Annotated Copy of Persia and the Persian Question by George Curzon, with Inserted Papers [‎585r] (1184/1814)

PERSEPOLIS, AND OTHER RUINS
171
of another material. Though polished to a glassy smoothness on their
outer surfaces, they are always here left rough, in order to facilitate
the adhesion of a lighter substance. As to the nature of this, I have
never myself, since having travelled somewhat widely in the East, been
able to share the doubts that have found favour with so many other
writers. That the walls were neither of stone, nor, as Canon Rawlinson
thinks, of small stones, or rubble, is evident from the absence of even
the slightest trace of any such material, either in blocks, chips, or frag
ments. That they were not of kiln-burnt bricks is, I think, also clear,
because clay that has passed through the fire is among the most im
perishable of substances ; and here again only the most infinitesimal
traces of such bricks have ever been discovered on the platform. But
that they were of sundried bricks or crude mud is, I venture to think,
absolutely certain, both from analogy, ancient and modern, the palaces
of Nineveh, Babylon, and Susa having all alike been so constructed,
and mud-bricks being to this day the staple of every Persian house,
from the palace of the sovereign to the meanest hovel of the peasant;
and because in this manner, and in this only, can we account for the
total disappearance of the Persepolitan walls, which, as soon as decay
had set its finger upon the place, and the platform had ceased to be
occupied, would in a few score of years, much more in hundreds and
thousands, have been swept a way by rains and storms, or washed down
into the heaps of mud that still encumber the surface. Eergusson, though
he is driven to some such conclusion himself, describes it as a ‘ bathos
in art. ; When we remember the extraordinary ingenuity and skill
displayed by the Eastern peoples from the time of Sennacherib to that
of the present Shah, in decorating the surfaces of mud-walls either with
plaster, painted and decorated , 1 or with glazed and enamelled tiles, I do
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1 In the palaces of Babylon, we learn from Ezekiel (xxiii. 14) that there were
‘men pourtrayed upon the walls, the images of the Chalckeans pourtrayed with
vermilion, girded with girdles upon their loins, exceeding in dyed attire upon their
heads, all of them princes to look to, after the manner of the Babylonians of
Chaldasa.’ The suggestion of colour on the plastered surface of the walls leads
me to mention the allegation of some authorities that gilding and colouring were
largely employed at Persepolis, even upon the sculptured stone. Several of the
seventeenth-century travellers made or repeated this assertion. Herbert (p. 152)
said: ‘ In some other places the gold also that was laid upon the Freez and
Cornish, as, also, upon the trim of vests, was also in as perfect lustre as if it had
been but newly done.’ Chardin (ix. 187) recorded traces of gildingin the cunei
form inscriptions. Daulier-Deslandes (p. 61) said : ‘ II paroist encore a plusieurs
de ces caracteres qu’ils ont ete dorez.’ Cf. Kaempfer, p. 838. On the other hand,
no subsequent visitor has made or endorsed the discovery, with the single excep
tion of Texier, in 1840, who declared (vol. ii. pp. 188-90) that he found traces of
gilded diapering on some of the robes of the king, and that the original back
ground of the bas-reliefs was blue. He accordingly makes a plentiful use both of
gilding and colour (as do Flandin and Coste) in his restorations. I searched very
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