Greek Art and Persian Taste: Some Animal Sculptures from Persepolis

Abstract

The military and political interaction between ancient Greece and Persia was accompanied by artistic exchanges that are only now being unraveled. In addition to the Greek architects and artisans recorded at Susa, Persepolis and Pasargadae, we now know that Greek, or Greek-trained, sculptors worked at Persepolis. They produced freestanding, life-sized statues of dogs, bulls, and goats that functioned as traditional Near Eastern guardian figures. The style of these works, however, is Greek rather than Persian, and their closest parallels are found in Greek works of the late sixth and early fifth centuries B. C. Certain stylistic details link the bull sculptures to Phocaean artists, one of whom, Telephanes, worked for the Persian king according to Pliny. The presence of large-scale sculptures in Greek style at Persepolis demonstrates the cosmopolitan, Hellenized taste of at least a part of the Achaemenid ruling elite. The preference for animal rather than human representations reveals the ultimately Persian basis of that taste.