Sasanian art

SCHOLARSHIP ON THE VISUAL CULTURES of ancient and early medieval Eurasia has recently benefited from art history’s renewed interest in questions that transcend political and cultural boundaries.1 Issues of cross-cultural interaction, however, have not enjoyed from art historians working on the ancient and early medieval worlds a level of critical attention commensurate with the number of problems arising from the material. As a result, many of those who work in the arts and cultures of the Mediterranean, Near East, and Asia have found themselves drawn closer together, but without a common vocabulary or debate with which to engage.

The organizing goal of this volume is to highlight these theoretical considerations and provide a forum where art historians of the ancient and medieval worlds can explore these problems of cross-cultural interaction with greater rigor. It does not intend to provide a comprehensive theoretical overview or art historical survey of Eurasian artistic interchange, nor an overarching theory. Rather, it aims to contribute critical perspectives drawn from premodern visual cultures to the wider theoretical conversation. The papers contained herein critically evaluate some of the most important problems encountered in the material: the cross-continental movement and selective appropriation of objects and motifs through trade; the impact of new ways of seeing, being seen, and acting introduced by these objects; the role of art and ritual in negotiations of power among empires; and representations and self-portrayals of ethnicity and gender within and beyond dominant visual cultures.

To order: http://www.asia.si.edu/visitor/arsorientalisVolumeOrder.htm

Although by its title, this book seems to be about a specialized topic, the spread of Mithraic societies and its avatars, in time and geographical expanse, much enhances its relevancy. From Roman legionaries to chivalry orders, from dervish circles to guild organizations, and from Freemasons to French revolutionaries, the hierarchy of Mithraic societies, their initiation rites, and their oaths of secrecy, provided a model for brotherhood organization that was efficient, but also flexible. They could adapt their philosophy to the prevailing politico-religion conditions of the day, because they did not worship any particular god. Mithra was the initial guarantor of their oath, and if need be it could be replaced by Jesus, Allah, or any other divinity. Their “religion” was their brotherhood, and as such they usually provided a counter-balance to the power elite, and had the potential to become politically active. Occasionally, they would even make a bid for power, sometimes successfully and sometimes not. By the same token, they could be comrades in arms with nascent religious movements, as with Christianity, or be an adversary when their paths diverged. In this book, its author traces back the appearance of these societies to the early days of the Achaemenid Empire and to the religious cataclysm that Herodotus has dubbed as Magophonia. The Mithraic magi were pursued and massacred, and to avoid persecution, they went underground, often literally. That’s how—secret—brotherhood societies were born.

Dynastic connections in the Arsacid Empire and the origins of the House of Sāsān, in: The Parthian and Early Sasanian Empires: Adaptation and expansion, Editors: Vesta Sarkhosh Curtis; Elizabeth Pendleton; Touraj Daryaee; Michael Alram, Oxford and Philadelphia: Oxbow, 2016, 23-35.

See http://www.oxbowbooks.com/oxbow/the-parthian-and-early-sassanian-empires.html [Published by the British Institute of Persian Studies (BIPS) Archaeological Monographs Series]

ABSTRACT
The old rivalry between branches of the Parthian royal house
and clans, including the Younger (western) Arsacids, the
Gondopharids in Indo-Parthia, the Sūrēn and Kārin, revived
when a rebellion broke out in Persis under the leadership
of Ardashir I, son of the Gondopharid prince Sāsān. The
connections between the Gondopharids of Sakastan and
the Sūrēn with Persis under Ardashir eventually led to the
overthrow of the Younger Arsacids.
A comparison of the diverse traditions about Sāsān shows
that the Persian writings and Sasanian inscriptions were
manipulated for specific political reasons. The Shahnameh
tradition traces Sāsān’s ancestry to the late Kayanids, harking
back to the historical Achaemenids. The same tradition
suggests that the ancestral seat of Sāsān’s forebears was in
India, where they had fled in fear of Alexander. Sāsān was
in fact a member of the Arsacid Gondopharid line, the ruling
dynasty of Indo-Parthia, who reigned in Afghanistan and the
north-western regions of India. Even under Farn-Sāsān they
held Sakastan, Arachosia and probably part of Sind.
Most probably Sāsān was the father of Ardashir, as
indicated by the Shahnameh, Agathias and the Armenian
authors, and as implied by Narseh’s inscription at Paikuli.
The coins and inscriptions of Ardashir I and Shapur I say
Ardashir I was the son of Pābag. Tabari, Kārnāmāg and
Bundahishn give a version that Ardashir’s father was Pābag,
but include Sāsān in the genealogy.
For reasons of propaganda Ardashir I, and later Shapur I,
endeavoured to downplay Sāsān’s role, so as not to be
perceived in Persis/Fars as a foreign dynasty. The paradox
is that, assuming Sāsān was Ardashir’s father, the Sasanian
dynasty in fact had a Parthian, and perhaps even an Arsacid
ancestry. Moreover, the early Sasanians built up their empire
thanks to the support of the chief clans of Parthia including
the Sūrēn and Kārin. That is why the Sasanian Ērānšahr
has been referred to as “the empire of the Persians and
Parthians”. And that is why Ammianus perceived the royal
house of Persia as the Arsacids.

The recent discovery of Sasanian figural capitals only slightly damaged-which have been kept in the park at Taq-i Bustan (Kermanshah)-allowed for a series of new identifications of the divine images represented there together with royal figures. Although the royal figures seem to point always at the same king (a very important hint that would suggest one date for all the figural capitals), the divinities have different attributes and also wear different clothes and headgears. In the past, all those divinities have been identified as representations of the goddess Anahita, a hypothesis not to be regarded since at least one god has even a beard. Enigmatic descriptions of those divinities in Avestan literature can be useful for their identification. The textual analysis can be also cautiously adopted to study the iconography of mythological fantastic creatures of Persian traditions such as the Senmurv/Simurgh. INTRODUCTION AND DESCRIPTION OF TAQ-I BUSTAN

The shahs of the early Sasanian dynasty faced the challenge of establishing their
legitimacy as the rulers of an imperial polity after rising to power through military
insurrection. The early shahs of the dynasty sought to locate themselves within the
religious, mythic, and historical context to link themselves to the glorious rulers and
dynasties of Iranian myth and history, while simultaneously espousing Mazdean virtue.
Through the concepts of Ērānšahr and Farr, the notion of the territorial unity of the
Mazda-worshiping peoples prescribed in the Avesta and the divinely-bestowed glory of
rulers, respectively, the motivations that underlaid Sasanian statecraft during the first four
generations of the dynasty are contextualized.
The idea of Ērānšahr as a sacrosanct territorial delimitation of the homelands of
the Mazdean peoples was first employed to validate and legitimize the rebellion of the
Sasanians against the Parthian Aškānīān dynasty. After the civil war that established
Ardašīr I as šāhanšāh, the defense of Ērānšahr as both a tangible expanse of territory and
a religious concept was used to justify punitive and retaliatory military action in the west
against the Roman Empire, as well as to acquire the Central Asian holdings of the
Kushan Empire. The claim to the sole possession of Farr was similarly employed to
justify first rebellion, and then conflicts with the Kushan Empire, whose own rulers
claimed Farr from Mazdean divinities.
Establishing the religious, mythic, and historical contexts to which the early
Sasanian dynasts were subject illuminates the motivations for imperial policy and allows
the scrutiny of those policies and actions to transcend the biases inherent in non-Iranian
sources for the period. Furthermore, privileging autochthonous sculptural, epigraphic,and numismatic productions produces an innovative analysis of early Sasanian statecraft
cognizant of, and rooted within, Iranian cultural paradigms.

This article presents a detailed reconsideration of the well-established and canonized theory of “Sasanian iconoclasm” postulated by Mary Boyce in 1975. The Sasanians did not develop any prohibition against anthropomorphic representations of the gods, and in the surviving Zoroastrian literature and inscriptions there is no evidence of either theological disputes over idols or of a deliberate eradication of them by the Persian kings. Sasanian cult was aniconic, but the historical and archaeological evidence clearly demonstrates that Sasanian visual culture was anything but iconoclastic. It seems that the Persian iconoclastic identity was constructed in the early Sasanian period as a response to the challenges posed by Christianity. By joining the common monotheistic discourse against idolatry, the Zoroastrian clergy adopted the conventions of the world in which they lived. Attacks against “idols” and “idolatry” should be understood in the context of internal and external polemical discourse against beliefs deemed to be erroneous by the Zoroastrian priesthood.

Abstract
This article examines the longstanding rivalry of Rome and Parthia, which began as an unintended consequence of Crassus’ decisive defeat at Carrhae in 53 BCE. It synthesizes the accounts and opinions of numerous Graeco-Roman writers from the Augustan Age to late antiquity in order to help illustrate the new and interconnected post-Carrhae world and its legacy. The rivalry of the Romans and Parthians became a primary focus of their foreign policies and drastically expanded their perceptions of the world in which they interacted. Even after the fall of the Parthians to the rebellious Sassanid Persians in the 220s CE, the Romans continued to find their three-century-long rivalry with the Parthians of interest and relevant to the changing world of late antiquity.

E. Shavarebi, "The Temples of Anāhīd at Estakhr (Southern Iran): Historical Documents and Archeological Evidence" in: J. Belaj et al. (eds.), Sacralization of Landscape and Sacred Places: Proceedings of the 3rd International Scientific Conference of Mediaeval Archaeology of the Institute of Archaeology, Zagreb, 2nd and 3rd June 2016 [Zbornik Instituta za Arheologiju 10], Zagreb: Institute of Archaeology, 2018, pp. 179-194.

Abstract: This essay deals with the location of the Achaemenid and Sasanian temples of Anāhīd at Estakhr, the capital of Persis/Fārs province in southern Iran. Relevant texts from Achaemenid and Sasanian epigraphic sources, classical literature, and Islamic historical and geographical writings are interpreted, followed by a survey of the archaeological sites at Estakhr and its environs, which have been suggested by other scholars to be in connection with the temples of Anāhīd. In this survey, I will criticise a new speculative hypothesis on the location of the temples and argue where in fact these temples were located.

Places are small, culturally significant locales that exist within a landscape. They are meaningful to specific cultural groups through everyday experience and shared stories associated with them. Places therefore gather a vast range of things in their microcosm: both animate and inanimate entities, residues, materials, knowledges, and stories. The material residues and cultural associations that cluster around places run deep in their temporality. Places are then generated and maintained by a spectrum of locally specific practices, from the situated activities of daily users of space, on the one hand, to the grandiose interventions of the political elite on the other. Combined, these social practices continually produce hybrid material forms and spatial configurations over time, and anchor communities to particular locales with a sense of cultural belonging. They become assemblages of shared memories, always pregnant for improvised events, despite the common essentialist notion of local places as static or conservative. Places thus serve as meaningful nexuses of human interaction, and as sites of immediate everyday experience. This edited volume is the outcome of a workshop/colloquium that tookplace at Brown University in March 2008, with the title Drawing on Rocks, Gathering by the Water: Archaeological Fieldwork at Rock Reliefs, Sacred Springs and Other Places. That event was intended to bring together academics who worked on similar questions concerning archaeological landscapes across the globe and specifically to focus on the making and unmaking of places of human interaction such as rock reliefs, sacred springs and lakes, cairns, ruins, and other meaningful places. The colloquium also provided a platform to discuss the experiences, the challenges, and the theoretical implications of working in the field and specifically at such unusual sites and landscapes. The intention was to bring to the table new archaeological perspectives on working at geologically and culturally distinctive locales where the particular geologies are encountered and uniquely reworked by local practices. This chapter is an introduction to the anthology of articles gathered under this topic.

The iconography on Persid coins of the frataraka dynasty has been discussed by many scholars. Interpretations have considered whether the building shown on the reverse of these coins was 1. a fire temple; 2. an atashgahs, i.e. repositories of holy fire; 3. a tomb; 4. a coronation tower; 5. a 'foundation house' or repository for Zoroastrian paraphernalia; or 6. a tower altar/ fire altar. These putative functions, and the building's relationship to the similarly shaped Zendan-e Sulaiman at Pasargadae and Ka'ba-e Zardosht at Naqsh-e Rustam, are evaluated.

Images of dragon-slaying by Eastern Christian warrior saints allegorise the overthrow of evil forces, a topos that appears first on the eastern confines of the Byzantine Empire in Transcaucasia. Representations of a triumphal rider trampling or slaying a fallen enemy are frequent in antiquity but acquire a moral significance only under the emperor Constantine in the early fourth century – a century later than analogous imagery on the investiture relief of Ardashīr I (r. 224–241) at Naqsh-i Rustam. Close parallels in iconography between the Iranian and the Judaeo-Christian traditions expressing the fundamental juxtaposition between victor and vanquished, and the latter often characterised by ophidian features, may in large part be due to the influence of Iranian dualistic notions, and specifically Zoroastrian eschatological thought systems. Conclusive evidence points to the fact that the iconographic semantics of the medieval Western Asian equestrian dragon-fighter in its heroic as well as saintly incarnation owe much to ancient prototypes that germinated in the syncretistic melting pot of the great Near Eastern religions. The visual representation of a fighter doing battle with a serpent or dragon employs a traditional and enduring iconographical formula of some antiquity and wide diffusion throughout the Near Eastern world. It is part of a stock of popular imagery that survived into medieval times. The fighter takes aim at an ophidian creature using a variety of weapons while the creature is shown either as a lively upright being imbued with fighting spirit, or, more commonly, in the guise of a vanquished being lying on its back beneath the horse's feet with gaping upturned jaws. The idea of connecting the cult and iconography of the Eastern Christian warrior saints with a serpent-dragon can be traced to at least the early seventh century. In the Christian church the dragon motif developed in the eastern confines of Byzantium, where the so-called holy rider vanquishing a dragon was a well-established literary topos and was represented in early wall painting. Depictions are found on portable items, ranging from magical amulets to luxury objects, as well as on sacred architecture, in particular churches and funerary settings. The motif fell on particularly fertile ground in the southern Caucasus region which was part of the pan-Iranian religio-cultural realm and was steeped in its artistic conventions.

The article discusses a helmet found in 1968 in a mountainous village of Yarysh-Mardy situated on the river Argun in the north-eastern Caucasus. The helmet was often associated with the Golden Horde period, which according to the author seems highly unlikely. On the basis of a detailed comparative analysis, the author puts forward a thesis of dating the object to either the late-Sasanid or early-Islamic period, i.e. to late 6th - beginning of 8th c. AD. Specifically, it is suggested that the appearance of the helmet in the Caucasus may be attributed to the time of Byzantine-Sasanid conflicts taking place at the turn of 6th and 7th c. AD.
Additionally, the article argues that in the late Sasanid period a new sub-type of helmets came into existence, namely the ones with straight spangs and ones with spiky rivets. Furthermore, it is proposed that  the Yarysh-Mardy helmet bears certain correspondences to similar finds from Groningen and Bremen.

The article discusses two seals from the recently published collection of Aman Ur Rahman that depict previously unrecognized images of Iranian deities. It is suggested that the first seal, of eastern Sasanian manufacture, depicts a unique image of the Daēnā accompanied by two dogs. The second seal shows a well-known motif of a chariot of Mithra. The inscription connects it with the Pārata kings and helps to date the seal to the third-fourth centuries CE.

The graffito from Dura-Europos depicting a heavily armored cavalryman is one of the most important sources used to reconstruct the armament of Iranian cavalry units seen in the middle of the third century A.D. The graffito presents a hybrid cuirass that is composed of mail and lamellas. It was probably originally an Iranian construction. The use of hybrid armor should be connected with the process of the adaptation of mail in the Parthian empire and then adjusting this new type of body armor to the realities of cavalry combat. The new hybrid cuirass served its purpose well. It not only survived the Parthian era but also the Arabic conquest of Sasanian Iran in the middle of the seventh century A.D., which is evidently demonstrated by the fact that it was present in the military equipment of Muslim armies in the 16th and 17th centuries A.D.

Partially preserved Himyarite rock relief with depiction of armored rider with his infantry attandant, has been
referred to Sasanian “jousting” reliefs in Nakš e Rostam. This way the missing part has been reconstructed as horizontally
extended rectangle. The relation with Nakš e Rostam is chronologically correct (as the Himyarite object is dated for beginning
of the 4th century)however it varies iconographically. There are more adequately related objects in Partho-Sasanian and
late Roman art which allow reconstructing entire format as closer to square in shape, with either infantry opponent or a beast
being an opponent of the main personage.
The Himyarite relief from Zafar displays several distinctive features shared with some examples of Parthian and Sasanian art, but its relation to the Naqš-ē Rōstam reliefs, as proposed by Yule and Robin, is not convincing for the following reasons:
1. The rider’s long scale armor is analogous to a terracotta plaque from Parthian Babylonia (fig. 9);
2. The infantry attendant with an axe depicted above the horse’s rump recalls the Tang-e Sarvak relief, which shows two foot soldiers and a battle axe (fig. 7);
3. The horseman carries a round shield and raises his right hand to hold his lance as on the Taq-e Bostan relief (fig.12).
4. The original composition of the relief must have been more square than rectangular, with the opponent of the main figure appearing at the right edge.
Thus, the Himyarite sculptors either followed an unknown or unpreserved Iranian iconographic pattern or combined features of different canons. Yule and Robin have pointed out that a simple snaffle is accorded the horse in place of the elaborate and decorative Sasanian bridle— a distinctive element in Sasanian art, but not always clearly rendered in Parthian art, especially in smaller objects.

Most of the well known Sasanian forms came from museums and private collection and have no further archaeological data. There are, of course, some exceptions, for example the 3rd century CE Sasanian helmet from Dura Europos (currently held in the Yale University Art Gallery). This is of bandhelme construction, having no lower band and possessing many features not seen in other well-known crossbandhelme Sasanian helmets. These differences led me to look for different forms of Iranian armour, unlike what might be called the then “popular ones”. One of my observations led me to write the current study of lamellar helmets in Iran. But before I setting down my ideas on this extremely interesting topic, I will try to explain some very basic typological characteristics and differences of the main types of lamellar helmet.

Review of
Vesta Sarkhosh Curtis, M. Elahé Askari, Elizabeth J. Pendleton with Richard Hodges, Ali-Akbar Safi (authors)
Vol. 1, Ardashir I–Hormizd IV, Special Publication (Royal Numismatic Society [GB]) 47,
London: Royal Numismatic Society in assoc. with the British Institute of Persian Studies, 2010,
216 pp (unpaginated), illus., ISSN 0080 4487; ISBN 0 901405 44 2.
Vol. 2, Khusrau II–Yazdgard III, Special Publication (Royal Numismatic Society [GB]) 49,
London: Royal Numismatic Society in assoc. with the British Institute of Persian Studies, 2012,
511 pp (unpaginated), illus., ISSN 0080 4487; ISBN 0 901405 64 7.

E. Shavarebi, "A Reinterpretation of the Sasanian Relief at Salmas", Iran and the Caucasus, Vol. 18, Issue 2, 2014, pp. 115-133.

Abstract: A Sasanian relief is located at Salmās in north-western Iran. This relief depicts Ardashīr I and his successor Shāpūr, who give rings to two standing men who are not exactly recognised. In this article the relief of Salmās will be examined from iconographic, geographical, and historical points of view, and I will try to diagnose the standing men’s identity.

The plate with the depiction of the battle scene from Tabriz Azarbayjan Museum follows several Sasanian patterns. It is related to early Sasanian rock reliefs picturing a mounted combat, in Firusbad and Naqsh e Rostam. However, the relation is limited to certain details and thorough examination of composition and iconography shows that the piece could not have been manufactured in Sasanian times. The plate fails to share visual structural elements with the rock reliefs and toreutics. It is most likely to see the object as modern imitation, probably made in 1920’s or 1930’s.

A fresh reconsideration of the fantastic winged creature with a dog face and peacock tail in Iranian arts that has been considered to be the Simurgh. According to new avidence, this creature should be a representation of Farr (Glory). It can be observed in late Sasanian art just at Taq-i Bustan but it was most likely an Eastern Iranian creation.

A recent find of a lion headed mace from a monastery complex in
Sivas, Turkey, sheds new light on the development and chronology of anthropomorphic
and zoomorphic maces from Kushan and Sasanian times
until the early modern era. The mace from Sivas features a lion-shaped head
with facial features and an interesting curvature. The mace has been dated to
the XIV–XV centuries....

E. Shavarebi, "Roman ‘Soldatenkaiser’ on the Triumphal Rock Reliefs of Shāpūr I – A Reassessment", Historia i Świat, Vol. 4, 2015, pp. 47-63.

Abstract: Five rock reliefs surviving in Persis/Fārs province in southern Iran represent the victories of Shāpūr I (241–272 AD), the second Sasanian King of Kings (Šāhānšāh), over the Roman Empire. The three Roman Emperors depicted on these reliefs have traditionally been identified as Gordian III (238–244), Philip I – known as ‘the Arab’ – (244–249) and Valerian I (253–260). From the 1960s onward, new interpretations are presented. In the most recent of these, Uranius Antoninus (253/254) is recognised on three of Shāpūr’s triumphal reliefs. The present paper aims to re-examine these new hypotheses by considering numismatic materials, including a unique gold coin of Shāpūr which bears an image of the same topic accompanying a legend on its reverse.

E. Shavarebi, "Some Remarks on a Newly-Discovered Coin Type of Shāpūr I", Studia Iranica, Vol. 43, Issue 2, 2014, pp. 281-290.

Abstract: In this paper a unique gold coin of Shāpūr I, first published by Michael Alram, is reexamined from some iconographic details as well as from an epigraphic point of view, comparing the legend of the coin’s obverse with the Sasanian royal inscriptions.

Résumé: Une monnaie d’or unique de Shāpūr Ier, publiée en premier par Michael Alram, est ici réexaminée sur la base de quelques aspects iconographiques et aussi d’un point de vue épigraphique, en comparant la légende de l'avers de la monnaie avec les inscriptions royales sassanides.

The helmet depicted on the capital at Ṭāq-e Bostān is the main evidence for employment of lamellar helmets by the Sasanian warriors. It seems that the decorated helmets of the kind were the marks of high status and were adopted by the Iranian warriors from the steppe peoples, most likely after recovery of control over the territories formerly conquered by the Hephtalites. Steppe nomads popularized this form of military gear throughout Eurasia. Another depictions which seem related to the personage on the capital at Ṭāq-e Bostān are representations on the reverses of the coins of Xusrō II, sometimes named as “Anāhitā” type. Similarity between the coinage and the capital allows to identify the personages as the same. This excludes the goddess as possible portrayed personage. Similarly possibility to identify the personage as Vərəθraγna-Bahrām should be refuted due to connection with Bahrām Čōbīn. If the emissions of the coins with the personage in the lamellar helmet were to commemorate the revenge over the murderers of Emperor Maurice than mentioning the name of Bahrām in positive context would be inappropriate. The most likely solution seems existence of secular system of allegories in Sasanian art which would allow transition of various meanings without the refrence to the yazatas.

In the previous issue of the Numismatic Chronicle a parcel 66 coins of a seemingly much larger hoard was presented. A second parcel of 176 coins includes 169 coins of Ardashīr III (r. AD 628-630), 5 of Yazdgard III (r. AD 632-651), and 2 apparently unrelated ones of Hormizd V (r. AD 632-633).  The closing coin of the second parcel is again from the reign Yazdgard III of his seventh regnal year (AD 638-9) struck Kirmān (NAL). The main reason for recording lies the scarcity of post-battle of al-Qādisiyya (AD 636) evidence; secondly, the Ardashīr-coins alone make up the largest group of his coins ever recorded and studied. Not only their quantity but also in the number of dies encountered allows preliminary hypotheses on relative mint output; thirdly, alterations of some of these dies and erasures of mints on the coins itself allow preliminary hypotheses about the mint organisation; and finally it is recorded to preserve the numismatic context for the phenomenon of ink dipinti and grafitti in the late Sasanian period.  It also contains a coin of the scarce mint W/N-A/S-A/S.

The article offers a reassessment of the identity of the female figure found on the relief of the Sasanian king Narseh at Naqš-e Rostam. Based on the iconographic analysis of the relief and the discussion of the arguments put forward by A.Sh.Shahbazi and U.Weber, it is concluded that the figure is not a queen but rather a goddess. She is most probably to be identified with the goddess Anāhitā, to whom Narseh was perhaps personally devoted.
This discussion is followed by a critical examination of the pictorial
representations of Anāhitā in the pre-Islamic Iranian world. It is emphasized
that Anāhitā was a western Iranian goddess whose worship was probably
imported to Bactria after this part of the eastern Iranian world came under
the rule of the Sasanian kings.