ECBATANA
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ECBATANA
flow forth abundantlj'. And within the var, or for- tress, he erected a loft}' palace, encompassed with walls, and laid it out in many separate divisions, and there was no place, either in front or rear, to command and overawe the fortress." Herodotus, who ascribes the foundation of the city to his king Deioces, says : "The Medes were obedient to Deioces, and built the city now called Agbatana, the walls of which are of great size and strength, rising in circles one within the other. The plan of the jjlace is that each of the walls should out-top the one beyond it V)y the battle- ments. The nature of the ground, which is a gentle liill, favors this arrangement in some degree, but it was mainly effected by art. The number of the circles is seven, the royal palace and the treasuries standing within the last. The circuit of the outer wall is near- ly the same with that of Athens. Of this outer wall the battlements are white, of the next black, of the third scarlet, of the fourth blue, of the fifth orange: all these are colored with paint. The last two have their battlements coated respectively with silver and gold. All these fortifications Deioces caused to be raised for himself and his own palace. The people were required to build their dwellings outside the circuit of the walls" (Ilerod. i, 98, 99). Finally, the book of Judith, probal>l_v the work of an Alexandrian Jew, professes to give a number of details, which appear to be drawn chiefly from the imagination of the writer (Jud. i, 2-4).
Tlie peculiar feature of the site of Takht i-Suleiman, which it is proposed to identify with the northern Ecbatana, is a conical hill rising to the height of about 150 feet above the plain, and cov- ered both on its top and sides with mas- sive ruins of the most antique and prim- itive character. A perfect enceinte, formed of large blocks of squared stone, ma}' be traced round the entire hill along its brow ; within there is an oval inclosure, about 800 yards in its great- est and 400 in its least diameter, strewn with ruins, which cluster round a re- markable lake. This is an irregular ba- sin, about 300 paces in circuit, fillod with water exqui- sitely clear and pleasant to the taste, which is supplied in some iinkno\vn way from l)elow, and which stands uniformly at the same level, whatever the quantity tak- en from it for irrigating the lands which lie at the foot of the hill. This hill itself is not perfectly isolated, though it appears so to those who approach it by the ordinary route. On three sides — the south, the west, and the north — the acclivity is steep, and the height above the plain uniform ; but on the east it abuts upon a hilly tract of ground, and here it is but slightly ele- vated above the adjoining country. It cannot, there- fore, have ever answered exactly to the description of Herodotus, as the eastern side could not anyhow admit of seven walls of circuuivallation. It is douVit- ed whether even the other sides were thus defended. Although the flanks on these sides are covered with ruins, "no traces remain of any vail but the upper one" (.Is. Jour, x, 52). Still, as the nature of the ground on three sides would allow this style of de- fence, and as the account in Herodotus is confirmed by the Armenian historian, writing clearly without knowledge of the earlier author, it seems best to sup- pose that in the peaceful times of the Persian empire it was thought sufficient to preserve the upper enceinte, while the others were allowed to fall into decay, and ultimately were superseded by domestic buildings. With regard to the coloring of the walls, or, rather, of the battlements, wliich has been considered to mark especially the fabulous character of Herodotus's de- scription, recent discoveries show that such a mode of
ornamentation was actually in use at the period in question in a neighboring country. The temple of the Seven Spheres at Borsippa was adorned almost exactly in the manner which Herodotus assigns to the Median capital (see Babel, TowEI^ of) ; and it does not seem at all improbable that, with the object of placing the city under the protection of the seven jdan- ets, the seven walls may have been colored nearly as described. Herodotus has a little deranged the order of the hues, which should have been either black, or- ange, scarlet, gold, white, blue, silver — as at the Bor- sippa temple — or black, white, orange, blue, scarlet, silver, gold — if the order of the days dedicated to the planets were followed. Even the use of silver and gold in external ornamentation — which seems at first sight highly improbable — is found to have prevail- ed. Silver roofs were met with by the Greeks at the southern Ecbatana (Polybius, x, 27, 10-12) ; and there is reason to believe that at Borsippa the gold and silver stages of the temple were actually coat- ed with those metals. (See Rawlinson, Herodotus, i, 185.)
Plan of Ecbatana. 1. Remains of a Fire-Temple; 2. Ruined Mosque; 3. Ancient buildings with shafts and capitals; 4. Kiiins of the I'alace of Abakai Khan; 5. Cemetery; 0. ];idgre of Rock called "the Dragon;" 7. Hill called "Tawilah," or "the Stable;" 8. Ruins of Kali.siah; 9. Rocky hill of Zindani-Sukiman.