This decorative frieze of polychrome glazed brick shows an army, the men carrying spears, bows and quivers. Are they the royal guards of Darius I (522–486 BC), whom Herodotus called “the Immortals.”  

The Frieze of Archers had two symmetrical lines of soldiers, parading at a slow march. Each archer’s hands are joined together on the shaft of his spear, and hanging from his shoulders is a bow, its ends in the form of duck’s heads, and a quiver. The butt of the spear, held vertical, rests on the front foot, shod like the other in a laced ankle-boot. The archers wear the long Persian robe, braided and pleated over the legs, the outline of whose ample sleeve describes a curve towards the belted waist. They are bearded, and their thick curly hair is massed at the nape of the neck, held back by a diadem of beaten metal. Each brick is molded from a quart-based body; its outer face is rectangular, but the brick tapers towards the back, a little like a quoin, so as to leave room for mortar when the decorated faces are butted up against each other. The frieze combines low relief and color, with glazes of green, brown, white and yellow separated by fine cloisons of siliceous body. 

This decorative frieze was certainly inspired by the Processional Way in Babylon, constructed by Nebuchadnezar II (604–562 BC), but the technique is different. The Babylonians used clay for their bricks, rather than the siliceous material employed here. The artists who worked for Darius may have revived a technique developed at Susa by the Elamites in the Late Elamite Period at the end of the second millennium. Polychrome brick decoration in Iran would have a great future in the architecture of the Islamic age.