Persepolis: Column with complete bull capital, 5th century BC

Showing that it came from the interior of a building, portico columns having the protomes resting directly on the shaft. "The column (the most original element of Achaemenian architecture) … has a bell-shaped base foreign to Hellenic art, just as the verticality of its decoration contrasts with the horizontality of its Greek counterpart. No Greek column rises to the height of the Achaemenian column, nor is it ever crowned with a composite capital as ponderous and complex as the Persian impost block, which in fact is unique in ancient architecture