In Babylonia and Assyria, where the employment of such an ornamentation was common, the traces of it which remain are abundant.

Must not the entire absence of such traces from all exclusively Persian ruins be held to indicate that this mode of adorning edifices was not adopted in Persia?
If then we resign the notion of this remarkable building having been a walled structure, we must suppose that it was a summer throne-room, open to all the winds of heaven, except so far as it was protected by curtains.

For the use of these by the Persians in pillared edifices, we have important historical authority in the statement already quoted from the Book of Esther.

The Persian palace, to which that passage directly refers, contained a structure almost the exact counterpart of this at Persepolis; and it is probable that at both places the interstices between the outer pillars of, at any rate, the great central colonnade, were filled with "hangings of white and green and blue, fastened with cords of white and purple to silver rings," which were attached to the "pillars of marble;" and that by these means an undue supply of light and air, as well as an unseemly publicity, were prevented.

A traveller in the country well observes, in allusion to this passage from Esther: Nothing could be more appropriate than this method at Susa and Persepolis, the spring residences of the Persian monarchs.