Besides edifices adapted for habitation, the Persepolitan platform sustained two other classes of buildings. These were propylaea, or gateways--places commanding the approach to great buildings, where a guard might be stationed to stop and examine all comers--and halls of a vast size, which were probably throne-rooms, where the monarch held his court on grand occasions, to exhibit himself in full state to his subjects. The propylaea upon the platform appear to have been four in number. One, the largest, was directly opposite the centre of the landing-place at the top of the great stairs which gave access to the platform from the plain. This consisted of a noble apartment, eighty-two feet square, with a roof supported by four magnificent columns, each between fifty and sixty feet high. The walls of the apartment were from sixteen to seventeen feet thick. Two grand portals, each twelve feet wide by thirty-six feet high, led into this apartment, one directly facing the head of the stairs, and the other opposite to it, towards the east. Both were flanked with colossal bulls, those towards the staircase being conventional representations of the real animal, while the opposite pair are almost exact reproductions of the winged and human-headed bulls, with which the Assyrian discoveries have made us so familiar. The accompanying illustration [PLATE XLVII., Fig. 1.], which is taken from a photograph, exhibits this inner pair in their present condition. The back of one of the other pair is also visible. Two of the pillars--which alone are still standings appear in their places, intervening between the front and the back gateway.
The walls which enclosed this chamber, notwithstanding their immense thickness, have almost entirely disappeared. On the southern side alone, where there seems to have been a third doorway, unornamented, are there any traces of them. We must conclude that they were either of burnt brick or of small blocks of stone, which the natives of the country in later times found it convenient to use as material for their own buildings.
An edifice, almost exactly similar to this, but of very inferior dimensions, occupied a position due east of the palace of Darius, and a little to the north of the main staircase leading to the terrace in front of the palace of Xerxes. The bases of two pillars and the jambs of three doorways remain, from which it is easy to reconstruct the main building. Its position seems to mark it as designed to give entrance to the structure, whatever it was, which occupied the site of the great mound (M on the Plan) east of Darius’s palace, and north of the palace of his son. The ornamentation, however, would rather connect it with the more eastern of the two great pillared halls, which will have to be described presently.