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Susa is the most famous Persian residence known by the Greek authors (see Aeschylus, The Persians narrating the defeat of Salamis in 480 BCE; see e.g. Aesch., Pers. 16, 534‐6, 730, 761). The palace of Darius differs from that of Persepolis in many respects, although the audience hall, called Apadana in a royal inscription, has obvious similarities with that of Persepolis. Susa is located in a vast plain crossed by several perennial rivers that allowed the early development of irrigation systems comparable to those of Mesopotamia. The plain and Susa itself suffered a significant population decline in the first half of the first millennium BCE after a flourishing period in the second millennium (Potts 2015: pp. 259–308). Permanent settlement in the plain during the Achaemenid period was relatively small, as it was in the Persepolis plain, and there was almost nothing around Susa itself between the Karkheh and Dez rivers. One hypothesis suggests that Darius, in deciding to install one of his residences in the old Elamite city, may have displaced the indigenous population that lived there and in the surrounding villages.

The limits Darius gave to Susa are defined by a massive mudbrick steep glacis, 18 m high, with no real defensive wall, enclosing 70 ha (Figure 15.5). Only one gate was found to the east, built of mudbrick. The inner space of the city is surprisingly empty apart from the royal quarter to the north. The whole empty space south of the palace was extensively explored by a long‐term French expedition, with no results for the Achaemenid period, despite huge works in the late nineteenth and first half of the twentieth century under M. Dieulafoy, J. de Morgan, R. de Mecquenem and R. Ghirshman. Much more precise research conducted by J. Perrot from 1969 to 1979 unearthed only flimsy remains.

Figure 15.5 Site map of Susa.

Source: Reproduced by permission of Remy Boucharlat and Danielle Perrot.

The palace is set on a 12 ha area (to be compared with the 12 ha of the Persepolis terrace) on the Apadana hill (Figure 15.6). Other buildings on the northwestern part of the “Royal City” hill (as the first French excavators coined it) also belong to the palace complex. To the southwest, the higher “Acropolis” hill was crowned by a poorly preserved Achaemenid period (?) mudbrick wall, 6–8 m thick, overlooking the palace.

Figure 15.6 Susa, Palace of Darius.

Source: Reproduced by permission of Remy Boucharlat and Danielle Perrot.

The palace is a compound of independent buildings (Ladiray 2013). Darius leveled the two hills to a constant 18 m above the plain (to be compared with the Persepolis retaining wall which was 12–14 m high). To extend the surface of the Apadana tell, the earth dug from the summit was moved to the slopes, creating a terrace. Walls and columns are set on a 10 m deep foundation made of gravel. The mudbrick walls rest on two courses of baked bricks. Stone is much less used than in Persepolis, for the mountains are 50 km away and most of the architecture belongs to the Mesopotamian tradition. Worked stone is restricted to bases, shafts, and capitals of columns. The stone bas‐reliefs are not used in Darius' palace; the walls of the courtyards of the residence made extensive use of siliceous glazed brick panels, now in the Louvre Museum. Many of them depict a file of guards, others show lions, griffins, and antithetical sphinxes. The colors include brown, light green, yellow, white, sometimes cobalt blue, usually with gray‐black outlines.

Inside the royal city the visitor first arrives at a building forming a monumental gate, called Propylaeum. It consists of two oblong contiguous rooms opening on two opposed porticoes with two square bases of columns. They bear an inscription in the name of Xerxes (XSa). The royal way then crosses the 14 m deep valley which separates the Ville Royale from the Apadana mound by a causeway bridge made of mudbrick boxes filled with earth. Here, the visitor is in front of the Gate of Darius.

The gate is a monumental building, 40 × 30 m, with a tetrastyle hall, like that of the All Countries Gate in Persepolis; it stands isolated from any other structure as in Persepolis. It is the symbolic passage between the outside and the inside of the palace. The gate is flanked by side rooms and stairwells leading to the roof. The square column bases bear an inscription in the name of Darius made by Xerxes (XSd). The passageway toward the palace was very likely flanked by two statues, of which only one was found in place. Apart from some fragments of at least two other statues previously found, this is the sole example of a human sculpture in the round so far known in the Achaemenid period. Originally, the statue was placed in Egypt, along the canal dug out by Darius (Yoyotte 2013: pp. 241–279). Later Xerxes brought it to Susa and placed the statue at the Gate that his father had left unfinished (Figure 94.8; cf. Chapter 94 Statuary and Relief).

The poorly preserved Apadana hall is very similar to the great hypostyle hall at Persepolis. A few column bases are not in place but their location is visible thanks to the stone foundation. The walls are marked only by the layout of the foundation trenches. Bull protomae of capitals also show the similarity with Persepolis. The column bases in the north part of the hall bore an inscription in situ of Artaxerxes II, who claims to have repaired this “Apadana” built by Darius and burned during the reign of his grandfather, Artaxerxes I. This is the only case in Achaemenid architecture where the term Apadana is directly associated with an existing building. The porticoes on three sides go out onto open space, while the fourth side consists of a series of rooms and especially a perpendicular passage leading to the residence, as in Persepolis.

To the south, Darius' residence occupies 4 ha, built on a totally non‐Persian plan but following Mesopotamian and Elamite traditions (Figure 15.6). The general scheme is organized around three main courtyards plus a small one (five courtyards in Nebuchadnezzar's palace in Babylon) that give light to the rooms and facilitate the circulation, as in the Mesopotamian palaces. The residence was entirely made of mudbrick on two courses of baked brick. The huge blocks in which are set the bronze doors' sockets are the only stone elements, often made of discarded column drums.

The reconstruction of the different parts and their function (Ladiray 2013: pp. 200–203; Perrot 2013: pp. 229–236) emphasizes increasingly controlled access from the eastern outer entrance toward the king's apartment opening on the western courtyard. The plan of the apartment with two parallel oblong rooms is a replica of the throne room in the Neo‐Assyrian palace at Nineveh, and later in Babylon. In Susa, at the rear side the king's bedroom is added. At both sides of the entrance to that small room were buried the famous foundation tablets, square stone slabs of 33 cm a side, inscribed on all six sides, one in Elamite (DSz) and the other in Babylonian (DSaa). The two texts differ from each other. Darius symbolically describes the contribution of all peoples of the empire to provide rough materials, to carry them from their origin to Susa, and to build the palace. Copies of these texts, the originals of which were not visible, and the fragments of the Old Persian version were found in stone and bricks in several areas of Susa (Vallat 2013: pp. 281–293). The other royal inscriptions mainly belong to Darius and Xerxes.

The other kings who left several inscriptions are Darius II and above all Artaxerxes II in the first half of the fifth century. Not only did he rebuild, or repair, the Apadana hall but he erected a new palace on the other bank of the Shaur river that extends over 4 ha. The main part is a columned hall of six rows of six stone column bases, with painted wooden shafts. In that hall were found the only so far known wall paintings depicting half‐size human figures. Amongst the pigments used, to be noted is the cinnabar for red. A few stone slabs showing small‐size servants similar to those carved on the reliefs of different buildings at Persepolis were found in that palace as well as at the southern tip of the Ville Royale (Boucharlat 2013: pp. 371–395).