Musing about Sasanian rock reliefs

[DBS]

I have been re-reading Canepa's The Two Eyes of the Earth; an art historian's take on the competing Roman and Sasanian promotion of their competing imperial ideologies through art - monumental and portable - and imagery.  All good stuff, but the one area where I think he is overlooking an issue is in his comparison of Roman monumental art, such as the Arch of Galerius, or the base of the obleisk in the Hippodrome at Constantinople, with the rock reliefs of the Shahanshahs, especially Ardashir and Shapur I.  Canepa sees them as both fulfilling the same objective, communicating the glory of the emperor/shahanshah, and indeed drawing inspiration from each other.

The point I think he overlooks is the question of intended audience.  The Arch of Galerius is placed at a key point of access in Thessaloniki to both Galerius' palace and the Hippodrome.  The obelisk in the Constantinople Hippodrome could not be in a more public spot.  Lots of people are going to see the reliefs and potentially be influenced.  All well and good.

In contrast, the Sasanian rock reliefs tend to be in somewhat remote spots.  Now, some of these spots have a history of being used previously by Persian rulers for monumental reliefs, including Achaemenids and Parthians.  So the question equally applies to who were the intended audience for the like of Darius or assorted Mithridates?  Certainly cannot have been a mass audience.

I have no answer myself, save a vague thought that it may be a more spiritual or divine audience.  THis or that spot is something important to a king of kings, whether from his personal history (eg Narses at Paikuli, where he won over the nobles to become shahanshah after decades of waiting), or perhaps because if the Zagros mountains were good enough for Darius, they were good enough for Ardashir; unlike the Romans, perhaps they are no so interested in promoting themselves to the masses, more interested in terms of self validation or justification to Ohrmazd?

Maybe there were mass audience monuments in Ctesiphon, long lost.  Of course, the very existence of Ardashir's and Shapur's new cities populated with deportees, named "Better than Antioch" rather delivered a message as well...

[Adrian Nayler]

In contrast, the Sasanian rock reliefs tend to be in somewhat remote spots.  Now, some of these spots have a history of being used previously by Persian rulers for monumental reliefs, including Achaemenids and Parthians.

Indeed these royal improvements, or defacements (depending upon your ideological perspective), to previous rulers' monumental art stretch further back beyond Achaemenid times.

At Naqsh-e Rustam II, Elamite rock reliefs of the seventeenth century BCE were themselves expanded during the eighth-seventh century BCE before the Sassanids overcut them with the so-called "Grandee relief" of Bahram II in the late-third century CE. (See plate 154 in Álvarez-Mon, J. (2020) 'The Art of Elam ca. 4200-525 BC,' London, Routledge.)

Presumably, much of this activity in the Persian sphere had a great deal to do with imposing or reinforcing a current regime's legitimacy over the previous incumbents, whomever they were and whatever culture they hailed from. In their world view this apparently did not have to necessarily take place in view of the masses.

Adrian.