586 
RUINS OF PERSEPOLIS. 
filled with the arrow-headed inscriptions. Whatever may have 
finished the top of these walls, is so totally destroyed, that not a 
vestige remains, to give the least ground of judging whether a 
friezed cornice and flat roof connected the gate-way at its 
summits, or that they always stood as they do now, perfectly 
separated. The heads of the bulls are entirely gone, but enough 
is left of the animals to show distinctly what they are. In the 
one I have drawn, the cloven foot of a bull, with the strong 
outlines of his form, are very apparent; and the bold, powerful 
fixture of his station, is particularly striking and grand. The loss 
of his head deprived me of the only means of knowing whether 
he carried one or two horns ; but I have no doubt on the 
subject, every symbolical animal of the kind, that I have seen 
in Persian architecture, having only one horn. Round the necks 
of these bucolic sentinels are broad collars of roses, executed 
with the most critical nicety; and over the chest, back, and ribs, 
extends a kind of decoration resembling short curling hair, but 
cut with a correctness and delicacy of chiselling so peculiar to 
Persian sculptures of antiquity, that I have been elaborate, I 
may say to a hair, in delineating such distinguishing marks of 
the art and its epoch. The proportions of the animals are 
admirable ; and, although the manner of their execution be sec, 
yet there is a corresponding grandeur in their forms, which 
perfectly accords with the prodigious scale on which all around 
them is designed. 
The dimensions of the wall that forms one side of the portal, 
are as follows. Its breadth, facing the west, is five feet, and its 
length twenty-one; its height agrees exactly with what Niebuhr 
calculated, thirty feet. The proportion between it, and the 
Persian who stands with his back against its outer side, in 
