that of the simpler Greek temples; distinguished from them by peculiarities of ornamentation, but by no striking or important feature, excepting the grand and elaborately sculptured staircase.  Internally, it was remarkable for the small number of its apartments, which seem not to have been more than twelve or thirteen, and for the moderate size of most of them.  Even the grand central hall covered a less area than three out of the five halls in the country palace of Sargon.  The effect of this room was probably fine, though it must have been somewhat over-crowded with pillars.  If these were, however (as is probable), light wooden posts, plated with silver or with gold, and if the ceiling consisted (as it most likely did) of beams, crossing each other at right angles, with square spaces between them, all likewise coated with the precious metals; if moreover the cold stone walls, excepting where they were broken by a doorway, or a window, were similarly decked; if curtains of brilliant hues hung across the entrances; if the pavement was of many-colored stones, and in places covered with magnificent carpets; if an elevated golden throne, under a canopy of purple, adorned the upper end of the room, standing against the wall midway between the two doors—­if this were in truth the arrangement and ornamentation of the apartment, we can well understand that the coup d’oeil must have been effective, and the impression made on the spectator highly pleasing.  A room fifty feet square, and not much more than twenty high, could not be very grand; but elegance of form, combined with richness of material and splendor of coloring, may have more than compensated for the want of that grandeur which results from mere size.

If it be inquired how a palace of the dimensions described can have sufficed even for one of the early Persian kings, the reply must seemingly be that the building in question can only have contained the public apartments of the royal residence—­the throne-room, banqueting-rooms, guard-rooms, etc.,—­and that it must have been supplemented by at least one other edifice of a considerable size, the Gynaeceum or “House of the Women.”  There is ample room on the platform for such a building, either towards the east, where the ground is now occupied by a high mound of rubbish, or on the west, towards the edge of the platform, where traces of a large edifice were noted by Niebuhr.  On the whole, this latter situation seems to be the more probable; and the position of the Gynaeceum in this quarter may account for the alteration made by Artaxerxes Ochus in the palace of Darius, which now seriously interferes with its symmetry.  Artaxerxes cut a doorway in the outer western wall, and another opposite to it in the western wall of the great hall, adding at the same time a second staircase to the building, which thus became accessible from the west no less than from the south.  It has puzzled the learned in architecture to assign a motive for this alteration.  May we not find an adequate one in the desire to obtain a ready and comparatively private access to the Gynaeceum, which must have been somewhere on the platform, and which may well have lain in this direction?