Persia, a Museum of Materials · Hall 6 · Grey Stone

Climb the Apadana stairs

Around 500 BC, sculptors at Persepolis carved a procession into the grey stone of the Apadana’s east stairs: 23 delegations from across the Persian Empire, each led by the hand by a court official, bringing gifts to the king. Climb the wall row by row and meet them.

1Nubians

Drag to walk along the wall

…

Bottom row · stop 1 of 25

Sun on 21 March

The southern wall · Three rows, stepped like the stairs. The procession walks right, towards the king.

Bottom row · stop 1 of 25

Nubians

Old Persian · Kūšiya

Came from: Kush, on the Nile in today’s Sudan
Gifts: An elephant tusk, an okapi and a small bowl with a lid
To Persepolis: about 2,500 km as the crow flies

Kush was the south-western edge of the empire named on the foundation plates. The long-necked animal is usually identified as an okapi.

Object: Relief of the Apadana east stairs
Place: Persepolis, Fars, Iran
Date: Around 500 BC
Stone: Grey limestone
Today: In place; UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1979

Try this

Start at the bottom left with the Nubians and press Climb. The path zigzags up the wall like a staircase and ends with the king.
Press Whole wall to step back and see all three rows, then tap any group to walk up to it.
Slide the sun. The east stairs catch the morning light; late in the morning it skims the stone and every carved line stands out. By about 11:20 the sun has passed the wall and it falls into shade.

The wall on this page is drawn with code in the style of the original, and each group is shortened to a few people. Names, gifts and the order of the groups follow Jona Lendering’s survey at Livius.org; scholars disagree on several identifications. On the real wall the last five groups (Thracians, Arabs, Carians, Libyans, Nubians) are squeezed into a sloping strip beside an inscription; here they stand in level rows. The light follows the sun over Persepolis at the spring equinox, in solar time, for a wall facing about 20° north of east, as the whole terrace does; the hills to the east, which delay the first sun, are left out.

Seventy-two columns

The stairs lead up to the Apadana, the great audience hall that Darius I began and his son Xerxes finished. Seventy-two stone columns held up its roof: 36 in the square hall and the rest in three porches. Estimates of their height run from about 19.5 to 24 metres. Thirteen still stood a century ago; a fourteenth was raised again in the 1970s.

Gold under the corners

In 1933, archaeologists found two gold and two silver plates buried in the Apadana’s foundations, all carrying the same text by Darius in three languages. It says his kingdom reached “from the Sacae who are beyond Sogdia to Kush, and from Sind to Sardis”. The groups on the stairs come from those same edges.

Paid in grain and wine

Tens of thousands of clay tablets found in the fortification wall of Persepolis record the rations paid to workers, men and women from many lands. Women who had just given birth received extra, and the tablets give the mother of a boy twice as much as the mother of a girl. How free these workers were is debated; some were probably deportees.

The 23 delegations, stop by stop

In the order of the climb. Tap one to see it on the wall.

Bottom row

Came from: Kush, on the Nile in today’s Sudan. Gifts: An elephant tusk, an okapi and a small bowl with a lid.
Came from: Libya, west of Egypt. Gifts: An antelope or wild goat (perhaps an oryx) and a chariot.
A lion leaps on a bull: an Iranian motif thousands of years older than Persepolis, carved four times on these stairs. What it meant is debated: eternity, royal power, or the turn of the seasons at the spring equinox.
Came from: The Indus valley, in today’s Pakistan. Gifts: Bags of gold dust, axes and a donkey (Livius sees a buffalo).
Came from: Arachosia, around Kandahar in southern Afghanistan. Gifts: A camel, two deep bowls and two shallow bowls.
Came from: Ionia, on the Aegean coast of Turkey. Gifts: Two ribbed metal cups, two pairs of shallow bowls, two sets of folded cloth and two pairs of cones, perhaps hanks of wool.
Came from: Cappadocia, in central Turkey. Gifts: A bridled stallion, an overcoat, a coat and trousers.
Came from: Lydia, around Sardis in western Turkey. Gifts: Two metal cups, two bowls, two metal rings with griffin heads and a chariot with two stallions.

Middle row

Came from: The Armenian highlands, in today’s Armenia and eastern Turkey. Gifts: A bridled stallion and a metal vessel with griffin handles.
Came from: Babylonia, in southern Iraq. Gifts: Shallow bowls, a garment with a netted, tasselled border and a humped bull.
Came from: Syria and the eastern Mediterranean coast. Gifts: Two pairs of bowls, a copper bar shaped like an animal skin, two rams and a garment.
Came from: The steppes of Central Asia, around today’s Uzbekistan. Gifts: A horse with a little bell, two decorated rings, an overcoat, a coat and trousers.
Came from: Gandhara, the Peshawar valley in northern Pakistan. Gifts: A humped bull, five lances and a shield.
Came from: Sogdia, around Samarkand in Uzbekistan. Gifts: A short sword, a pair of oblong rings, a pair of battle axes and a bridled stallion.
Came from: The desert of northern Arabia. Gifts: A garment with tassels and a dromedary.
Came from: Caria, in south-western Turkey. Gifts: A round shield, a spear and a bull.

Top row

Came from: Thrace, in today’s Bulgaria and north-eastern Greece. Gifts: Two pairs of spears, two round shields and a stallion.
Came from: Probably the area around Yazd, in central Iran. Gifts: Garments and a bridled stallion.
Came from: Bactria, around Balkh in northern Afghanistan. Gifts: A two-humped camel with a bell, two deep bowls and two shallow bowls.
Came from: Egypt. Gifts: Lost: only traces of a hippopotamus remain.
Came from: Aria, around Herat in western Afghanistan. Gifts: Two bowls and a two-humped camel.
Came from: Parthia, in north-eastern Iran and southern Turkmenistan. Gifts: Two bowls and a two-humped camel.
Came from: Elam, around Susa in south-western Iran. Gifts: Two bows decorated with ducks’ heads, two daggers, a lioness and two cubs.
Came from: Media, around Hamadan in western Iran. Gifts: A pitcher, bowls, a short sword, rings, a cloak, a coat and trousers.
The climb ends here. The centre of the stairs once showed the king on his throne, probably Darius I, with the crown prince behind him, receiving an official. It was later replaced by a panel of guards; archaeologists found the original in the Treasury in the 1930s.

Episode 6 of 12

Still alive today

Every time someone says Farsi, Fars or Persia, they are echoing Pārsa: the name this land and this city had in Old Persian.

Questions people ask

Does the relief show Nowruz?

It is a popular idea, but nothing on the stairs says so. The relief shows gift-bearers arriving for a royal audience. Some scholars link it to a new-year festival; others think it shows no single event but the empire as a whole.

Were the gift-bearers prisoners?

They are not shown that way. No one is bound, and each group is led by a court official, often hand in hand. Assyrian and Egyptian reliefs often showed subject peoples as captives. The stairs are still royal art: an ideal picture of a willing empire.

Who carved it?

We do not know their names. Building records from Susa and tablets from Persepolis mention craftsmen from many lands, among them Ionians, Lydians and Egyptians.

Why is the carving so crisp?

After Persepolis burned in 330 BC, the east stairs lay buried under rubble for centuries and were uncovered only in the 1930s, so the weather that wore down other walls spared them.

Where does the name Takht-e Jamshid come from?

Its Persian name means the Throne of Jamshid, after a legendary king of the Shahnameh. Persepolis, “city of the Persians”, is its Greek name; in Old Persian it was Pārsa.

How many peoples are shown?

Twenty-three delegations, as most scholars count them. Some groups look alike, so experts still disagree about a few of the names.

Continue your visit

Next, through the dig…

In 330 BC, Alexander of Macedon reaches Persepolis and stays the winter; in the spring, before he leaves, the palaces are burning.
Passage · Ash · 330 BC
Within a century of the fire, horsemen from the north-east found a new kingdom, the Parthians, famous for turning in the saddle to shoot behind them; that layer is still being excavated.
Hall 7 · Silver · The Parthians · in a coming update
In the next layer, still under the tarp, a Persian named Ardashir, who as a young man in an old tale outplays the Parthian princes at polo and chess, defeats their king in AD 224 and founds an empire that will last four centuries.
Hall 8 · Carved Stucco · The Sasanians · in a coming update
Climb past the tarp: by the next episode the Sasanian empire has fallen, paper has come west through Samarkand, and a scholar is climbing a hill in the Punjab to measure the whole Earth from one hilltop and one angle, but how?
Hall 9 · Paper & Ink · The Age of Scholars →

Next hallHall 7 · Silver · The ParthiansIn a coming update

Next openHall 9 · Paper & Ink · Measure the Earth like al-BiruniEnter the hall →EarlierHall 5 · Gold & Road · Race the messageEnter the hall →The museumThe entrance · all twelve halls, oldest firstBack to the entrance →

Sources: Jona Lendering, “Persepolis, Apadana, East Stairs” and “Persepolis, Apadana”, Livius.org; Wikipedia, “Apadana”; Encyclopaedia Iranica, “Persepolis” (A. Sh. Shahbazi) and “Women i. In the Achaemenid period”; UNESCO World Heritage List, “Persepolis” (1979).

Map: Natural Earth (public domain). Relief: a reconstruction drawn with code by Bridge Labs.