The inscriptions upon it declare it to be the work of Xerxes.

[PLATE XLIV.] The western staircase was composed merely of two single flights, facing one another, with a narrow landing-place between them.

It was ornamented like the eastern, but somewhat less elaborately.
[Illustration: PLATE XLIV.] A staircase, very similar to this last, but still one with certain peculiarities, was built by Artaxerxes Ochus, at the west side of the Palace of Darius, in order to give it a second entrance.

[PLATE XLV., Fig.

1.] There the spandrels have the usual figures of the lion and bull; but the intermediate space is somewhat unusually arranged.