rooms, and objects, often luxurious, found in many of them, including stone mortars, most of which are inscribed in Aramaic and sometimes mention “treasurers.”
The present‐day remains represent Persepolis terrace as Alexander left it after he put fire to it in 330. Only a small part in the southwest quarter was repaired or maintained in the late fourth or third centuries. At Darius' time most of the terrace was empty. He built the terrace itself, a task of several years, by cutting into the mountain, keeping the natural rock in places and reusing the extracted blocks to build the retaining wall in cyclopean masonry. The original access was on the south side, next to which Darius had engraved four different inscriptions, two in Old Persian (DPd‐e),1 one in Elamite (DPf) which mentions the construction of the terrace and some buildings, and one in Babylonian (DPg) mentioning people who contributed to the construction.
Then Darius built the Apadana and his palace almost attached to it, which is the best preserved monument of Persepolis (Jacobs 1997). He erected the Treasury, the plan for which changed several times. These buildings take up the tradition of the pillared halls of Pasargadae but expanding them and changing them into a more complex layout. The central columned halls are usually square instead of the rectangular plan of Pasargadae. Unlike the Mesopotamian compact architecture of the palaces, the Persepolis buildings are separated from each other but not distant as they are in Pasargadae; each of most of them is built on a platform 1–2.60 m high. The Apadana is the most grandiose expression of the Achaemenid architecture: a square building of 110 m a side on a 2.60 m high podium. The columned hall, 53 m a side, counts six rows of six fluted columns resting on a square base and supporting a composite capital topped by two adorsed bull protomae. None of them is complete, raising the question of the direction of the protomae. The traditional reconstruction showing the lateral side of the bull in the porticoes (Krefter 1971: Beilage 3–4), as they are on the facade of the royal tombs, may be an artistic convention; a front position is quite plausible (Seidl 2003). The latter supported cedar beams from Lebanon. On three sides, the main hall is surrounded by columned porticoes with two rows of six columns resting on bell‐shaped bases. The south side consists of a series of small rooms with a main corridor in the middle leading to Darius' palace. The porticoes are flanked by corner towers which contain several rooms at ground level and probably an upper story and a staircase to reach the roof. In the northeast and southwest corners of the audience hall, foundation deposits were discovered beneath the walls: two sheets of gold and silver bearing a trilingual text (DPh), together with gold, silver, and copper coins. The north and east porticoes are approached by stairways composed of four symmetrically arranged flights of steps. Their facades are covered with reliefs at eye level. Both stairways bear the same kind of figures. The central panel originally represented the king sitting on his throne giving audience to an official. Probably under Xerxes, both reliefs were removed to the Treasury and replaced by a series of guards. One side of the staircase is decorated with files of guards, followed by court members. The other side shows 23 tribute bearing delegations (cf. Chapter 94 Statuary and Relief).
The plan of Darius' palace is the archetype for the later buildings of his successors: a single portico flanked by guardrooms, a square hypostyle hall, with symmetrical series of rooms on the lateral sides and other rooms at the rear side. Xerxes and Artaxerxes would extend this layout for their own palaces.
The fortifications on the north and east sides of the terrace were built during Darius' reign and probably completed later. In two small rooms of the north fortifications, thousands of inscribed clay tablets, administrative documents, were discovered in 1933 (see Chapter 7 Elamite Sources). The remote location of these archives (Persepolis Fortification Tablets covering Darius' reign between 509 and 494 BCE) is still puzzling (Hallock 1969; Henkelman 2008).
The only visible architecture today at Persepolis is made of stone, but the buildings were made of clay, mudbricks, and baked bricks for the walls (5 m thick in the Apadana). Actually stone is limited to the column bases, door frames, actual and blind windows, staircases, and wall reliefs. Stone column shafts and capitals are restricted to the Apadana, the Hall of 100 Columns and All Nations Gate. The other columned buildings are equipped with wood poles coated with plaster and painted. Stone was extracted from quarries nearby, one being immediately north of the terrace, others located on a slope near Naqsh‐i Rustam or at 5–10 km from the terrace. The most distant quarry, more than 30 km northwest of the terrace, provided a better quality used for sculpture.
Almost nothing was completed at the death of Darius in 486 BCE. That situation raises two questions. One concerns the location of official audiences and meetings during most of his reign; the other one is the type of buildings where the king and the court lived. Even in later periods, only some buildings on the terrace are really adapted to accommodate the king and his family and the court, namely a large part of the so‐called Harem, which was not built until Xerxes, and, according to some hypotheses, the southern side of the Apadana where apartments could have been located on an upper story (Huff 2010 and other articles by Huff quoted there).
Xerxes completed his father's major buildings, erected the “All Countries” Gate to the north, and added his hadiš, today poorly preserved, in the south. He, or maybe his son, Artaxerxes I, began the Hall of 100 Columns and the smaller Hall of 32 Columns. Artaxerxes also built his own palace, to the southwest. The following kings were less active, but they may have enlarged or altered buildings, or removed pieces of them without signing their work with an inscription. Artaxerxes III (359–338 BCE) is the latest known builder for a staircase at the palace H and another one to the west of the palace of Darius (on function of the terrace, cf. Chapter 70 The Residences).
The terrace and the royal necropolis of Naqsh‐i Rustam belong to the same project. As shown by the remains of stone architecture scattered west and north of the terrace, and the results of archeological surveys since 2000, the whole area between the two sites must be considered as Parsa that extended over some 20 km2 (Tilia 1978: pp. 73–91). The spatial organization of this vast area consists of discrete concentrations of artifacts or structures, likely corresponding to different social classes. An elite – or royal? – residential area about 3 km west of the terrace covers dozens of acres. It consists of low and small tepes separated from each other by several hundred meters. Blocks of hewn stone, and in one case a mural of glazed bricks, are still visible on many of them. These mounds probably correspond to large mudbrick buildings, surrounded by gardens. Such elite areas probably also existed north and northwest and perhaps in the south. Clearly separated from these areas are other large patches marked by pottery sherds on the surface, without visible traces of architecture. They should be the living quarters and workshops of more mundane people, and barracks of numerous workers employed for the construction of the royal buildings. One of these patches is particularly noticeable about 1 km west of the terrace. The location of the encampment of the guard is not localized but should rather consist of tents. The geomagnetic survey shows some anomalies corresponding to ditches and maybe some walls which are the flimsy remains of these settlements. Altogether, in the vast area between the terrace and the necropolis, the non‐built spaces were the majority. However, they may correspond to managed landscape with orchards, large gardens, or parks.
The plain of Persepolis extends over some 100 km from north to south and 30 km at its greatest extension in the central part. In the southern half, the soil is today very salty, as it was in the past, according to analyses. It contrasts with the central part near the terrace and the northern one most intensively occupied from the Neolithic to the late second millennium BCE. After a gap of several centuries, the plain is again developed during the Achaemenid period and later.
Soil quality and irrigation possibilities make the plain a fertile region, which has negative consequences. Modern mechanized agricultural development provoked the disappearance of many witnesses of the ancient occupation. A multiperiod survey of this plain in 1968–1969 showed
