Page 231 - The Art & Architecture of the Ancient Orient_Neat

CHAPTER 12
THE ART OF ANCIENT PERSIA

Introduction
Pee si a alone among the peripheral regions possessed an individual style. This first ap­
pealed m prehistoric times and was never lost, even though it was overshadowed for
long periods by Mesopotamian influences. The predominance of decoration over repre­
sentation winch marks the painted pottery of the fifth millennium is also characteristic
ot Achaememan sculpture of the fifth century b.c. and sets it apart from its Assy
rian and
Greek contemporaries.
Vase-painting was practised throughout Iran in prehistoric times, but it reached per­
fection in the south-west.1 It used so-called geometric designs as well as natural repre­
sentation, but the latter do not appear in their own right, but are integral parts of the
design (Figuie 99). The mountain-goats and hunting dogs, in their stylized forms,
em phasize the roundness or the splaying height of the cups. The fine lined transparent
pattern below the lips of the beakers appears, upon closer inspection, to consist of a row
of long-necked birds. There would be no point in asking which species was intended;
for throughout this phase of painting the association of forms with living creatures
merely imparts a peculiar richness to the design. Even if it were true, as has been sur­
mised - but we have no means of knowing - that some of these animals had a religious
significance, their treatment shows an exclusive concern with decorative potentialities;
hence their austere, stylized, abstract character.
The best-known pottery of this school derives from Susa 2 (Figure 99). At most of die
other sites the style is represented by the mediocre products of ordinary craftsmen, but
at Persepolis, as at Susa, there was a remarkable creative centre, using somewhat different
shapes and more massive designs.3 Yet the essential similarity with the pottery from Susa
is demonstrated by figure 100. The swelling spirals are admirably suited to the conical
shape of the cup; when one turns the cup upside down, one realizes that they are the
horns of two mountain sheep whose heads and bodies are drawn close to the base.
An off-shoot of this Persian school of vase-painting is found at Samarra (Figure 1), and
a debased derivative was made and used by the earliest settlers in southern Mesopotamia,
who had come down from the highlands to Eridu, Al ‘Ubaid, Ur, Warka, and other
sites. But in Sumer vase-painting fell into disuse after the efflorescence of civilization to­
wards the end of the fourdi millennium b.c. In Iran it survived until the beginning of the
first millennium B.C., even though the highlands were under Mesopotamian influence.
Elam the region bordering on southern and central Mesopotamia, was most tior-

It retained its language. It adopted the cylinder seal, and while its seal designs are, on

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