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The Shushan palace is mentioned in three books of the Bible.

“The words of Nehemiah the son of Hachaliah. And it came to pass in the month Chisleu, in the twentieth year, as I was in Shushan the palace” (Ne. 1:1).

“That in those days, when the king Ahasuerus sat on the throne of his kingdom, which was in Shushan the palace” (Es. 1:2).

“And I saw in a vision; and it came to pass, when I saw, that I was at Shushan in the palace, which is in the province of Elam; and I saw in a vision, and I was by the river of Ulai” (Da. 8:2).

Nehemiah and Esther lived in this palace.

It was a winter and spring palace, as the summers there were fiercely hot. In the spring, the rain-watered land around Shushan was covered with beautiful flowers.

The Shushan palace of Esther’s day began to be built by Darius I and was completed by Xerxes. A Darius tablet at the Louvre says, “This palace which I built at Susa...” The Bible describes it as a glorious place with pillars of marble, beds of gold and silver, and pavements of red, blue, white, and black marble (Es. 1:6).

The palace at Shushan measured 820 x 490 feet and spread out across three steep hills. Its grand throne room and audience hall had 72 majestic columns 60 feet high and was surrounded on three sides by porticoes with columns topped with huge double-bull capitals on which the cedar beams of the roof rested. These columns sat on bell-shaped bases. “Four monumental staircases, elaborately decorated, provided entrance to the site” (Clyde Fant and Mitchell Redding, Lost Treasures of the Bible, p. 271).

Darius’s tablet describing the palace was discovered by French archaeologists in the 20th century mentions many things that are described in Esther 1:6, “Where were white, green, and blue, hangings, fastened with cords of fine linen and purple to silver rings and pillars of marble: the beds were of gold and silver, upon a pavement of red, and blue, and white, and black marble.”

The Darius record mentions red and blue stone, silver, and the stone pillars.

“The stone - lapis lazuli and carnelian - which was utilized here, this from Sogdiana was brought. The stone – turquois[e] - this from Choras - was brought, which was utilized here. The silver and the copper from Egypt were brought. The ornamentation with which the wall was adorned, that from Ionia was brought. The ivory which was utilized here, from Ethiopia and from Sind and from Arachosia was brought. The stone pillars which here were utilized - a place named Abiradus, in Uja from there were brought. The artisans who wrought the stone, they were Ionians and Sardians.”

Bill Cooper observes,

“Lapis lazuli and turquoise are blue in colour, and carnelian is red, and both these colours, blue and red, appear specifically in the Book of Esther’s (1:6) description of the multi-coloured floor or pavement of the Palace. The floor was not just of black and white marble, which would have been impressive enough, but of lapis lazuli, turquoise and carnelian inlay too, just as the Book of Esther tells us--luxury indeed! ... Darius, in lines 45-47 of his inscription, calls them merely stone (stuna) pillars, without specifying of what kind of stone they were made. The Book of Esther, however, is specific. They were made of marble. Were they? According to Pillet, the French archaeologist who excavated them, yes, they were. He calls them “colonnes de marbre.”4 Silver (ardatam) is also listed by Darius, and we note the appearance of silver in the materials described in the Book of Esther. All of this positively shouts authenticity for the seemingly inconsequential details provided in the Book of Esther, with not one detail being challenged either by the Persians’ own description of the materials used in the Palace’s construction and decoration, or by the archaeology which has been conducted at the site for the past 150 years or more.” (The Authenticity of the Book of Esther, 2013).

The palace was decorated with panels of beautiful glazed brick featuring reliefs of soldiers and animals and people from all parts of the Persian Empire. Some of these are in the British Museum (Room 52). Others are in the Susa Room at the Louvre in Paris. These are also mentioned in the Darius tablet as follows: “The ornamentation with which the wall was adorned, that from Ionia was brought.”

“The gigantic timbered ceilings, the gateways and portals with their golden fittings, the sumptuous curtains, tiles, wall-paintings, coloured pillars, capitals and reliefs, as well as the luxurious contents, must have dazzled the ancient visitor” (Josef Wiesehofer, Ancient Persia, p. 23).

Darius brought materials and skilled workers from all parts of his empire to build the palace. He described the construction as follows:

“This palace which I built at Susa, from afar its ornamentation was brought. Downward the earth was dug, until I reached rock in the earth. When the excavation had been made, the rubble was packed down, some 40 cubits in depth, another part 20 cubits in depth. On that rubble the palace was constructed” Wiesehofer, Ancient Persia, p. 27).

A Greek philosopher/historian described the palace at Susa and the Persian king’s far-flung empire as follows:

“[Xerxes] sat on the throne in Susa or Ecbatana, invisible to all, in a wonderful royal castle and palace domain sparkling with gold, electrum and ivory; many successive gateways and entrance halls, separated by a distance of many stades [one stade was about 600 feet], were secured by brazen doors and mighty walls. And outside there stood, decked out and ready, the first and most distinguished men, some destined to serve the king himself as bodyguard and attendants, some as guardians of the different courts, so-called door keepers and listeners, so that the king himself, who was addressed as sovereign and god, might see everything and hear everything. Apart from these, others were posted as administrators of revenues, as generals in wars and in hunting expeditions, as receivers of gifts, and as providers of other services required from time to time. The entire empire of Asia, however bordered as it was by the Hellespont on its west and by the Indus on its east, had been divided up into peoples by generals, satraps, and princes, dependents of the great king, who were in their turn obeyed by day couriers, scouts, messengers, and observers of fire signals” (Wiesehofer, Ancient Persia, p. 34).

“Suppliants approaching the royal chamber would climb a series of stairs past stunning gold reliefs of the king’s guard and a larger-than-life statue of the first Darius himself. Tribute from the whole empire was built into the palace as a reminder of the awesome power of the king--cedar wood from Lebanon, ivory from India, walls decorated by Egyptians, stone shaped by Greek workers from the Aegean coast. Inside the hall was an explosion of color, with golden images of sphinxes and lions, while the capitals of the columns were carved like the heads of gigantic bulls. Across the river next to the vast complex stood the smaller palace of the Great King Artaxerxes II, built in the time of Alexander’s grandfather. This Persian king constructed a less imposing but still opulent structure as a retreat from the endless demands of the royal court. An inscription there prayed that the gods would grant him and his palace protection from all evil” (Philip Freeman, Alexander the Great, p. 194).

The Persian palaces were surrounded by beautiful parks called “paradise” (pairidaeza in Persian and paradeisos in Greek). These massive gardens were a combination park and zoo. In this, the Persian kings followed the example of the Assyrians and Babylonians. The Assyrian king Assurnasirpal II describes the irrigated gardens at his palace in Calah (Nimrud):

“I dug out a canal from the Upper Zab, cutting through a mountain at its peak, and called it the Patti-hegalli (Canal of Abundance). I irrigated the meadows of the Tigris and planted orchards with all kinds of fruit trees in its environs. ... The canal cascades from above into the gardens. Fragrance pervades the walkways. Streams of water as numerous as the stars of heaven flow in the pleasure garden. Pomegranates which are bedecked with clusters like grape vines. ... I, Assurnasirpal, in the delightful garden pick fruit like a squirrel” (Joan and David Oates, Nimrud: An Assyrian Imperial City Revealed, p. 33).

At Cyrus’s gardens in Pasargadae, water flowed through “a network of some 3,600 feet of stone conduits into handsome square basins, hewed from a single block of dressed stone.” The water running beside the paths “kept the garden moist and added a glittering, fluid element” (Persians: Masters of Empire, Time-Life, 1995, pp. 62, 66).

Everything archaeology has found from the ruins of the palace at Shushan fits the biblical account of Esther:

“The 90 years of French work rescued many exquisite pieces of pottery and statuary, that are now in the Louvre Museum in Paris, but also produced a detailed plan of the palace, which confirms and supplements the original descriptions in the Book of Esther. We can see the King’s Gate through which Haman had to come to the palace from his residence in the city; the queen’s garden where the king ran to contemplate what to do with Haman; and the public inner court through which Esther would have had to pass to approach the king on his inner throne. ... The entry to the palace grounds was by an elaborate roofed gatehouse to the east, facing the residential area of the city, where Haman lived. When Esther wanted to approach the king, she had to pass through the public inner court on her way from the harem or the royal apartments to the king sitting on the inner throne, and so she could have been seen in the inner court. After her drinking party with the king and Haman in the harem area, the king could easily rush into her garden, which was planted alongside the harem. As for the king’s garden, that was a large open area outside the palace, between the gatehouse and the public outer court, and thus ideal for the lengthy feast the king was providing for his courtiers and officials. All this is clear from the French plans of the palace. The Book of Esther is a wonderful story of the triumph of good over evil, as exemplified by the beautiful Queen Esther and the wicked minister Haman, but it is no fairy tale. Its descriptions are founded in facts on the ground, as discovered by the French archaeologists of the 19th and 20th centuries, and still visible today in the remains of their excavations in the city of Shush in central Persia, now known as Iran” (Stephen G. Rosenberg, “In the Palace of Shushan,” The Jerusalem Post, Mar. 4, 2015; Rosenberg is a Senior Fellow at the W.F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research in Jerusalem).

“The French archeologist Jean Perrot was the world’s foremost authority on the ancient palace at Shushan. Perrot served as director of the French archaeological mission to Susa and worked at the site from 1968 till 1979. Commenting on the palace at Shushan (Susa), Perrot wrote: ‘One today rereads with a renewed interest the book of Esther, whose detailed description of the interior disposition of the palace of Xerxes is now in excellent accord with archaeological reality’” (“Shushan the Citadel with Bible in Hand,” Bible Reading Archaeology, Sept. 20, 2018).

“Whoever wrote the Book of Esther, knew the inside of the Palace of Shushan like the back of his hand. That much is very plain indeed. This was no romancer of a later time, but someone who strode its halls, its chambers, its courtyards, and its corridors at the time when Esther lived there. He even names its different parts, mentioning: beth hannashim -the house of the women (2:9); beth hannashim sheni -the second house of the women (2: 14); sha’ar hammelek -the gate of the king (2: 19); hachatser happhenimith -the inner court (4: 11); and chatsar beth hammalek hachitsonah -the outer court (6:4). This simple list is actually far more informative than initially appears. For example, the distinction between the house of the women and the second house of the women is that the latter accommodated those members of the harem who had previously been with the king, whereas the virgins were housed in the first. Likewise, the term for inner court denotes in the Hebrew a place in which the king spoke face to face with certain favoured subjects in a less formal, more socially intimate setting, thus distinguishing it from the outer court where more formal business was conducted. All distinguishing features which might have identified these parts of the palace were destroyed in the fire of 435 BC, making it impossible for any later writer to know of their existence even if he’d gone to the trouble of visiting the ruins” (Bill Cooper’s The Authenticity of the Book of Esther, 2013).

Many beautiful objects have been recovered from the ancient Persian palaces that give us a glimpse into life in that day. The artifacts include gold and silver jewelry, fine pottery, silver bowls with gold overlays, silver and gold rhytons used to pour wine into drinking vessels, and glazed brick wall panels. Some of these are in the Susa Room at the Louvre Museum and might have been seen by Nehemiah and Esther.

Also found in the palace ruins are idolatrous images, including those pertaining to Asshur the sun god and Ishtar.

The previous is excerpted from the Way of Life Commentary Series, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, available soon from the Books section of www.wayoflife.org