great significance.
We have already referred to the creation of anthropomorphic images of the main Zoroastrian deities. It is true that they repeat the real iconography of royal portraiture. Ahura Mazda, in the dress and insignia of lran’s shahanshah, is depicted on the same pattern as the Khwarnah of the Achaemenids, except that the dress of the Achaemenid king is exchanged for that of a Sassanid king; Anahita is depicted in the dress and insignia of lran’s queen of queens; Mithras is also in royal dress, but with a radiant crown around his head.
The link with Achaemenid culture is apparent in many spheres. One could point out, for example, that in official manifestos of the Sassanid shahanshahs the standard formula of Achaemenid royal inscriptions is employed. Nowadays it has become evident that Sassanian state Zoroastrianism was initially nothing but the Zoroastrianism of Parsa of the Parthian, or even the late Achaemenid, age. In the formation of Sassanian art the Parthian contribution was no less important than that of the Achaemenids and of post-Achaemenid Parsa. A certain number of reliefs and wall-paintings, as well as coins of the Parthian age, have the same composition and sometimes the same portrait iconography. The contribution of the late Hellenistic art of Mesopotamia to Sassanian art is also extremely significant.
Vessels of precious metal play an important role in Sassanian art. Such vessels were used at royal feasts, but the feasts themselves also had particular significance. Herodotus wrote that the Persians decided all their most important questions of state at feasts. Precious vessels were offered to the kings of neighbouring states as valuable gifts; they served as rewards to courtiers for outstanding exploits.
They were valued for their marvellous craftsmanship and for their imagery, but the metal of which they were made was itself of no small value in Sassanian times. According to the Sassanian Code of Law, for example, “worthy” provision for a free citizen of the empire consisted of 18 silver drachmae a month (about 75g of silver); the silver bowls in the State Hermitage Museum weigh at least ten times that amount. The earliest of the silver ceremonial bowls which have come down to us date from c. 270–29 °CE.
Late Roman art and especially late Roman silver “portrait” vessels heavily influenced Sassanian metalwork during its early stage. Apparently under their influence this traditionally Persian art form was reborn. The vessels were of prestigious or propagandistic significance and their simple ceremonial role was merely secondary. At first, such vessels featured official portraits of the Iranian kings, employing the same iconography as on reliefs and coins. Fairly soon, within fifty years or so, the portraits depicted on the vessels were no longer of shahanshahs, but of great courtiers and priests. Towards the middle of the 4th century such vessels disappear completely. The first known plate bearing a depiction of kings and incarnations of Zoroastrian deities also dates from the c. 270–290.
The first known plate depicting a hunting scene was produced at about that time. This form of art was new to the Sassanians and exhibits some innovations. First of all, there is a wealth of Zoroastrian symbolism (other objects of this period presented only what might be termed basic symbols).
At this point, it is necessary to summarise briefly what little we know about the hypostases or incarnations of Zoroastrian deities, from the Yashts of the Avesta. The first of the yazads, Mithras, according to the Mihr Yasht a sun deity of victory, royal majesty and justice, does not have an earthly incarnation, but even in the Achaemenid age a lion was the symbol of the sun and royal majesty. In the Mihr Yasht, the deity of victory Verethragna, in the form of a boar with sharp tusks and iron claws, flies in front of Mithras as he defeats his enemies. In other Yashts Verethragna appears before the hero-kings in different guises: in the form of a bull, a camel, the bird of prey Varaghna, a white steed, Senmurv, a ram, an ibex, a bear and a beautiful youth. The deity of fate, success and “royal predestination”, Khwarnah, appears in the Yashts in the form of the bird Varaghna, a fish, a gazelle (?), Senmurv and a large ram. In the Avesta Mithras is extremely closely linked to Verethragna and Khwarnah. The bull was also revered (the deity of the “soul of the bull” and Gopatshah, the man-bull) as was the star Sirius (Tishtrya) which appeared in the image of a steed, a golden-homed bull and a youth. This covers almost the entire animal repertory of early Sassanian art.
Fragments of eastern Iranian epic cycles are preserved in the Avestan texts, where they narrate the struggle of the hero-kings to acquire the qualities of these deities – strength, invincibility and success. The visible incarnation of the deity had to be literally captured or seized. Not only the hero-kings of the Iranian epics but also the founder of the Sassanian state, Ardashir, had to first obtain possession of the “good fortune of Khwarnah of the Kayanids” in the form of a large ram, according to the account in the romance devoted to him (The Book of the Deeds of Ardashir, Son of Papak).
This solves the mystery of the symbolism of the hunting scenes on Sassanian silver plates. The three divine qualities of a true, legitimate ruler of Iran, granted to him by the god Mithras, by Verethragna and by the deity of royal predestination, constitute the sole symbolism found on ceremonial royal metalware of the early Sassanian era, presented in strict, exact compositions repeated without alteration from one object to another.
Imam Mosque. Isfahan, Iran.
Columns topped with Persian horses.
These pieces were fashioned in a central royal workshop up to c. 480. Divine essence and the legitimacy of royal power are symbolically represented by the “capture” of Khwarnah in the form of the most popular hypostasis, a mountain ram, the strength of this power by the struggle with the lion, and its triumph by the struggle with the wild boar. Silver plates bearing such compositions were essentially for propaganda purposes.
By the end of the 4th century, however, scenes of royal hunts on silver plates were gradually giving way to depictions of the heroic or epic victory of the king of kings. Of course, one cannot say that the Zoroastrian symbolical composition in its pure sense was no longer recognised – it still occurs on 5th-century objects – but the range of buyers for metalwork had widened and this, it seemed, had somewhat altered the repertory of subjects. This development of iconography is characteristic of the evolution of all Sassanian art; it is a movement from orthodoxy to the everyday subject requiring no religious interpretation.
The theme of the heroic hunt flourished especially in the 5th century. Later, this subject, too, was reduced to a simple genre scene, or even to the level of literary illustration of some particular hunting story. Royal horsemen were already being depicted wearing, as a rule, standard “impersonal” crowns.
Three silver plates – two in The State Hermitage Museum, one in a private collection in the USA – provide examples of such a hunting story, representing one of the exploits of Prince Varahran.
These depictions are the first and possibly the only clear examples of genuine illustrations of oral or written tales of the skill and valour of an Iranian knight. But in the sparse Sassanian literature of the 6th-7th centuries that has reached us we find tales of skill and prowess in chivalrous sports (hunting, polo, the mastery of various weapons and especially skill at archery) and also of proficiency in games (at chess, shatrang, and backgammon, nevartashir). One of those works, Khusrau, Son of Kavadh, and His Page, tells the story of the beautiful women who played the chang and who accompanied kings on their hunts; they are often depicted, for example in hunting scenes of the Shahanshah Khusrau II (reliefs at Taq-e Bostan). Judging by the story of Firdawsi, a woman playing chang also took part in the marvellous gazelle hunt of Bahram Gur, though on silver vessels showing this scene she has no instrument in her hands. A host of such beauties with harps, flutes and changs are depicted on silver vessels – ewers, flasks, deep hemispherical bowls and shallow dishes.
These vessels also show various birds and beasts, including fabulous ones, genre scenes, depictions of architectural monuments (which have not survived), illustrations of myths that are not fully comprehensible,
