702 
ARCHITECTURE OF PERSIA. 
have existed in very early days; man gradually assimilating the 
places of his worship to the progressive stages of his own abode; 
from the open plain to the covert of trees, to the tent and taber¬ 
nacle, to the house of stone, and the temple of God. We have 
seen sufficient in the architectural remains of ancient Persia, 
to discern some distant resemblances between the style and 
taste of their structures, with those of Egypt, India, and Judea; 
but we have to lament, that the utter demolition of all outline 
of building, or fragment of ornament, on the heaps of Nineveh 
and Babylon, totally deprives us, not only of the foundation- 
stone of architecture, but of those after-links which would 
have formed a perfect chain in the history of the art, from the 
building of Babel to the temples of the East, and thence onward 
to those of Greece and Rome. 
Some writers attribute the first introduction of the semicir¬ 
cular arch into the architecture of Persia by Zoroaster; but it 
certainly is not to be found in any of the apparently most 
ancient edifices, if I except the two stone altars at Nakshi- 
Roustam. Neither does it occur in any of the colossal struc¬ 
tures of Upper Egypt; the roofs of the buildings, and the 
lintels of the doors, being all perfectly straight. Plence, if the 
information respecting the adoption of the arch by the Magian 
sage be correct, the absence of it in all these Persepolitan buildings 
must prove their greater antiquity. But I do not think that the 
semicircle was used in Persian edifices, till after the Macedonian 
invasion ; it then gradually gained ground, till the accession of 
the Sassanian dynasty spread it out into domes for palaces and 
temples. The conquest of the Arabs changed its form again, 
and run it up into all the pyramidal undulations of the Saracenic 
arch. Then appeared arcades, like avenues of trees cut in 
