EXOTIC TASTE : THE LURE OF SASANIAN PERSIA

Striding Lion Mosaic (Antioch)

The Antioch floor mosaics have long served as a useful gauge of iconographic and stylistic tastes and trends (visual and thematic ins and outs, expected as well as unexpected) of the Roman and early Byzantine periods because of their nearly five hundred years of uninterrupted production. A powerful lion on one of the many floors would have counted among the expected representations of the king of beasts had it not been for a long ribbon, identified as a pativ, a Sasanian royal symbol, fluttering around its neck. This Antioch lion is not the familiar animal of the lion hunts and Roman amphitheater games but a captive of the royal hunting preserves of one of the empire’s powerful neighbors and adversaries to the east, the Sasanian Persians.1 The mosaic, assigned to the early fifth century, was made during a rare pause in the centuries-long conflict between the two empires marked by the Sasanian sacking and destruction of Antioch by Shapur I in 256 CE and by Chosroes I in 540 CE.2 It is also an instance of the direct influence of Sasanian art on Roman art. Sasanian Persia was the most important intermediary for luxury goods such as silk and spices reaching Rome from as far as China, and from the early fifth century on it was also a source of both artistic motifs and luxury goods, among which textiles, especially silks, would have been much sought after.

The appearance of the Sasanian motifs in the Roman and Byzantine repertory coincided with the maturing of Sasanian art in the course of the fourth and fifth centuries. The Sasanian state came into existence with the overthrow of the Parthian Arsacids by the founder of the dynasty, Ardashir of Fars, in 224 CE and lasted until its collapse by the advance of Islam in 651. The Sasanian kings ruled over a vast territory between Mesopotamia in the West and the Indus River to the east, which at times included Syria, the Holy Land, and Byzantine Egypt. The Sasanian dynasty, ideologically allied with the ancient Persian line of the Achaemenians, ruled over a highly centralized state in which all the power was in the hands of the divinely chosen kings and the princes of the royal family. The purity of the ideological line was maintained by a powerful Zoroastrian priesthood.3

Sasanian art grew out of the successful merging of several Near Eastern traditions with roots extending back to the Achaemenian period. The Hellenistic-Roman presence is further explained by the direct participation of Roman craftsmen in the creation of Sasanian art. The Hellenized Roman style was brought into Sasanian Persia by the Syrians captured in periodic territorial raids. These raids not only brought plunder and other gains but also led to the founding of the new cities Vek-Andiyok-Shapur of Gundeshapur (Better than Antioch Shapur Built This) and Vek-Andiyok-Khusrau (Better than Antioch Chosroes Built This). The Roman-style floor mosaics and other classically inspired architectural decoration of Bishapur, another city founded by Shapur I, clearly demonstrate the appeal of Roman art to Sasanian kings. A similarly strong Roman overtone has been recognized in the decorative system of Sasanian coinage. The resulting Sasanian art can be best understood as refl ecting both the complex history of the vast Sasanian-controlled territory and receptivity to new and different artistic forms and ideas suitable for assimilation into the dominant culture.4

The extant Sasanian art primarily chronicles royal patronage and communication of the royal ethos and glory, xvarnah, as represented through royal investitures and triumphs. The most important in this respect are the rock reliefs commemorating the investitures and victories of Sasanian rulers. Shapur I’s victories over the Romans, including the capture of Antioch, were celebrated in no less than five reliefs; a trilingual inscription in a sanctuary at Naqs-í Rustam mentions the capture of Antioch. The royal themes are communicated by hierarchical compositions in which the centrally placed king and the god are the largest figures. As the most important expression of the king’s xvarnah, each king wore a distinctive crown, as seen on numerous coin issues. The royal crowns combine the attributes of several protective deities, such as the eagle and wings of Anahita or the ram’s head of the war god Verethragna worn by Shapur II at the siege of Amida in 359.5 The kings and deities also wore multiple pleated ribbons whose fluttering surrounded them with a visual and physical aura.

Concern with royal themes also dominates the imagery of the best-known category of Sasanian art, silver plates: the kings, on foot or mounted and identifiable by their unique crowns, triumph over their prey, be it lions, boars, or tamer rams and wild goats. On several plates a royal banquet is represented (cat.no. 24 [all references are to Antioch). Such plates were produced in royal workshops and functioned as official gifts and display pieces.6

Stucco, the main medium of architectural decoration, is another important source of information for the appearance of Sasanian art. Although Sasanian kings founded many cities, Sasanian architecture is known only through several excavated royal palaces, whose splendor is alluded to in the Byzantine accounts of Emperor Herakleios’s victorious advance against Chosroes II in 626 CE. The palaces, built of brick and rubble masonry, contained multiple courtyards and vaulted areas; throne rooms or audience halls were particularly prominent. In the Parthian tradition, brick walls were profusely decorated with figural and ornamental stucco designs in the form of molded and carved panels. These panels were painted and formed large framed fields of repeat patterns enclosed in multiple borders. Extant animal and figural fragments hint at thematic compositions similar to the early-seventh-century royal hunts of the Taq-i-Bustan rock-cut reliefs of Chosroes II. Most panels, however, consist of alternating geometric and vegetal patterns with figural and animal motifs unique to Sasanian art. Many motifs are associated with Zoroastrian divinities and auspicious powers, amplifying the royal and ceremonial function as well as the sacredness of architectural spaces. The Worcester beribboned ram panel (Antioch, cat. no. 20) and the ram’s protome-and-wings pattern block from Kish (Antioch, cat. no. 20) were used in this way. The ram and wild boar, another common motif in stucco, were sacred animals of the war god Verethragna, while the wings, arranged in pairs, were shared with the goddess Anahita. The fluttering ribbons in both reliefs signal sacred and royal associations.7

Floor mosaics from the palace of Shapur I in Bishapur doubtless belong to the Hellenistic-Roman tradition and might even be the work of craftsmen exiled from Antioch. The heads of maenads and satyrs and other motifs from the Dionysiac thiasos and geometric ornament are especially Roman. The half-nude female musicians and dancers and the richly dressed court ladies, on the other hand, reflect stylistic adjustments to the Sasanian formal mode that correspond to the court and royal representations in other media of Sasanian art.8

Two categories of Sasanian art, the jewelry and rich vestments of Sasanian kings and courtiers, are most frequently commented on by Roman and Byzantine sources. It is in these categories that the art of display and luxury arts can be seen as signs of sociopolitical status within the Sasanian hierarchies. Only a few examples of jewelry survive – rings, necklace pieces, and belts. Representations on Sasanian coins, seals, sculpture, and silver plate are our main sources of what was worn by the Sasanian royalty, nobles, and courtiers.

The art of Sasanian weavers is often mentioned in Roman and Byzantine sources, with the clothing of Persian men in one source described as “gleaming with many shimmering colors.”9 Until recently knowledge of Sasanian textiles was based mainly on literary sources and on the representation of elaborately patterned textiles of the king and the courtiers of the royal hunt reliefs at Taq-i-Bustan; and many textiles, some woolen but mainly silks, found in the Byzantine graves of Antinoë in Egypt were also assumed to be Sasanian primarily on the basis of their exotic patterns and their similarity to the Taq-i-Bustan reliefs.

Comparisons of the late antique weaving techniques has confirmed that many of the Antinoë silks belonged to the costume worn by the Sasanians.10 The silk filament is particularly suitable for dyeing, and this property was fully exploited in these weavings. Because weaving was mechanized, designs with repeated patterns could be produced. The repertory of motifs includes many elements known from Sasanian stucco and silver: rams and rams’ heads, winged horses, birds, especially cocks and peacocks, and senmurws (fantastic creatures). Beaded borders resembling pearls are known from jewelry and the written sources. Specifically Sasanian are composite forms arranged in self-contained units, such as an elaborate flowerlike palmette or an animal arrangement with only the heads and foreparts, finished with a crest motif such as pairs of wings or floral or foliate finials (cat. no. 20). These composite forms may be repeated in rows, alone or combined with framing. The presence of potentially meaningful elements, such as wings, sacred animals, and plants, suggests that even this patterned decoration may have had a significance beyond simple ornamentation. Many of these motifs were imitated in a variety of media outside the Sasanian culture, from floor and wall mosaics to architectural sculpture and silver vessels, in the late Roman and Byzantine periods.

The Sasanian motifs found in late Roman and early Byzantine monuments fall into two categories. One comprises motifs imitating the official royal art using sacred motifs such as wings and animal protomes. This is not surprising because portable luxury objects with royal symbols were exchanged through court gifts and embassies. The Antioch mosaics are among the earliest extant examples in Roman art to carry these “exotic” motifs. The evidence of Sasanian art in Antioch is demonstrated by the mosaic of the beribboned lion, the borders with ram’s heads and wings from two neighboring houses in Daphne (cat. no. 20), and the mosaic of beribboned parrots (cat. no. 25), all three dating  the late fifth or early sixth century. In all of these examples Sasanian elements, such as the fluttering ribbons and ram’s-head protomes with wings, can be identified.

The second category of motifs is more likely found in the patterns of textiles (silks and wools). Many examples of such borrowings exist, especially in Byzantine textiles, which are best found at Byzantine burial sites in Egypt. Many less direct cases of borrowings from Sasanian art are evident in the popular “diaper” patterns, which are rich with floral filling motifs. Such all-over designs may well have been inspired by patterned woven textiles, specifically silks produced by the Sasanian state. The closest example to a putative silk model would be the Louvre mosaic of the beribboned parrots (cat. no. 25). In the case of the parrot mosaic, the parrots’ regular arrangement in the main field undermines their naturalistic appearance. The arrangement of the birds recalls a silk from Antinoë that employs peacocks rather than parrots to similar effect.11

Although Sasanian motifs did not appear in the ornamental repertory of Roman and early Byzantine art until the fifth century, their impact was longlived. The attraction to Persian art can be found in many examples of medieval Byzantine textiles, jewelry, and architectural sculpture.12 The fifth-century vault mosaics in the Saint George Rotunda in Thessaloníki and the architectural ornamentation in the church of Saint Polyeuktos in Constantinople of 528 demonstrate the influence of the Sasanian decorative repertoire on early Byzantine artists. But by far the richest selection of these is found among the fifth-and-sixth-century floor mosaics of Antioch.

Notes

1 Levi 1947, pp. 313–15, pl. 70. On the presence of Sasanian motifs at Antioch, see ibid., and Morey 1938, pp. 41–5.
2 Yarshater 1983, esp. pp. 124–62, 568–92.
3 Ibid., pp. 359–83.
4 For an overview of Sasanian art, see Ghirshman 1962, pp. 119–254; Harper 1978; Musées Royaux d’Art et d’Histoire.
5 Yarshater 1983, pp. 324–6, 345–7. For Shapur II at Amida, see Ammianus Marcellinus 9.1.3.
6 Musées Royaux d’Art et d’Histoire 1993, pp. 95–108; see also Harper 1981.
7 For a useful survey of Sasanian stucco decoration, see Harper 1978, pp. 101–4; see also Kröger 1982.
8 Ghirshman 1962, pp. 140–7, figs. 180–6; see also Musées Royaux d’Art et d’Histoire 1993, pp. 67–9.
9 Ammianus Marcellinus 23.6.84.
10 The best recent survey is Musées Royaux d’Art et d’Histoire 1993, pp. 113–22.
11 Martiniani-Reber 1986, pp. 52–3, no. 19.
12 Mango 1977, pp. 316–21; Grabar 1971, pp. 679–707.

By Anna Gonosová originally published pp.130-133 in "Antioch: The Last Ancient City", Princeton University Press, 2000. This excerpt was taken from "Late Antique and Medieval Art of the Mediterranean World", edited by Eva R. Hoffman, Blackwell Anthologies in Art History, Blackwell Publishing, 2007, USA/UK pp.40-45. Adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa to be posted.

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