Persian Empire
Q & A 6 min read

Who Built Persepolis?

Three Achaemenid kings, in succession: Darius the Great founded the site around 518 BCE, Xerxes I expanded it, and Artaxerxes I, Xerxes’ son, completed it around 460 BCE. The site remained a ceremonial centre of the Achaemenid state until it was burned by Alexander the Great in early 330 BCE. The Achaemenid foundation tablets, inscribed in Old Persian, Elamite, and Babylonian, give a detailed picture of the workforces, the materials, and the peoples who contributed to the project. The standard modern treatment is Margaret Cool Root, The King and Kingship in Achaemenid Art (1979), and the original excavation reports are Ernst Herzfeld and Erich Schmidt’s publications from the 1930s and after.

The founding by Darius I

The decision to found a new capital at Persepolis was taken by Darius I in the years following his accession to the throne in 522 BCE and the consolidation of the empire after the revolts of the early years of his reign. The site chosen was a vast terrace about 125,000 square metres in area, at the foot of the Kuh-e Rahmat (“Mountain of Mercy”), in the heart of the Persian homeland. The terrace had to be levelled and supported by massive retaining walls of cyclopean masonry; it was well watered and well protected, and it lay close to the older dynastic sanctuary of Pasargadae, the place where Cyrus the Great had been buried.

The first buildings of Persepolis, including the great hypostyle hall called the Apadana, were begun by Darius around 518 BCE. The Apadana, the great audience hall of the Achaemenid kings, was the centre of the complex, and its construction required a major engineering effort. The terrace had to be extended and levelled, the great column bases set in place, and the wooden roof beams brought from Lebanon, a long and difficult journey across the Mediterranean and the Syrian desert. The Apadana staircase, with its famous reliefs of tribute-bearing delegations from twenty-three subject peoples, was carved in the same period, and remains one of the great masterpieces of ancient art.

The building programme of Xerxes I

The building of Persepolis was continued by Xerxes I, who reigned from 486 to 465 BCE. Xerxes added several major buildings to the complex, including the Gate of All Nations, the Throne Hall, and the Harem of Xerxes. The Gate of All Nations, a square hall flanked by two massive stone bulls, was the formal entrance, and it was inscribed with an Achaemenid inscription now widely known: “A great god is Ahura Mazda, who created this earth, who created that heaven, who created man, who created happiness for man, who made Xerxes king, the great king, king of kings, king of the lands of many peoples, son of Darius the king.”

The Throne Hall, also built by Xerxes, was the largest of the Persepolis halls, measuring about 70 metres by 70 metres and supported by 100 columns on stone bases. The original columns were cedar wood, not stone; the older literature that calls them “100 stone columns” is misleading, though the surviving bases and fluted shafts are stone. The hall was used for imperial receptions and feasts, and it was decorated with reliefs of the king on his throne, fighting mythical beasts, and being attended by the court. The Harem of Xerxes, a smaller and more private building, was the residential palace. The rock-cut tomb of Xerxes, carved into the mountain behind the terrace, is one of the four great royal tombs of Persepolis.

The completion by Artaxerxes I

The building of Persepolis was completed by Artaxerxes I, the son and successor of Xerxes, who reigned from 465 to 424 BCE. Artaxerxes added the Treasury of Persepolis, a complex of rooms and halls at the southeastern corner of the terrace, used to store the tribute, the gifts, and the precious objects of the Achaemenid state. The Treasury was excavated by the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago in the 1930s, under Ernst Herzfeld and Erich Schmidt, and the finds included a large number of gold and silver vessels, jewellery, weapons, cuneiform tablets, and the collection of foundation tablets inscribed in Old Persian, Elamite, and Babylonian.

The completion of the Persepolis complex by Artaxerxes I, around 460 BCE, marked the end of a major phase of Achaemenid building. The complex as a whole — the Apadana, the Gate of All Nations, the Throne Hall, the Harem, the Treasury, the residential buildings, and the rock-cut tombs — was a complete ceremonial centre of a kind that no other ancient state could match. The site continued to be used for royal ceremonies, including the great New Year festival of Nowruz, throughout the rest of the Achaemenid period, and it was still in use when Alexander the Great arrived in 330 BCE.

The peoples who built it

The building of Persepolis required an enormous workforce, drawn from across the Achaemenid empire. The foundation tablets, inscribed in the three official languages, record the names of the peoples and the workforces that contributed. The principal peoples mentioned include the Persians and Medes of the Iranian heartland, the Babylonians and Assyrians of Mesopotamia, the Egyptians of the Nile Valley, the Lydians of western Anatolia, the Cappadocians and Cilicians of the Taurus region, the Sogdians and Bactrians of Central Asia, the Indians of the Indus Valley, the Arabians of the Syrian desert, and the Ethiopians of the upper Nile. The list is a cross-section of the Achaemenid empire, and it gives a vivid picture of the multi-ethnic character of the building project. (The Ionian Greeks of the Aegean coast are sometimes listed in the popular literature as a major workforce, but the standard tablet lists do not name them prominently; the principal Aegean and western Anatolian contribution came from the Lydians and Carians.)

The workforces were organised by the satraps of the respective regions, and they were supplied with provisions, tools, and materials by the imperial treasury. The cedar beams for the roof of the Apadana came from Lebanon. The stone for the columns and the bas-reliefs came from the quarries of Persis. The gold, silver, and precious stones for the decoration came from across the empire. The work was supervised by Persian, Median, Babylonian, and Egyptian architects and engineers, and the reliefs were carved by craftsmen from many different traditions.

The style

The architecture of Persepolis is a distinctive synthesis of earlier Near Eastern traditions. The hypostyle halls, the massive columns, the carved reliefs, and the bull capitals are all drawn from earlier Mesopotamian, Egyptian, and Median traditions, but they are combined in a way that is distinctively Achaemenid. The columns of the Apadana, with their fluted shafts, their double-headed animal capitals, and their lotus-leaf decoration, are a synthesis of Egyptian, Mesopotamian, and Persian elements. The reliefs of the Apadana staircase, with their processions of tribute-bearing delegations, are a synthesis of Egyptian and Mesopotamian traditions, but the careful ethnographic detail and the hierarchical composition are distinctively Achaemenid. The execution is unusually fine: the stone is finely cut, the reliefs are carefully composed, and the proportions of the halls and staircases are carefully calculated.

Reading

  • Root, Margaret Cool. The King and Kingship in Achaemenid Art (1979)
  • Schmidt, Erich F. Persepolis (3 vols., 1953–1970)
  • Boardman, John. The Persians (2000)
  • Curtis, John, and Nigel Tallis, eds. Forgotten Empire: The World of Ancient Persia (2005)
  • Briant, Pierre. From Cyrus to Alexander (2002), chapters 10–11