Sasanian Reliefs Research Articles

The Tassels of Royal and Divine Sasanian Horses

The Tassels of Royal and Divine Sasanian Horses

A Reinterpretation of the Sasanian Relief at Salmās

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.

Lionel Bier. Palais B at Bishapur and its Sasanian Reliefs

Palais B, the so-called “Valerian’s palace”, is a stone building on the northeastern side of Bishapur. It was first excavated by R. Ghirshman and G. Salles who discovered relief sculptures there. A. Sarfaraz followed up on these pre-World War II excavations briefly in 1974, when more sculpted blocks were dug up. The late Lionel Bier has combined the limited information existing on this palace with photographs and drawings of 25 blocks or block fragments with relief decorations, which he saw a...

And man created God? Kings, priests and gods on Sasanian investiture reliefs

An inscription on the Naqsh-i Rustam I rock relief identifies the two protagonists in the investiture scene as Ardashir I and Ahura Mazda. All investing authorities on the royal Sasanian reliefs are therefore commonly identified as Ahura Mazda. In view of conflicting historic information and unexplained variations in the iconography of “Ahura Mazda”, a re-interpretation of the investiture reliefs is made. The inscription on Ahura Mazda’s horse at Naqsh-i Rustam appears to have been added at the end of Ardashir’s reign or early in Shapur I’s reign and the earliest reliefs are now considered to depict an investiture by a priest, instead of by Ahura Mazda. Once the inscription had been added to the Naqsh-i Rustam I rock relief, it changed from an investiture by a priest to one by a god, Ahura Mazda. Iconographic details that conflicted with this transformation (such as the barsum, attendant and possibly the “royal” tamga) were left out of the divine image in later representations of the investiture on horseback. The late Sasanian Taq-i Bustan III investiture on foot, up to now considered to be the investiture of Khusrow II by Ahura Mazda and Anahita, is equally interpreted as an investiture by clergy, in this case by representatives of the cults of these two gods, rather than by the gods themselves.

Composition and Continuity in Sasanian Rock Reliefs

The cliffs of Iran are adorned with rock reliefs from every period of its long history. During the years that the Sasanian dynasty ruled Iran, artists added to this collection considerably. These monuments are individual capsules of information on the general political, religious, historical and artistic milieu of the time. This paper presents a method for furthering our understanding of the Sasanian period through an analysis of the composition of each Sasanian relief. The analysis is based on the hypothesis that composition will serve as an indicator of artistic continuity and change and encode an artistic signature of sorts indicating the artists' background and training. The initial results suggest that the reliefs of the early Sasanian period reflect the work of artists from at least two schools of art.

The Sasanian Rock Relief at Darabgird-A Re-Evaluation

Previous articleNext article No AccessThe Sasanian Rock Relief at Darabgird-A Re-EvaluationDalia Levit-TawilDalia Levit-Tawil Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Journal of Near Eastern Studies Volume 51, Number 3Jul., 1992 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/373549 Views: 15Total views on this site Citations: 2Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 1992 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Carlo G. Cereti Narseh, Armenia, and the Paikuli Inscription, Electrum 28 (Jan 2021): 69–87.https://doi.org/10.4467/20800909EL.21.007.13365Khodadad Rezakhani Mazdakism, Manichaeism and Zoroastrianism: In Search of Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy in Late Antique Iran, Iranian Studies 48, no.11 (Jan 2022): 55–70.https://doi.org/10.1080/00210862.2014.947696