Royal bodyguards, relief at Darius palace, solar disc, sun

Royal bodyguards, relief at Darius palace, solar disc, sun disc symbols on their garments, located at the Pergamon Museum. Palaces at Susa and Persepolis, the residential cities of the Achaemenid kings, are note- worthy for their elaborate wall decoration which can be considered exemplary of art at the royal court. The walls of Darius's palace at Susa were embellished with colorful reliefs made of glazed bricks on the Babylonian model. It is not certain which room (or rooms) of the palace with its audience hall (apadana) was decorated with representations of a procession of royal bodyguards, dressed in their splendid costumes. (A reconstruction on reduced scale beside the doorway to the next gallery gives visitors an impression of how these figures were arranged in a long frieze.)