the tombs of the Achaemenids were hewn.
Sheikh Lotf Allah Mosque. Isfahan, Iran.
Once again, we are confronted with an artform that aims to reflect the specific ideological principles of a new state. Once again we are confronted with an “imperial style”, with a strict canon and a comparatively narrow choice of themes reflected in all branches of art, from reliefs to carved gem-seals.
This period must be regarded as the closing stage in the development of ancient Persian art. The art is characterised in particular by naturalism in the portrayal of iconographic details such as the insignia of power of the shahanshah (king of kings) – a crown and ornaments, a particular type of dress, the exact rendering of weapons, or horse harness. Such iconographic details vary only slightly as a result of variations in the material.
For example, all the basic elements of the individual crowns of the shahanshahs are portrayed absolutely identically whether on colossal rock reliefs and on miniature gem-seals, in soft stucco and in silk textiles. Until the end of the Sassanian period each shahanshah was portrayed on such works wearing an individual crown of a pattern that was unique to him and with the symbols of his own guardian deities.
A few palace ruins have survived from the Sassanian period (Firuzabad, 3rd century CE; Sarvistan and Ctesiphon, 5th-6th centuries CE, and others), a few Zoroastrian temples, the so-called chahartaqs – domed constructions with a windowless central space, which became widespread throughout Iran probably in late Sassanian times – and a few towns, in general still unexcavated. The outstanding works of art of this period are the numerous works of applied art, above all metalwork but also carved gem-seals, textiles, ceramics and glass, which are to be found in various of the world’s museums. The State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg justifiably prides itself on possessing the largest collection of such pieces in the world. These works recreate the image of a state which was one of the great powers of the East from the 3rd-7th centuries CE and a centre of learning and culture; a state which not only left as its heritage one of the first medical academies and one of the first universities of the Near East, but also the first authentic chivalrous romance and the first authentic record of the codification of the ancient Iranian encyclopaedia – the Avesta.
Sheikh Lotf Allah Mosque. Isfahan, Iran.
In almost all fields of culture of the Sassanian era one can discern clear links with the culture of previous periods – not only with that of the Achaemenids but also the Hellenistic period. The artistic imagery and ideas of Sassanian works exerted a perceptible influence over a vast territory from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and in turn one can distinguish features from the art of the Caucasus, Central Asia, Eastern Turkestan, even China, in works of art from Iran.
The dominant theme of early Sassanian art (3rd-4th centuries CE was the proclamation of the state’s power. From the very beginning of the Sassanian era official portraits of the Sassanid shahanshah and his courtiers as well as his military triumphs were the images most often seen. In essence, Sassanian art begins with the creation of the iconography of the official portrait and the triumphal composition.
Religious art also follows the same line as official art. From the very beginning its basic subjects were anthropomorphic portrayals (also, in their way, official portraits) of the major Zoroastrian deities – Ahura Mazda, Mithras and Anahita, depictions of the interior of the monarch’s coronation temple and portrayals of the shahanshah’s investiture by these main deities. Such works of art reflected the fundamental, divine nature of power cherished by lran’s rulers in a language of clearly understood symbols. The scene of the divine investiture, the handing over of the insignia of power to the shahanshah by Ahura Mazda, Mithras or Anahita, was mainly sculpted in reliefs, but also featured on the reverse of early Sassanian coins and on early Sassanian gems. The canonic form of the interior of the king’s coronation temple shows an altar on which a fire blazes, sometimes flanked by the figures of the king and a deity, the design being almost the same as in Achaemenid reliefs; the altar is occasionally on the dais of a throne constructed just like those of the Achaemenid rulers. This altar appears on reliefs and coins as well as on gems.
These official works reflected the initial period of development of the Sassanid monarchy’s state ideology; they emphasised the real political successes of the first shahanshahs and proclaimed their faith, Zoroastrianism. The religious theme becomes more complex at the end of the 3rd century CE, as if it had become obscured by the introduction into the official portrait iconography of incarnations of Zoroastrian deities of a lower order (in the beginning, it is true only of one deity the companion of Mithras, the god of victory Verethragna). The main incarnations of Verethragna are a wild boar, a horse, a bird, a lion and the fabulous Senmurv (half-beast and half-bird), and they appear in depictions of the shahanshahs’ crowns and the headdresses of princes and the queen of queens. Strictly speaking, the emergence of such imagery marks the beginning of a new theme, that of Zoroastrian symbolism. The earliest pieces only present these incarnations themselves or their protomes, but very soon they give way to a different type of composition, above all to scenes of the royal hunt which are also widespread at the end of the 3rd century CE.
Subsequently all three themes that followed developed along different lines. At the end of the 4th century CE the state political theme gradually loses its significance. Rock reliefs, the chief monuments exhibiting this theme, are no longer produced: thirty reliefs are attributed to the period from c. 23 °CE to the beginning of the 4th century, but only two to the period from the first decade of the 4th century to the beginning of the 6th century. The official portrait of the shahanshah appears primarily on coins, the official portraits of courtiers mainly on gems.
Zoroastrian symbolism, with various symbols of the guardian deities, occupies an ever greater place on the crowns of the shahanshahs. The scene of the altar flanked by the figures of the king and a deity on the reverse of Sassanian coins gradually becomes a canonical image, but one which has already lost its meaning. Zoroastrian symbolism, on the other hand, seems to overwhelm various branches of art. Incarnations of many Zoroastrian deities and symbolical compositions become the main subject of gems and are often depicted on stucco decoration and on textiles.
However, the initial meaning of this theme is also lost. The symbols of the Zoroastrian deities – various birds, beasts and plants – become benevolent. Imagery that is foreign to the Sassanians makes its appearance, borrowed from the West and in the main connected with Dionysian beliefs. Having been subjected to a Zoroastrian interpretation, not always of any great profundity, it is included in Zoroastrian benedictory or celebratory compositions. Such a subject as the royal hunt loses its initial, strictly symbolical, meaning and a new, narrative, theme arises in Sassanian art on its foundation; the symbolical composition simply turns into a literary subject.
All these processes had already begun in the 4th century CE and were, of course, linked to definite changes both in dynastic doctrine and in the Zoroastrian canon, although there was no such hard and fast correspondence between the two as there was between official ideology and official art during the first stage.
In the 6th and 7th centuries CE, art as a whole was characterised by a flowering of the narrative theme and benedictory subjects, although in some works political and religious themes did reappear. There was even an emergence of what might be termed narrative-Zoroastrian themes – various Avestan myths were illustrated in works of art.
The link with ancient Persian art is particularly significant for Sassanian religious iconography. The portrayal of Zoroastrian deities in the form of their hypostases or personifications is a device with which we are already familiar and which was encountered in the art of both the Medes and the Achaemenids. Several such hypostatic images were passed on to Sassanian art. Amongst them one finds the already familiar Gopatshah who has the Assyrian shedu as his prototype, winged and homed lions, winged griffins, the scene of a lion attacking a bull and even such ancient images as a stag,
