons and designers enlisted from the kings' Greek subject cities in Anatolia, to work on the great palaces and tombs. For their skills and design tastes:

Compare: Didyma (near Miletos), the oracular temple of Apollo, a replica started in the 4th c. BCE of the great archaic "forest of columns" temple here; these were a special monument form of Ionia with their soaring colossal colonnades of many rows of columns (often decorated) set upon high stepped platforms, which we can reconstruct for Samos and Ephesos too (cf. Ephesos in the drawn reconstruction elsewhere).