Observations on the Birth and Development of the Sasanian Rock Reliefs Craft Tradition

The group of the Sasanian rock reliefs is one of the most important documents to understand the ideology of the Sasanian dynasty of Iran (from the 3rd to the 7th century AD) because the main role is played by the king, represented in various actions: investiture, or gift of the khwarrah by a deity; homage to the king by the family and dignitaries; king and his entourage; victory and triumph over the king's enemies; individual equestrian battles. Initially, scholars were mainly interested in the interpretation of the motifs represented and the identification of the characters who animated the scenes, based on the comparison with the monetary portraits, identified by a legend. Moreover, the figurative language of the reliefs is not entirely clear, and sometimes it is quite difficult to interpret complex scenes safely. The codes, expressed by the postures, gestures, hairstyles and attributes of the characters, which were clear to contemporaries, often appear enigmatic to us.

However, the purpose of this work is not to discuss the different interpretations proposed for the iconographic motifs, but to study the theme of the birth and development of this or these craft traditions, with a methodology that starts from the assumption that the complex technical aspects underlying their production characterize the works of art in relation to the skills shared by the craftsmen of the different «production centers»: they are linked to a school that keeps a certain tradition alive, with a slow evolution, on which, however, an external agent can act quickly.

Keywords

Iran, the Sasanian dynasty, rock reliefs, tradition craftsmanship, sculpture

Received

28.05.2020

Publication date

22.06.2020

Number of characters

55352

Cite

GOST	Pierfrancesco C. Observations on the Birth and Development of the Sasanian Rock Reliefs Craft Tradition // Vostok. Afro-Aziatskie obshchestva: istoriia i sovremennost – 2020. – Issue 3 C. 82-97 [Electronic resource]. URL: https://vostokoriens.jes.su/S086919080009887-2-1 (circulation date: 20.04.2024). DOI: 10.31857/S086919080009887-2
MLA	Pierfrancesco, Callieri "Observations on the Birth and Development of the Sasanian Rock Reliefs Craft Tradition." Vostok. Afro-Aziatskie obshchestva: istoriia i sovremennost 3 (2020):82-97. DOI: 10.31857/S086919080009887-2
APA	Pierfrancesco C. (2020). Observations on the Birth and Development of the Sasanian Rock Reliefs Craft Tradition. Vostok. Afro-Aziatskie obshchestva: istoriia i sovremennost (3), pp.82-97 DOI: 10.31857/S086919080009887-2

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1	The group of rock reliefs represents one of the most important documents for understanding the ideology of the Sasanian dynasty, the last of the ancient Eastern empires [Harper, 1986, p. 585] but at the same time one of the foundations of the subsequent medieval Islamic civilization.
2	Mainly on account of the richness of their themes and iconographic motifs, a powerful visual counterpart to the textual sources on this dynasty, the large panels of monumental appearance soon have started to arise the interest of scholars.
3	Thirty-nine Sasanian rock reliefs are known: thirty are located in Fars, in the south of the Iranian Plateau, six others are in Taq-e Bostan, near Kermanshah, in the western part of the Plateau; one relief is at Salmas in the West Azerbaijan province of Iran, in the north-western part of the Plateau, while the last relief was discovered in 2002 in Bactria, in northern Afghanistan. Finally, a relief initially in Ray, near Tehran, is known only from 19th century drawings.
4	The reliefs are concentrated in the first two centuries of the dynasty, the 3rd and 4th centuries; no reliefs are known for the 5th and 6th centuries, until the advent of King Khusraw II, at the end of the 6th-first quarter of the 7th century.
5	On the Sasanian rock reliefs, the main role is played by the king. The subjects of the representations are thus: the investiture, or bestowal of the khwarrah – the royal power of divine origin – to the king by a deity; the homage paid to the king by his family and dignitaries; the king and his entourage; the victory and triumph over the king’s enemies; equestrian fights with the king engaged.
6	But unlike the Roman bas-reliefs, which were the part of the urban architecture and celebrated historical actions, the Sasanian rock reliefs were more often sculpted in isolated or at any rate barely accessible places, and in positions that didn’t allow for a close-up view. They were always near a water point – maybe now dried up – because water was considered to be the element of residence of khwarrah [Callieri, 2006(2)].
7	It is therefore clear that their main function was not to visually tell the people important events in the king’s career: for this function the reliefs would need to be easily accessible. On the contrary, the location of the reliefs indicates that they intended to evoke meanings of a spiritual, even magical nature [Vanden Berghe, 1983, p. 58]: they were not testimonies of actual episodes of historical nature but rather symbolic and magical representations, also if they depict events. At the same time, they did not have an expressly religious function, for religious iconography is absent: deities were indeed represented only with the sole function of enhancing royal dignity.
8	Obviously, the aspects that initially captured the researchers’ interest were mainly the interpretation of the motifs represented and the identification of the characters animating the scenes, the latter being rarely completed by inscriptions. Thanks to the comparison with the portraits depicted on coin obverses, on which the Sasanian rulers are always represented with a personal crown and identified by a legend, it was relatively easy to identify the ruler on a large part of the reliefs, and thus to propose interpretations for the various scenes on the basis of the knowledge of the political history of the dynasty.
9	On the other hand, the reliefs’ figurative iconographic language is not self evident, and a safe interpretation of complex scenes at times is difficult [Vanden Berghe, 1980]. The language expressed by the postures, hairstyles and attributes of the characters, which was clear to the contemporaries, often appears enigmatic to modern observers.
10	In spite of the vast bibliography on the subject, we are still far from having reached a broad overall consensus on many of the aspects relating to Sassanid rock reliefs.
11	Numerous recent studies, on isolated reliefs or on specific themes, have brought about sometimes substantial modifications to what can be considered as the communis opinio, expressed by the positions presented by the Belgian archaeologist Louis Vanden Berghe in the catalogue of the 1983 photographic exhibition «Reliefs rupestres de l’Iran ancient» [Vanden Berghe, 1983] and shared by one of the latest overviews on this subject [Canepa, 2013, p. 862–863] .
12	From the point of view of the interpretations of the iconographies of the reliefs, therefore, an overall work of comparative evaluation of the new interpretations against those of the communis opinio, even those hitherto considered to be certain, would be necessary, with preference to a global approach that seeks to identify the codes of the language of the Sasanian reliefs, both at grammatical and syntactical level, as suggested by A. Soudavar [Soudavar, 2009].
13	However, the purpose of the present work is not to discuss the different interpretations proposed for the iconographic motifs, not only because the subject is so vast that it would require a monographic study but also because most of the existing studies have already concentrated onto this subject.

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