Better known than ceremonial rhyta is the Oxus Treasure, a piece trove of reliefs, figurines , jewelry, and coins made of gold and silver. The treasure is important because it demonstrates the variety of forms in which metal was worked during the early Persian Empire. The gold chariot below demonstrates the precision possible with small sculptures and includes a small votive based on the Egyptian god Bes. Gold chariot from Oxus Treasure, amalgamated from fragments of other objects in the trove.
The griffin-headed bracelet also found in the treasure was once inlaid with enamel and precious stones. Once thought to have originated with the ancient Egyptians, the manner of goldsmithing evident in the amulet was later found in Assyrian art. The style of the animals originated with the Scythians, who inhabited the Steppes of Russia.
Bracelet from the Oxus Treasure : Indentations show where the bracelet once held enamel and stone inlay. Persian art incorporated not only the styles of conquered peoples but also their languages. A large bas relief representing Cyrus the Great as a four-winged guardian figure proclaims his rank and ethnicity as an Achaemenidian in three languages.
The stylized profile pose in which the king stands recalls the dominant Egyptian style of depicting the human body in art. Cyrus is believed to have died in December BCE and was interred in a tomb that further demonstrates the syncretism of Persian art. The load-bearing tomb, pyramidal-roofed, sits atop a geometric mound that resembles a stepped pyramid of Pre-Dynastic Egypt. Despite the razing of the original city centuries ago, the tomb remains largely intact. Tomb of Cyrus the Great : Syncretic attributes include the pyramidal base of the tomb.
The Achaemenid Empire was known for its eclectic style of art and architecture synthesized from many foreign influences between and BCE. Not only was the Achaemenid Dynasty militarily and politically influential, but it also left a long-lasting social and cultural legacy throughout its vast realms.
Among its greatest cultural achievements was the development of Achaemenid art and architecture, which were intimately intertwined, reflected techniques and influences from the many corners of its huge empire, and synthesized different styles to develop a unique Persian style.
Decorative frieze from the palace of Darius the Great at Susa, ca. The vivid colors were preserved, thanks to the ruins being buried underground and protected from the elements. This grew up during the eighth and ninth centuries, roughly concurrent with the era of Irish illuminated manuscripts and became an Iranian speciality. Painting was regarded as an important art under Islam.
Around , several schools of religious art emerged which specialised in the illustration of manuscripts of various types, all illustrated with miniature paintings. This art form, in combination with illumination , grew into a significant artistic tradition in Iran.
The most famous Persian miniature painter was Bihzad , who flourished at the end of the fifteenth century, becoming the head of the Herat Academy of Painting and Calligraphy. His landscape paintings were executed in a realistic style using a vivid colour palette. Among his pupils were several noted painters of the day, including Mirak and Sultan Mohammed. Other painting styles, such as mountain-scapes and hunting scenes became popular during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries with Baghdad, Herat, Samarqand, Bukhara and Tabriz becoming the main art centres.
Later, portrait art became fashionable. From the late s, Persian artists imitated European painting and engraving , leading to a slight weakening of Iranian traditions.
Surviving remains of ancient Persia were first brought to notice by Rabbi Benjamin of Tudela in the 12th century, and subsequently by Sir John Chardin l7th century , Karsten Niebuhr 18th century , Sir Henry Rawlinson and Sir Henry Layard 19th century and by the many travellers to Persia. Flandin and P. Coste were commissioned to make drawings of these remains in Investigation began only in , when M. Dieulafoy settled in Sus a identified by W. Loftus where J. Persia assumed the name of "Iran" under the Sassanids.
The country is made up of a very high plateau with a central salt desert. To the west this plateau runs into the mountains of Armenia and, along the eastern side of Mesopotamia, matches the plateau of Asia Minor which borders Mesopotamia to the north-west.
These two plateaux, cut by small valleys, form the extreme edges of the central Asian plateau known as the 'great steppes'.
The empire of the Achaemenid Persians extended far beyond these boundaries, stretching from the Indus to the Aegean Sea and the Nile. Civilisation grew up in this part of the world at a very early date.
Its existence during the age of Neolithic art , possibly from the 5th millennium, is borne out by the excavated sites at Tepe Hissar, Tepe Sialk pre-'Ubaid culture and, a little later, at Tepe Giyan 'Ubaid culture. The excavation of Susa , the capital of the country of Elam bordering on lower Mesopotamia, has shown that the growth of this civilisation was to be closely dependent on the development of Mesopotamian civilisation.
For details of contemporary culture in Ancient Egypt, please see: Egyptian Architecture c. The great Indo-European migrations of the 3rd millennium brought Aryans, on their way to India by way of Turkestan and the Caucasus, to the Iranian plateau.
Some of them intermarried with the people of the Zagros Mountains, where they took control; soon after, they swept down into Babylonia, and this was the beginning of the Kassite domination that was to last almost until the end of the 2nd millennium.
See also: Hittite art BCE. The Assyrians , in a few centuries, were to reverse the situation. The Medes , a young Iranian warrior tribe like the Scythians and brought up in their tradition, had selected Ecbatana as their capital, while the Persians, members of the same race, descended the slopes of the Iranian plateau.
About the 9th century B. Phraorte then became the leader of the Medes, Mannaeans and Cimmerians, and conquered the Persians. The Scythians, who had taken control of Media, were governed by Cyaxares ; he reorganised the army and, following his alliance with Nabopolassar , founder of the Chaldean dynasty in Babylon, and with the help of nomadic tribes, he destroyed Nineveh in , thereby avenging the Assyrian sack of Susa in Prior to the Scythian invasion the Persians had established a sovereign state under Achaemenes , which was to be reunited under Cambyses I ; his marriage to the daughter of the Median king produced Cyrus , who conquered Media in , then Lydia in and lastly, in , Babylon.
He was succeeded by Cambyses in Cambyses had his brother Smerdis put to death, conquered Egypt and proclaimed himself king and conquered Ethiopia, but because of the Phoenician sailors' lack of cooperation, he was unable to reach Carthage.
On his death a pretender claiming to be Smerdis stirred up the people. Darius I deposed the usurper, crushed the rebellion and launched out to conquer India Later, turning to the north and Europe, he marched as far as the Danube. The rest of the story belongs to Greek history: the Ionian rebellion, the burning of Sardis , the fall of Miletus and finally the first Persian War and the battle of Marathon Darius, who had recognised his son Xerxes as heir to the throne, died at the age of thirty-six.
None of his successors came near to matching his greatness,with the exception of Artaxerxes II Mnemon who signed the peace of Antalcidas , a compensation for Marathon and Salamis.
For a comparison with the history and evolution of Asian art and culture, see: Chinese Art Timeline c. Little has survived of the art of the Medes, and the most important remains come from the Sakkez treasure found to the south of Lake Urmia.
It could just as well be the treasure of a Scythian king. The objects belonging to it can be divided into four groups which reveal the various influences affecting Median art : in the first group can be put a typically Assyrian bracelet adorned with lions carved in relief; the second group, identified as Assyro-Scythian , includes a breast-plate on which a procession of animals is making its way towards a cluster of stylised Sacred Trees.
In actual fact, except for one or two animals in the Scythian style, this shows entirely Assyrian influence. The last two groups are Scythian scabbard and dish decorated with Scythian motifs, notably the lynx and native which can be related to bronzes like those from Luristan.
There are two conflicting theories regarding the various features of this treasure. Godard dates this Assyrian art from the reign of Assurnasirpal 9th century whereas Ghirshman attributes them to the time of Esarhaddon 7th century.
According to the first theory the objects must be attributed to local Mannaean workshops, and it must be assumed that while the Scythians were in this area they adopted certain features out of which they developed their own style.
If we follow Ghirshman's idea, these specimens can be properly attributed to 7th-century Scythians and would thus be the first known examples of their work. Achaemenian art , the youngest art of the ancient Orient, covers two centuries from the middle of the 6th to the middle of the 4th. Examples can be seen in the ruins of Pasargadae , Persepolis and Susa. This was the first settlement on the plateau for which Cyrus was responsible. The palace and various other buildings were set among gardens, and the many columns, surmounted by bulls' heads, show that the ideas behind the apadana were already in full force.
Pasargadae can be described as the forerunner of Achaemenian architecture, but the terrace near Masjid-i-Sulaiman, with its gigantic walls and the ten flights of stairs leading up to it, can be attributed to the Persians and to a period prior to the building of Pasargadae and Persepolis. At Pasargadae there is also a fire temple.
These temples were square towers, built of well-bonded stone with mock loopholes and windows in dark materials; inside, the sacred fire was kept alight by the Magi, who belonged to a Median tribe specially trained in the study and practice of religious ritual. At one time these buildings were thought to be 'towers of silence'. Similar structures can be found near Persepolis and at Naksh-i-Rustam, along with four-sided monuments having ornamental bas-relief battlements, that have been identified as fire altars.
Not far from Pasargadae, at Meshed-i-Murgad, stands the tomb of Cyrus, a rectangular building set on a base of seven stone-courses, with a gabled roof made of flat stone slabs. It can be compared with monuments in Asia Minor. At Naksh-i-Rustam, near Persepolis, are the royal rock-tombs standing one beside the other.
The tomb of Darius Codamannus at Persepolis was never finished. The tombs are hollowed out of the rock on the pattern of the tomb of Da-u-Dokhtar in the province of Fars. The architects carved from the rock itself an imitation of a palace facade with four engaged columns, crowned by 'kneeling bull' capitals which support an entablature decorated with a Greek moulding; above this is carved a line of bulls and lions, on which rests a dais held up by Atlantes; the king, turning towards a fire altar, stands on steps beneath the emblem of Ahura Mazda whose face is inside the circle.
Private tombs have been discovered like the one at Susa in which a woman of high rank, adorned with jewels, was laid in a bronze receptacle. It was here that the Achaemenian genius developed to the full. The barracks and citadel were built on a mountain overlooking a wide plain in the direction of Shiraz. The lower slopes were levelled off for an esplanade on which a virtual city of palaces was built.
Although excavations have now uncovered almost all the buildings, we still have no very clear idea of the purposes for which they were intended, although it would seem that the buildings in question are almost exclusively state or ceremonial edifices. From the walled esplanade a great stairway with a double ramp leads down into the plain; opposite the highest landing are the propylaea of Xerxes, a massive four-sided structure open at each end and along the sides and decorated with colossal human-headed winged bulls.
Around the entrance, spaces left empty with regular hollows cut out of the rock were intended for terrace gardens. What is left of the palace is a veritable skeleton structure of doors and windows hewn from great blocks of stone that served as supporting props for walls that have long since vanished. Here the Egyptian gorge was used, and the king was portrayed on the lateral blocks of stone inside the doorways. On the right side a stairway, decorated with bas-reliefs, led to the apadana of Darius and Xerxes.
The apadana, used as an audience chamber, was a typically Achaemenian structure. Its roof was supported by columns about seventy feet high-fluted, slender shafts that were mostly set on a bell-shaped base and were crowned by typically Achaemenian capitals like the one from Susa which is now in the Louvre.
The lower part of these eighteen-foot-high capitals was made up of volutes, like C's set back to back, which supported the main part of the capital - the forequarters of two kneeling bulls, joined together. Beams rested on the saddle and in turn supported the larger beams of the roof so that some weight was taken by the bulls' heads.
The apadana at Susa had thirty-six columns and covered an area of almost two and a half acres. This chamber at Persepolis had the same number of columns and was surrounded by a single peristyle that had two rows of six columns on three sides.
The old royal cities continued to be important alongside the new capitals. At the ancient Elamite capital of Susa, on a hill, Darius I built his winter residence, with its vast apadana which was restored by Artaxerxes II Mnemon. It was explored by M. Dieulafoy, who retrieved some of its glazed ornamentation, and then by J. The palace was planned on similar lines to the one in Babylonia, with chambers arranged around a rectangular court.
The plastic arts were primarily devoted to the ornamentation of the palaces. Bas-reliefs formed the main part of the Persepolis ornamentation: the double stairway which led on to the terrace and into the palace chambers was decorated with two kinds of bas-relief.
The motif of the lion attacking a bull, a familar device since the earliest period of Mesopotamian art, appeared on the triangular panels of the balustrades; elsewhere, the king 'in majesty' was found. On a dais shaped like a throne, a colossal prototype of the royal Persian throne the Peacock Throne , the king sits in a great chair.
Beneath the dais, lines of figures are carved, whose dress indicates that they belong to the various satrapies. The second type of bas-relief depicts processions of guards, courtiers and tribute-bearers. The artist has taken immense trouble to differentiate the characteristic features of their dress. The Persians wear a single or embattled tiara and long robes whose wide sleeves are adorned with symmetrical folds in imitation of drapery a concession to Greek influence but of a completely uniform treatment.
Over one shoulder they carry a quiver holding a bow and arrows. The Medes, wearing caps, have a short tunic, and trousers, entirely free of folds, caught in at the ankle. They carry daggers with scabbards of the same shape as those of Scythian origin.
The tribute-bearers are distinguished more by the nature of their gifts than by their costume and are preceded by a chamberlain. Other sculptures present within the city of Persepolis were a pair of large bulls with human heads, which flanked the gates leading into the city.
Darius I, the ruler at that time, was also said to have commissioned an enormous relief sculpture carved out of rock complete with an inscription. Within the sculpture, he is portrayed to be conquering his enemies while being watched over by the Gods.
This sculpture thus demonstrated the great influence that Greek art had on the type of sculptures created within the Achaemenid Era. Other important artworks from the First Persian Empire included intricate jewelry which was typically made out of precious metals like gold and gemstones. This complex jewelry went on to illustrate the outstanding level of artistry that existed during this time, which was further emphasized by the swords and drinking horns that were made out of silver and gold.
This led to an uncomplimentary mix of Greek and Iranian motifs in the art that was created, with Greek culture dominating momentarily. However, after the death of Alexander the Great, Persian art fell fully under the influence of the Parthians, which helped resume the development of Persian art and architecture. The Parthians initially existed as semi-nomadic people, with the style of the artwork indicating the many different regions that had come into contact with them.
Despite this diversity present in the sculptures and monuments, art from the Parthian Era retained some basics that were established in previous Achaemenid artworks. The main characteristic found in art from the Parthian Era was an inevitable return to architecture and a frontality in art. Ancient Persian paintings and sculptures no longer featured images of people from their side profile only, as they were replaced with statuary images that confronted viewers head-on.
Parthian art and architecture were said to be greatly influenced by Hellenistic and Mesopotamian forms, which were drawn upon by these nomads to make art that was entirely their own.
For example, the domes that were built took inspiration from stable Roman art but were expanded on by the Parthians. Roman domes were placed on top of structures, whereas Parthian domes were made to rise from the earth directly.
The era of Parthian art eventually reached its peak as the Second Persian Empire, known as the Sassanid Empire, began. Despite existing as a momentary interlude between the two empires, the Parthian Era was incredibly influential to the development of Persian art, as it was continuously referred back to in order to create some of the most important monuments and works of art of the ancient world. The Sasanian Empire was established by Ardashir I c.
Once the Sassanid Era emerged, Ardashir I launched various building projects which have survived the length of time and exist as some of the best examples of Sasanian art today. Two important designs became architectural staples during this period, which were the dome and the minaret. However, what made these designs stand out was that Sasanians abandoned the frontality of sculptures embraced within the Parthian Era and returned to the profile and three-quarter view treatment commonly used in the Achaemenid Era.
Sasanian art focused on decorative stone mosaics and created dishes typically made out of gold and silver that depicted animals and various hunting scenes.
However, possibly the most striking Sasanian art to develop from this era were rock sculptures that were carved out of sharp limestone cliffs. These sculptures were etched out to illustrate the many victories of the various Sassanid leaders at that time.
An important artistic craft that came out of the Second Persian Empire, which is still in use today, was carpet-making and silk-weaving. This skill led to the development of the iconic Persian carpets, which were exported to the West in what is now known as Istanbul and to the East to Turkey. The Sasanian Empire continued to draw on the knowledge and influences of previous artistic eras, as this period fully integrated techniques that worked in the past into their present style to be used and improved upon.
Thus, Sasanian art is easily considered to be the peak of Persian artistic effort, as it illustrated and emphasized the best aspects of the ancient Persian culture into the sculptures and artworks that were created. The architecture that developed during the era of Persian art was incredibly important, as it led the way to great developments which can still be seen today. Out of the various empires that ruled over Persia, the richest collection of architecture is said to be found in the ruins of the Persepolis, which was built during the Achaemenid Era.
Persepolis was considered to be the capital of Iran during the First Persian Empire, with the subsequent empires attempting to emulate the type of architecture that was built. When considering the distinctive characteristics that came out of Persian architecture, the column exists as an important feature.
Although formed after the Greek columns, Persian artists and sculptors added a unique twist to their columns, which made them distinctly their own. Persian columns were thinner, which elongated their sense of verticality, and had an unusual topmost section design, Termed the Persian animal capital, it greatly differed from Greek columns as it featured the front of an animal emerging from both sides of the column.
Additionally, the column differed between the First and Second Persian Empire. Within the Achaemenid Empire, columns featured a post-and-beam support structure, while the Sassanid Empire made use of an arched support construction, inspired by the Romans. Despite the influences taken from both Greek and Roman sculpture, the architecture of Persia remains one of the most remarkable artistic advances due to its own cultural impact throughout the different eras.
One of the most important artistic developments within Persian art was sculpture. Luckily, numerous Persian sculptures have managed to survive as time has gone on, mostly in the form of the stone reliefs that were carved onto the walls of palaces and on the faces of cliffs.
The influences for sculptures varied greatly, with some remaining Persian sculpture pieces demonstrating a strong Mesopotamian influence, while others display strikingly classic European features.
Persian sculpture alternated between quite stylized and very realistic, with the features of a sculpture depending heavily on the culture of influence. Thus, two contrasting aesthetics made up the sculptures found within Persia, yet they were all universally considered to be uniquely Persian sculptures. In addition to stone sculptures, Persia was also responsible for the vast amount of metalwork sculptures that emerged from this era, despite very few of these sculptures surviving the passage of time.
Common forms that were sculpted out of metal included statuettes, jewelry, and rhytons, which were goblets and pitchers that featured an animal type of design. After the fall of the Sassanid Era, Persia was invaded by Arabs and became part of Islam as a result. Due to this, Persian visual arts developed according to the newer Islamic rules, which meant a shift in the artmaking process. One of these rules banned the depiction of three-dimensional living things, which led to an instantaneous decline in the creation of Persian sculpture.
This forced artists to adopt fine painting as their main artistic medium, with artworks becoming more decorative and flatter due to the influence of the Byzantine period. Despite the production of sculpture diminishing, decorative arts which included metalwork, weaving, and ceramics continued to thrive.
In addition to these decorations, mosaics were also widely used in mosques and in other buildings. Another popular style of Persian architecture, which continued in spite of Islamic rule, was creating colored roofs out of blue , red, and green-hued ceramic tiles.
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