Note 95 — Chapter IV · PERSIA.

It is very strange that this similarity, like the plan of the square halls, should hitherto have escaped observation. Had any one looked at the matter as a whole we should have been spared some restorations which are too absurd even to merit exposure.

[The restorations referred to are those in which the columns of the Great Hall and of the porticoes are shown as isolated features standing on the platforms. The authors of these designs would appear to have been misled by Messrs. Flandin and Coste’s plan, in which the drains are shown as if they ran under the line of the wall proposed by Mr. Fergusson, the enclosing wall of the Great Hall. Mr. Weld Blundell’s researches (1891), however, have shown that the main drain really lies under the hall, and between the enclosure wall and the first row of columns, and that the vertical rain-water shafts which were built into the wall communicated direct with this main drain. These shafts, cut in stone, in some cases rise above the level of the platform, which show that they were not intended to carry off the surface water from the platform. Mr. Weld Blundell discovered also the traces of the foundation of walls at the angles where shown by Mr. Fergusson. It would seem that in course of time the platforms have become coated with so hard and uniform a covering as to suggest its being the natural surface; when once broken through, however, the evidences of foundations of various walls are abundant.—Ed.]