[Illustration:  PLATE XXIX.]

[Illustration:  PLATE XXX.]

The other building, which lies towards the south, and is separated from the one just described by the whole length of the court-yard, a distance of nearly 200 feet, appears to have been for the most part of an inferior character.  It comprised one large hall, or inner court, but otherwise contained only small apartments, which, it is thought, may have been “intended as guard-rooms for the soldiers.”  Although, however, in most respects so unpretending, this edifice was adorned externally with a richness and magnificence unparalleled in the other remains of Sassanian times, and scarcely exceeded in the architecture of any age or nation.  Forming, as it did, the only entrance by which the palace could be approached, and possessing the only front which was presented to the gaze of the outer world, its ornamentation was clearly an object of Chosroes’ special care, who seems to have lavished upon it all the known resources of art.  The outer wall was built of finely-dressed hard stone; and on this excellent material the sculptors of the time—­whether Persian or Byzantine, it is impossible to determine—­proceeded to carve in the most elaborate way, first a bold pattern of zigzags and rosettes, and then, over the entire surface, a most delicate tracery of foliage, animals, and fruits.  The effect of the zigzags is to divide the wall into a number of triangular compartments, each of which is treated separately, covered with a decoration peculiar to itself, a fretwork of the richest kind, in which animal and vegetable forms are most happily intermingled.  In one a vase of an elegant shape stands midway in the triangle at its base; two doves are seated on it, back to back; from between them rises a vine, which spreads its luxuriant branches over the entire compartment, covering it with its graceful curves and abundant fruitage; on either side of the vase a lion and a wild boar confront the doves with a friendly air; while everywhere amid the leaves and grapes we see the forms of birds, half revealed, half hidden by the foliage.  Among the birds, peacocks, parrots, and partridges have been recognized; among the beasts, besides lions and wild boars, buffaloes, panthers, lynxes, and gazelles.  In another panel a winged lion, the “lineal descendant of those found at Nineveh and Persepolis,” reflects the mythological symbolism of Assyria, and shows how tenacious was its hold on the West-Asian mind.  Nor is the human form wholly wanting.  In one place we perceive a man’s head, in close juxtaposition with man’s inseparable companion, the dog; in another, the entire figure of a man, who carries a basket of fruit.

Besides the compartments within the zigzags, the zigzags themselves and the rosettes are ornamented with a patterning of large leaves, while the moulding below the zigzags and the cornice, or string-course, above them are covered with conventional designs, the interstices between them being filled in with very beautiful adaptations of lesser vegetable forms.