are meticulously elaborated and carefully observed in such details as weapons, dress, headdress, masterful depiction of valuable vessels, ornaments and details of horse harness. Such articles of Achaemenid applied art as have survived are reproduced with absolute accuracy in the sculpted reliefs at Persepolis. We may restrict ourselves to a single example – the relief on the western doorpost of the Apadana shows Darius wearing a garment, the hem of which is decorated with an engraved procession of lions. A wool hem with the same figures of lions – identical down to the minutest detail – was found in one of the Pazyryk burial mounds in the Altai.
Sheikh Lotf Allah Mosque. Isfahan, Iran.
The “portraits” at Persepolis are extremely stylised but the subjects are distinguished by details of attire – crowns, weapons or bracelets, by their position in the scene depicted or by clearly delineated “ethnographic” features.
In the first Achaemenid capital, Pasargadae, which was built twenty-five years before Persepolis, only remains of reliefs decorating walls and entrances to the palaces have been found. Comparing these to the Persepolis reliefs, one can trace the rise of the “Achaemenid style” of sculpture and its evolution. Above all, at Pasargadae the prototype for these reliefs can be more clearly discerned, going back to the stone orthostats of Assyrian palaces.
Their style and imagery also derive from the Mesopotamian traditions of Assyria and Elam. Several of them have exact counterparts in Assyrian art, especially amongst the orthostats of Sennacherib’s palace at Nineveh, where portrayals of fish-people and “demons” recur with great frequency. These images were probably seen by the Persians as guardians of the Assyrian rulers.
Perhaps some political purpose lay behind the repetition of these motifs at Pasargadae. Perhaps they express an attempt to proclaim the concept of a succession of power from the Assyrian kings. But the pictorial quotations are as chaotic as those at Ziwiye and the total sacrifice of the meaning of the Assyrian composition indicates that the original religious message was of no consideration. At any rate, we are faced here with the earliest example of imagery intended to convey a message adopted from kingdoms destroyed by the Achaemenids and used by them in order to glorify their own majesty and power.
It is significant that at Pasargadae too a limited repertoire of themes has been selected from the enormous variety of sculpted designs of Assyria and Elam – there are only depictions of “monsters”, “demons” and fabulous creatures, a king and courtiers, or processions of warriors and people offering gifts. Achaemenid reliefs have none of the scenes so characteristic of Assyrian art such as hunts, battles, the storming of cities, feasts, depictions of landscapes or various types of religious ceremony.
When analysing Achaemenid monuments we should recall an Egyptian hypostyle hall, the image of the Egyptian winged sun-disc, the Egyptian crown of one of the fabulous creatures on a relief at Pasargadae, the obvious Ionic influence in the form of the columns, and especially the Lydian features in the layout of the palaces and the Urartian techniques of erecting buildings on enormous artificial platforms, as well as the already mentioned Assyrian and Elamite reliefs.
We have already referred to the inscription of King Darius to mark the building of his palace at Susa (written in the three officially accepted languages of Achaemenid Iran: Akkadian, Elamite and Old Persian). It lists a wide variety of materials delivered to Susa from many of the kingdoms subject to the Achaemenids (from the Mediterranean coast as far as India) and a host of craftsmen of all nationalities (Ionians, Carians, Egyptians, Medes, Babylonians, etc.).
Carl Nylander, an expert on Achaemenid art, describes something like the following situation. Having subjugated Media and Asia Minor and destroyed Babylon, the Achaemenid king of kings, Cyrus II, became the ruler of an enormous powerful state. He ordered building to begin at Pasargadae, in view of the new political and religious tasks which confronted him. The buildings of his official residence were to be constructed of stone and decorated with reliefs. Median concepts and techniques were employed,[11] or those used in Assyria and Elam which Cyrus had subjugated. In other instances ready-made traditional forms were lacking, so there was a certain synthesis of other elements. But as all the palaces were to be constructed of stone and at that time such buildings only existed in Asia Minor it was essential to attract stonemasons from Sardis and Ephesus, in addition to those craftsmen schooled in the Mesopotamian and Median traditions who were employed above all as sculptors.
Iranian carpet, c. 1600. Silk and silver wire, 249 × 139 cm. Musée du Louvre, Paris.
Persian carpet.
A school of craftsmen developed at Pasargadae which later flourished at Persepolis; this united various formal languages in a single style which reflected state requirements. In other words, we are faced, in theory, with a pattern similar to that which characterised the formation of early Median art, which was itself a determining factor in this new school.
The Achaemenid age was the first period of a native Persian art from which many objects have survived, as well as written records. Such of its features as are formulated below may well help reconstruct the history of Median art from a few surviving objects and at present a comparison is possible only of general patterns and theories rather than of actual objects.
Thus, first of all, Achaemenid art cannot be characterised any longer as one of direct visual references, despite the colossal number of borrowings – in this instance from prestigious branches of the art of subjugated lands. Such borrowings quickly lose their original meaning. The paradox of Achaemenid art lies in the fact that all, or nearly all, the details of any particular image or any particular architectural construction can be traced back to prototypes of previous ages and various lands, but the image itself, nevertheless, remains distinct from anything known and is specifically Achaemenid.
Secondly, the entire pictorial repertoire of art of this era, established with the participation of craftsmen of various nationalities, fairly rapidly spread down to the minutest details to all the monuments – from reliefs on palaces and kings’ tombs to metalwork, textiles, ornaments, etc. A single imperial Achaemenid style was created and this unified culture can, moreover, be traced from the Indus to the shores of Asia Minor.
The plan of the Apadana at Persepolis, for example, was repeated by Darius at Susa, and in Armenia (at Erebuni) an Urartian temple was rebuilt according to the same plan; the same sort of palace was erected for the Achaemenid satrap at Khwarazm (Kalaly-gyr). In many instances, however, local traditional materials were used instead of stone.
Thirdly, the art of the Achaemenids as we now see it, primarily in the monuments of Pasargadae, Persepolis, Susa, the Behistun rock reliefs and the rock tombs of the Achaemenid kings at Naqsh-e Rustam, as well as in numerous articles of metalwork and glyptics, is in essence intended to proclaim the majesty of royal power and the majesty of the empire. This characteristic in particular also explains the paradoxical selection of themes in Achaemenid art. Only such proclamatory themes interested the Achaemenid monarchs and not tense, dynamic hunting or battle scenes.
There is conscious selection, or a strict pictorial system dictated by specific aims. One might say that the reliefs of Persepolis, for example, are thematically monotonous because Persepolis itself was a ritual city. Apparently the solemn celebrations of the sacred Iranian New Year (Nawruz) were performed here, when the coronation of the king of kings took place. We can thus conclude that it is this ritual that is depicted on the Persepolis reliefs, the sculptural reflection of the myths and images of the ancient Iranians.
These include the struggle of good and evil symbolised in the battle of the king with the monster, festive processions and subjugated nations presenting New Year gifts and tributes to the king of kings. It could be said that the reliefs of Pasargadae
On the architecture of the Median temple, ruler’s residence, and fortifications discovered by archaeologists in the 1960s, see Stronach 1973.
