Footnote 2 – Why Darius Built Persepolis

In the 1930s, Persepolis’s first excavator, the German archaeologist Ernst Herzfeld, uncovered remains of an Achaemenid palace 1,000 feet south of the platform. In 1952 the building was completely excavated by Ali Sami, who found inscriptions on column bases identifying the structure as a “palace of Xerxes the king.” Set in a large garden with an ornamental pool, this palace seems to have been one of the main residences of the Achaemenid kings during visits to Persepolis. Nearer the platform, Sami also uncovered the remains of a larger building with a four-columned central hall. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Akbar Tadjvidi excavated seven other architectural complexes in the south plain, as well as a portion of the citadel’s north-south enclosure wall, 330 feet west of the platform. The huge stone platform, we now know, was the core of a larger settlement that has only been partially excavated.