Palace of Darius at Susa: Achaemenid Royal Residence

The Palace of Darius at Susa was a great royal residence built by the Persian king Darius I from around 521 BC in Susa, in what is now south-western Iran. It combined a vast columned audience hall with a residential palace arranged around courtyards. It is famous for its colourful glazed-brick friezes, including the Frieze of Archers, and for an inscription in which Darius lists the materials and workers brought from every corner of his empire.

Background: Susa before Darius

Susa was one of the oldest cities in the world, inhabited from about 4200 BC. For centuries it was a capital of the kingdom of Elam, until the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal sacked it around 647 BC, as told in Assyrian Sack of Susa. The city later recovered and came under Persian rule in the time of Cyrus the Great.

Darius I took power in 522 BC after a violent crisis, described in Darius I Seizes the Persian Throne. Soon afterwards he chose Susa as a main administrative centre. It lay in the lowlands between Mesopotamia and the Iranian plateau, and was later linked to Sardis in Anatolia by the Royal Road of Persia.

The palace

Darius’s builders raised a huge artificial terrace on the northern part of the ancient city, now called the Apadana mound. On it they built two main parts.

The apadana, or audience hall, was a square hall with 36 columns in six rows of six, surrounded by porticoes on three sides. The columns stood about 20 metres high and were topped with capitals in the form of the front halves of two bulls, back to back, which supported the roof beams.

South of the hall lay the residential palace, a large complex of rooms arranged around three courtyards. Its plan followed Babylonian traditions more than Persian ones. A monumental gate to the east, the Gate of Darius, gave access to the palace area. In 1972 a statue of Darius made in Egypt was found at this gate; it is now in the National Museum of Iran in Tehran.

The glazed-brick friezes

The walls of the palace courtyards were decorated with panels of glazed brick. The technique came from Babylon, where it was used on the Ishtar Gate, but at Susa the bricks were made from a siliceous (sand-based) material rather than ordinary clay.

The best-known panels show rows of soldiers in long patterned robes, carrying spears, bows and quivers. They are often linked with the royal guard described by Herodotus, sometimes called the Immortals, though this identification cannot be proved. Other panels show lions, winged bulls and griffins. Many panels were taken to Paris after the French excavations and are displayed in the Louvre.

The foundation charter

Darius left several inscriptions at Susa, including a text known as DSf, often called the foundation charter. Copies were found in Old Persian, Elamite and Babylonian.

In it, Darius describes how the ground was dug down to bedrock and filled with gravel and mud brick. He then lists where each material came from: cedar timber from Lebanon, other timber from Gandhara and Carmania, gold from Sardis and Bactria, lapis lazuli and carnelian from Sogdiana, turquoise from Chorasmia, silver and ebony from Egypt, and ivory from Kush, India and Arachosia.

He also names the workers: Ionians and Lydians as stonecutters, Medes and Egyptians as goldsmiths, Babylonians as brick makers, and Lydians and Egyptians as woodworkers. The text presents the palace as a product of the whole empire, under the protection of the god Ahuramazda.

Later history

Susa remained a major royal city. According to a later inscription of Artaxerxes II (r. 405-359 BC), the apadana burned in the reign of his grandfather Artaxerxes I and was rebuilt by Artaxerxes II. The Book of Esther is set at the Persian court in “Shushan”, the biblical name for Susa.

Alexander the Great took Susa without a fight in 331 BC and held a famous mass wedding there in 324 BC, when he and many of his officers married Persian noblewomen. The palace later fell into ruin.

Marcel and Jane Dieulafoy excavated the palace in 1884-1886 and sent the friezes to the Louvre. Jacques de Morgan led larger French excavations at Susa from 1897. From 1969 to 1979 Jean Perrot directed a new study of the palace, which clarified its plan. Susa was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2015.

Timeline

• c. 4200 BC: First settlement at Susa.
• c. 647 BC: Ashurbanipal of Assyria sacks Susa.
• 522 BC: Darius I becomes king of Persia.
• c. 521 BC: Building of the palace begins.
• c. 510 BC: Glazed-brick friezes, including the Frieze of Archers, are made.
• 405-359 BC: Artaxerxes II rebuilds the burned apadana.
• 331 BC: Alexander the Great takes Susa.
• 1884-1886: Marcel and Jane Dieulafoy excavate the palace.
• 2015: Susa becomes a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Why it matters

The Palace of Darius at Susa shows how the Persian kings used architecture to display the reach of their empire. Its foundation charter is a rare record of how materials and workers from three continents were brought together for one project. Its glazed-brick archers remain one of the most recognisable images of ancient Persia.