ARCHITECTURE OF ANCIENT PERSIA: SYNCRETISM OF THE ARCHETYPES OF THE OIKOUMENE

Abstract

The architecture of ancient Persia was an important component ecumenical development of culture and architecture of the ancient editerranean. Syncretism is confirmed in the forms of the order system and the porticos of Persia and Greco-Roman ancient architecture in the courtyards of Persian palaces and Roman court exedra in the form of a cross-domed temple of Persian Zoroastrianism and Byzantine Christianity. In the Achaemenid period of the history of ancient Persia, in the 6th century. B.C. in the Persian-occupied Anatolia and the Ionian Greeks took place an important event in ancient architecture - the birth of the order and the original architectural style. There is no reason to claim that the Persian marble column is a prototype of Greek Ionic marble or vice versa: they appeared synchronously and had common features (column with a developed base, flutes, with paired symmetrical sub-beam volutes) and methods of their monumental facade use (order portico). The archetype of the columned hall in the case of the Persian apadana, in solving its internal space, has certain features in comparison with ecumenical analogues – hypostyle halls of Egypt or Roman basilicas. The space of apadana, evenly marked by rows of slender columns of a unified order, had no difference in width or height nave, had neither deep nor centripetal spatial development. During the Sassanid dynasty in the 6th century. in the border provinces, which were the scene of the struggle between Rome- Byzantium and Sassanid Persia, the formation of the cross-domed system took place – parallel in the cross-domed Zoroastrian temples and Christian Roman-Byzantine. At the Persian University in Gondishapur, where an international team of scientists gathers, in the construction (involving Roman prisoners of war) of the Persian capital Bishapur the formula of ideal (centric, axial) architecture was realized. Zoroastrian temples of the Sassanid era receive a symmetrical shape, cross composition, centricity, trinity, that is, those archetypal themes that are characteristic of the traditions of sacred architecture of the Mediterranean ecumenism, in particular ancient Rome. The shape of the Persian courtyard is a variation of the Roman biaxial cross planning composition found in the architecture of Rome in the city plans, in the courtyards-perestilya with exedra, in the layout of the imperial baths). These examples show that the experience of ancient Persian architecture is not only the original oriental style, but is a variation of the Mediterranean ecumenical stylistic development.