Sasanian Rock Reliefs

Images of dragon-slaying by Eastern Christian warrior saints allegorise the overthrow of evil forces, a topos that appears first on the eastern confines of the Byzantine Empire in Transcaucasia. Representations of a triumphal rider trampling or slaying a fallen enemy are frequent in antiquity but acquire a moral significance only under the emperor Constantine in the early fourth century – a century later than analogous imagery on the investiture relief of Ardashīr I (r. 224–241) at Naqsh-i Rustam. Close parallels in iconography between the Iranian and the Judaeo-Christian traditions expressing the fundamental juxtaposition between victor and vanquished, and the latter often characterised by ophidian features, may in large part be due to the influence of Iranian dualistic notions, and specifically Zoroastrian eschatological thought systems. Conclusive evidence points to the fact that the iconographic semantics of the medieval Western Asian equestrian dragon-fighter in its heroic as well as saintly incarnation owe much to ancient prototypes that germinated in the syncretistic melting pot of the great Near Eastern religions. The visual representation of a fighter doing battle with a serpent or dragon employs a traditional and enduring iconographical formula of some antiquity and wide diffusion throughout the Near Eastern world. It is part of a stock of popular imagery that survived into medieval times. The fighter takes aim at an ophidian creature using a variety of weapons while the creature is shown either as a lively upright being imbued with fighting spirit, or, more commonly, in the guise of a vanquished being lying on its back beneath the horse's feet with gaping upturned jaws. The idea of connecting the cult and iconography of the Eastern Christian warrior saints with a serpent-dragon can be traced to at least the early seventh century. In the Christian church the dragon motif developed in the eastern confines of Byzantium, where the so-called holy rider vanquishing a dragon was a well-established literary topos and was represented in early wall painting. Depictions are found on portable items, ranging from magical amulets to luxury objects, as well as on sacred architecture, in particular churches and funerary settings. The motif fell on particularly fertile ground in the southern Caucasus region which was part of the pan-Iranian religio-cultural realm and was steeped in its artistic conventions.

Abstract
This article examines the longstanding rivalry of Rome and Parthia, which began as an unintended consequence of Crassus’ decisive defeat at Carrhae in 53 BCE. It synthesizes the accounts and opinions of numerous Graeco-Roman writers from the Augustan Age to late antiquity in order to help illustrate the new and interconnected post-Carrhae world and its legacy. The rivalry of the Romans and Parthians became a primary focus of their foreign policies and drastically expanded their perceptions of the world in which they interacted. Even after the fall of the Parthians to the rebellious Sassanid Persians in the 220s CE, the Romans continued to find their three-century-long rivalry with the Parthians of interest and relevant to the changing world of late antiquity.

Abstract:
Sasanian Empire can be seen as one of the most significant periods of political history. This dynasty abtain a special place not only in politics, but also in the history of art and architecture and study the art of this period,  can reveal dark corners of history and art of ancient Iran. . The art of this period can be known from the early centuries AD, when the  Fartedaran family owned  feudal state and after the extinction of the family until 9 and 10 th century,  can also study the  factors affecting the art, In other words, Sassanid art covers nearly a millennium. One of the most prominent of these arts, art reliefs on the mountains and rocks, which in the course, entirely have been at the service of the Sassanian dynasty of kings and their ideologies, Having a better understanding of the art, not only can help us in the style of art, but also in the history of this period. Relief Darabgerd I, a perfect example of this carvings and there is much disagreement on the identity of the people in it and it also the date of carving. In this paper, we present the geographical location and the size of the reliefs, and continue to investigate and describe the effect as well as the ideas presented by the expert researchers in this subject, and at the conclusion, after analyzing all the data, it is known to belong to ShapurI, that has been carved after the victory of ShapuI over Roman Emperors in 244 AD.

Keywords: Darabgerd I, Shapur I, Artaxerxes, reliefs, the Sassanids.

E. Shavarebi, "The so-called 'Thronfolgerprägungen' of Ardashīr I reconsidered", in: M. C. Caltabiano et al. (eds.), XV International Numismatic Congress Taormina 2015 Proceedings, Roma-Messina: Arbor Sapientiae Editore, 2017, Vol. 1, pp. 627-630.

The shahs of the early Sasanian dynasty faced the challenge of establishing their
legitimacy as the rulers of an imperial polity after rising to power through military
insurrection. The early shahs of the dynasty sought to locate themselves within the
religious, mythic, and historical context to link themselves to the glorious rulers and
dynasties of Iranian myth and history, while simultaneously espousing Mazdean virtue.
Through the concepts of Ērānšahr and Farr, the notion of the territorial unity of the
Mazda-worshiping peoples prescribed in the Avesta and the divinely-bestowed glory of
rulers, respectively, the motivations that underlaid Sasanian statecraft during the first four
generations of the dynasty are contextualized.
The idea of Ērānšahr as a sacrosanct territorial delimitation of the homelands of
the Mazdean peoples was first employed to validate and legitimize the rebellion of the
Sasanians against the Parthian Aškānīān dynasty. After the civil war that established
Ardašīr I as šāhanšāh, the defense of Ērānšahr as both a tangible expanse of territory and
a religious concept was used to justify punitive and retaliatory military action in the west
against the Roman Empire, as well as to acquire the Central Asian holdings of the
Kushan Empire. The claim to the sole possession of Farr was similarly employed to
justify first rebellion, and then conflicts with the Kushan Empire, whose own rulers
claimed Farr from Mazdean divinities.
Establishing the religious, mythic, and historical contexts to which the early
Sasanian dynasts were subject illuminates the motivations for imperial policy and allows
the scrutiny of those policies and actions to transcend the biases inherent in non-Iranian
sources for the period. Furthermore, privileging autochthonous sculptural, epigraphic,and numismatic productions produces an innovative analysis of early Sasanian statecraft
cognizant of, and rooted within, Iranian cultural paradigms.

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some sort of icon for research into armoured cavalry in antiquity. Despite its fragmentary state of preservation, surface damage and the missing right section of the composition, the relief is the most accurate representation of the combat equipment, elements of armour and armament of elite cavalry coming from the territory of the Parthian state. The state of preservation of the battle scene in the relief of Gotarzes at Bīsotūn, does not allow any analysis of the armament (apart from the fact that long

Most of the well known Sasanian forms came from museums and private collection and have no further archaeological data. There are, of course, some exceptions, for example the 3rd century CE Sasanian helmet from Dura Europos (currently held in the Yale University Art Gallery). This is of bandhelme construction, having no lower band and possessing many features not seen in other well-known crossbandhelme Sasanian helmets. These differences led me to look for different forms of Iranian armour, unlike what might be called the then “popular ones”. One of my observations led me to write the current study of lamellar helmets in Iran. But before I setting down my ideas on this extremely interesting topic, I will try to explain some very basic typological characteristics and differences of the main types of lamellar helmet.

E. Shavarebi, "Sakastān in der frühen Sasanidenzeit: Münzprägung und Geschichte", Anabasis: Studia Classica et Orientalia, Vol. 8 (Collectanea Iranica et Asiatica: Iran and Western Asia in Antiquity. New Perspectives, ed. M. J. Olbrycht), 2017, pp. 160-177.

Abstract: In his eastern campaign, Ardashīr I (r. 224–241 AD), the founder of the Sasanian Empire, defeated the Indo-Parthian kingdom and conquered the land of Sakastān. The metallurgical analyses corroborate the possibility that the copper issues of Ardashīr’s coin-type VIII, showing a beardless bust before Ardashīr’s figure on the obverse, were minted in Sakastān after the conquest of the Indo-Parthians by the Sasanians. There are, however, historiographical literature and iconographic evidence leading to an identification of the hitherto unknown beardless bust as Ardashīr’s grand vizier Abarsām – and not a local ruler. This article aims to examine the political and monetary history of Sakastān during the late Parthian and early Sasanian periods to assess the provenance of these coins as well as the possible connection of Abarsām to Sakastān.

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.

The equestrian figures on the relief of Salmās have been commonly identified as Ardašīr I (r. 224-242) and his son, Šāpur I (r. 242-272). The paper is an attempt of novel identification of the sovereigns depicted on the relief, based on iconography and the analyze of literary sources.

Starting from the well-known examples carved on the doorjambs of some buildings on the Persepolis Terrace, this book aims to trace and analyse archaeological evidence of the use of the royal parasol at the court of the Persian Great King and in the wider territories subject to military and political control by the Achaemenid Dynasty.
Imbued with a preeminent symbolic value pertaining to the ideological domain of kingship and retained as a sign of authority par excellence, the use of this peculiar element of the royal paraphernalia was already widespread before the Achaemenid Empire and survived its collapse, when it entered both the secular and religious imagery of Hellenistic and post-Hellenistic Central Asia and Northern India, before returning to Iran in the Late Antiquity.

Partially preserved Himyarite rock relief with depiction of armored rider with his infantry attandant, has been
referred to Sasanian “jousting” reliefs in Nakš e Rostam. This way the missing part has been reconstructed as horizontally
extended rectangle. The relation with Nakš e Rostam is chronologically correct (as the Himyarite object is dated for beginning
of the 4th century)however it varies iconographically. There are more adequately related objects in Partho-Sasanian and
late Roman art which allow reconstructing entire format as closer to square in shape, with either infantry opponent or a beast
being an opponent of the main personage.
The Himyarite relief from Zafar displays several distinctive features shared with some examples of Parthian and Sasanian art, but its relation to the Naqš-ē Rōstam reliefs, as proposed by Yule and Robin, is not convincing for the following reasons:
1. The rider’s long scale armor is analogous to a terracotta plaque from Parthian Babylonia (fig. 9);
2. The infantry attendant with an axe depicted above the horse’s rump recalls the Tang-e Sarvak relief, which shows two foot soldiers and a battle axe (fig. 7);
3. The horseman carries a round shield and raises his right hand to hold his lance as on the Taq-e Bostan relief (fig.12).
4. The original composition of the relief must have been more square than rectangular, with the opponent of the main figure appearing at the right edge.
Thus, the Himyarite sculptors either followed an unknown or unpreserved Iranian iconographic pattern or combined features of different canons. Yule and Robin have pointed out that a simple snaffle is accorded the horse in place of the elaborate and decorative Sasanian bridle— a distinctive element in Sasanian art, but not always clearly rendered in Parthian art, especially in smaller objects.

The socio-political and cultural memory of the Achaemenid (Persian) Empire played a very important role in Antiquity and later ages. This book is the first to systematically chart these multiform ideas and associations over time and to define them in relation to one another, as Persianism. Hellenistic kings, Parthian monarchs, Romans and Sasanians: they all made a lot of meaning through the evolving concept of "Persia", as the twenty-one papers in this rich volume illustrate at length. Persianism underlies the notion of an East-West dichotomy that still pervades modern political rhetoric. In Antiquity and beyond, however, it also functioned in rather different ways, sometimes even as an alternative to Hellenism.

E. Shavarebi, "A Reinterpretation of the Sasanian Relief at Salmas", Iran and the Caucasus, Vol. 18, Issue 2, 2014, pp. 115-133.

Abstract: 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.

This article analyzes the scene of the Sasanian king combating a lion in two rock reliefs. Most Sasanian Bas-reliefs belong to the first 150 years of the dynasty and most are located in modern Fars province. The reliefs typically depict the king’s investiture by a deity (who is usually Ahurā Mazdā, but, in some reliefs, Mithra or Anāhitā), the king with courtiers, the king with his family, the king at war, the king’s triumph over his enemies, and the king fighting and hunting wild animals. Two of the bas-reliefs of the king killing animals show him killing lions. One is located at Sar Mašhad and the other, less-known, is kept in the Haft-Tanān Museum, Shiraz, and was discovered at the foothills of Pahnu (Pahnā) Mount in Dārāb. In the ancient Near East, the lion symbolized power, courage, and ferociousness: whoever could confront it successfully was regarded as powerful and brave; consequently, many kings have been portrayed fighting lions (and other wild animals) during this period.
Key words: Bas-relief, Sasanian, Lion, King as Hunter, Sar Mašhad, Haft-Tanān

The helmet depicted on the capital at Ṭāq-e Bostān is the main evidence for employment of lamellar helmets by the Sasanian warriors. It seems that the decorated helmets of the kind were the marks of high status and were adopted by the Iranian warriors from the steppe peoples, most likely after recovery of control over the territories formerly conquered by the Hephtalites. Steppe nomads popularized this form of military gear throughout Eurasia. Another depictions which seem related to the personage on the capital at Ṭāq-e Bostān are representations on the reverses of the coins of Xusrō II, sometimes named as “Anāhitā” type. Similarity between the coinage and the capital allows to identify the personages as the same. This excludes the goddess as possible portrayed personage. Similarly possibility to identify the personage as Vərəθraγna-Bahrām should be refuted due to connection with Bahrām Čōbīn. If the emissions of the coins with the personage in the lamellar helmet were to commemorate the revenge over the murderers of Emperor Maurice than mentioning the name of Bahrām in positive context would be inappropriate. The most likely solution seems existence of secular system of allegories in Sasanian art which would allow transition of various meanings without the refrence to the yazatas.

The shahs of the early Sasanian dynasty faced the challenge of establishing their legitimacy as the rulers of an imperial polity after rising to power through military insurrection. The early shahs of the dynasty sought to locate themselves within the religious, mythic, and historical context to link themselves to the glorious rulers and dynasties of Iranian myth and history, while simultaneously espousing Mazdean virtue.
Through the concepts of Ērānšahr and Farr, the notion of the territorial unity of the Mazda-worshiping peoples prescribed in the Avesta and the divinely-bestowed glory of rulers, respectively, the motivations that underlaid Sasanian statecraft during the first four generations of the dynasty are contextualized.
The idea of Ērānšahr as a sacrosanct territorial delimitation of the homelands of the Mazdean peoples was first employed to validate and legitimize the rebellion of the Sasanians against the Parthian Aškānīān dynasty. After the civil war that established Ardašīr I as šāhanšāh, the defense of Ērānšahr as both a tangible expanse of territory and
a religious concept was used to justify punitive and retaliatory military action in the west against the Roman Empire, as well as to acquire the Central Asian holdings of the Kushan Empire. The claim to the sole possession of Farr was similarly employed to justify first rebellion, and then conflicts with the Kushan Empire, whose own rulers claimed Farr from Mazdean divinities.
Establishing the religious, mythic, and historical contexts to which the early Sasanian dynasts were subject illuminates the motivations for imperial policy and allows the scrutiny of those policies and actions to transcend the biases inherent in non-Iranian sources for the period. Furthermore, privileging autochthonous sculptural, epigraphic, and numismatic productions produces an innovative analysis of early Sasanian statecraft cognizant of, and rooted within, Iranian cultural paradigms.

Unlike the king himself, the identity of other figures carved out of Sassanid reliefs has mostly been controversial. This study attempts to resolve one of such controversial discussions on the identity of two Sassanid equestrians depicted on the Fīrūzābād I relief and thus on other Ardašīr I's reliefs. In a bid to cast light upon obscured Sassanid genealogical topics, the heraldic concept was took precedence in the course of investigations. To the best of the present author's knowledge, historical texts (mostly Arabic sources), numismatic evidence and visual analysis of ornaments probably related to ranks were all employed for this purpose. In some cases, however, the author was forced into an argumentum ex silentio against his will due to a lack or shortage of historical evidence. There are two premises central to this investigation: first, the fact that the early Sassanids followed the lead of the late Arsacids in several political and cultural aspects, and, second, the existence of a sort of a heraldic system in both early Sassanid and late Arsacid periods.

The article offers a reassessment of the identity of the female figure found on the relief of the Sasanian king Narseh at Naqš-e Rostam. Based on the iconographic analysis of the relief and the discussion of the arguments put forward by A.Sh.Shahbazi and U.Weber, it is concluded that the figure is not a queen but rather a goddess. She is most probably to be identified with the goddess Anāhitā, to whom Narseh was perhaps personally devoted.
This discussion is followed by a critical examination of the pictorial
representations of Anāhitā in the pre-Islamic Iranian world. It is emphasized
that Anāhitā was a western Iranian goddess whose worship was probably
imported to Bactria after this part of the eastern Iranian world came under
the rule of the Sasanian kings.

Scopo di quest'opera è quello di fornire una bibliografia quanto più aggiornata e circostanziata possibile sulla produzione artistica persiana dall'epoca antica fino all'arrivo dei turchi selgiuchidi. Il testo si presenta quindi come una rassegna relativa a un periodo di tempo molto lungo, dalla metà del I millennio a.C. circa alla fine del I millennio d.C. Il volume - probabilmente tra i lavori più esaustivi per ciò che riguarda lo studio della civiltà e dell'arte persiana - può essere collocato tra le pietre miliari del settore. Obiettivo principale è quello di agevolare un'indagine quanto più documentata possibile della fase tardo-antica dell'arte iranica, con particolare riguardo all'epoca sasanide, secondo alcuni una sorta di "età dell'oro" persiana. L'iconografia occupa un ruolo privilegiato all'interno della rassegna in senso ampio e onnicomprensivo, senza però sottrarre importanza a quelli che sono gli elementi di fondo mesopotamici e - a partire da una certa epoca - ellenistici, determinanti per la formazione della cultura iranica antica. Saggio di natura storico-artistica, il lavoro di Compareti è eclettico e minuzioso anche per quanto concerne l'utilizzo delle fonti scritte (mesopotamiche, classiche, medio-iraniche, siriache, cinesi, islamiche, ecc.) atte a proporre identificazioni e letture altrimenti estremamente ardue. Lo studio è preceduto da un'introduzione del noto iranista e islamista Gianroberto Scarcia, da sempre attento testimone di ogni aspetto culturale prodotto in terra d'Iran.

In Intangible Spirits and Graven Images, Michael Shenkar investigates the perception of ancient Iranian deities and their representation in the Iranian cults. This ground-breaking study traces the evolution of the images of these deities, analyses the origin of their iconography, and evaluates their significance. Shenkar also explores the perception of anthropomorphism and aniconism in ancient Iranian religious imagery, with reference to the material evidence and the written sources, and reassesses the value of the Avestan and Middle Persian texts that are traditionally employed to illuminate Iranian religious imagery. In doing so, this book provides important new insights into the religion and culture of ancient Iran prior to the Islamic conquest.

The article provides an overview of the international scientific conference “Age of Empires. Eastern Iran from Achaemenids to Sasanians: History, Archeology, Culture”, dedicated to the memory of the prominent researcher of Central Asia Boris A. Litvinsky, scheduled on the 95th anniversary of his birth and held by the Institute of Oriental Studies RAS in cooperation with the State Museum of Oriental Art in April 16–18, 2018.

A recent find of a lion headed mace from a monastery complex in
Sivas, Turkey, sheds new light on the development and chronology of anthropomorphic
and zoomorphic maces from Kushan and Sasanian times
until the early modern era. The mace from Sivas features a lion-shaped head
with facial features and an interesting curvature. The mace has been dated to
the XIV–XV centuries....

This chapter reviews the religious and mythical allusions embodied in the royal titulature of the Arsacids and Sasanians. The evolution of Sasanian royal ideology and its relationship to that of Rome are surveyed. The influence of Iranian mytho-epic traditions on Sasanian political ideology is discussed against the backdrop of Iran’s military history. The historicity of the Mazdakite revolution and late Sasanian Iran’s confrontation with Byzantium is assessed.

چکیده:
در آزمون دکتری باستان شناسی سال 1392 نقش برجسته « : پرسشی مرتبط با نقوش برجسته ساسانی آورده شده بود بدین شكل که
زمانی که این پرسش را دیدم اولین چیزی که باعث به وجود ؛»؟ جنگ سواران در نقش رستم متعلق به کدامین پادشاه سامانی است
بود! و این که آخر هیچ اثری از شاهان سامانی در این محوطه وجود ندارد، پس » پادشاه سامانی « آمدن علامت سوال شد واژه ی
چگونه می توان چنین پرسشی کرد؟ شاید بتوان ایراد تایپی را توجیهی برای این پرسش دانست؛ اما این پرسش، مشكل اساسی تر
دیگری نیز داشت و آن، این که در محوطه نقش رستم سه نقش برجسته جنگ سواران وجود دارد، و طراح محترم پرسش های
آزمون دکتری باستان شناسی حتی خود به این مهم آگاه نبوده است، در حالی که مسئولیت مهم مورد آزمون و خطا قرار دادن نسل
جدید باستان شناسی بر عهده ی این شخص گذاشته شده است. به هر روی، این پرسش عاملی شد تا نگارنده بر آن شود مقاله ایی
جدا برای هویت شناسی و تاریخ گذاری سه نقش برجسته جنگ سواران در نقش رستم ارائه کند، هر چند پیش از این پژوهش گران
مختلفی در این باره نظریه پردازی کرده اند، اما این سه اثر با نظریات ضد و نقیض و متفاوتی روبرو بوده است، و خوانندگان را دچار
سر درگمی می کند. در محوطه نقش رستم سه نقش برجسته جنگ سواران با شماره های III ، V و VII وجود دارد که دستور
حجاری هر یک از آن ها را یک شاه ساسانی داده است؛ ما در این مقاله ابتدا موقعیت جغرافیایی و وجه تسمیه محوطه نقش رستم را
مورد مطالعه قرار می دهیم، سپس به پیشینه پژوهشی مستشرقان و پژوهشگرانی که از نقش رستم دیدن کرده اند می پردازیم، در
قسمت سوم ابعاد و توصیف هر سه نقش برجسته و رزم جامه های ساسانی را داریم و در بخش سبک شناسی و هویت شناسی، پس از
ارائه نظریات پژوهشگرانی که درباره این سه اثر نظر داده اند، تاریخگذاری و هویت شناسی پیشنهادی خود را ارائه خواهیم کرد. در
پایان می توان این احتمال را داد که نقش برجسته شماره VII به بهرام دوم، نقش برجسته شماره V به هرمزد دوم، و نقش برجسته
شماره III احتمالاً به شاپور سوم تعلق دارد.
كلید واژگان: جنگ سواران، نقش رستم، رزم جامه، بهرام دوم، هرمزد دوم، ساسانیان.