Page 234 - The Art & Architecture of the Ancient Orient_Neat

I I

THE ART OF ANCIENT PERSIA

had lived to the north of the Black Sea, were driven from their homeland by the
Scythians, horsemen of the Eurasian plains who were themselves under pressure from
the Huns at war with the Chinese at the eastern end of the Steppe belt.9 The Cimmerians
moved into Armenia and crushingly defeated Rusas of Urartu in 714 B.c.', but were
headed off towards Anatolia six years later. They spread havoc throughout the peninsula,
destroyed the Phrygian state, and endangered even Lydia in the west until Gyges de­
feated them in 660 b.c. Other groups of Cimmerians seem at some time to have moved
southwards, into the Zagros mountains which form the border between Persia and Iraq
in Kurdistan and Luristan. But the Scythians also moved into Iran, and stayed for some
considerable time in the area between Media, Urartu, and Mesopotamia, an area extend­
ing southwards from Lake Urmya. The Scythians were a power to reckon with; Hero­
dotus states that they ruled Persia for twenty-eight years.10 The Assyrians were anxious
to enlist them against Urartu and the Medes. One of the Scythian chieftains wished to
marry a daughter of Esarhaddon of Assyria. But in the end he betrayed Assyria and
joined the Medes and the Babylonians in an attack which led to the sack of Nineveh in
612 B.C.
Of events taking place within Iran we know little for certain, but we can imagine their
nature by analogy widi a similar protracted upheaval which destroyed the Roman em­
pire. If we remember the vicissitudes of the Visigoths, from their first appearance on the
north-eastern marches of Byzantium until the fall of their kingdom in Spain, we have
an analogy for the history of the Scythians, Cimmerians, and other new arrivals, fight­
ing among themselves and fighting the native princes, or serving them; gaining power
in existing communities or creating ephemeral dominions of their own. The Scythians,
and probably the Cimmerians, spoke an Indo-European language, like the Medes and
the Persians. Yet we must not think of any of these mobile peoples as homogeneous. It
was a mode of life, not common descent, that kept them togcdier. The Aryan-speaking
people may have been comparatively insignificant in numbers, but they dominated the
natives. In particular they claimed from the local metal-workers a continuous supply of
the weapons, horse-trappings, and other goods which they required. It was this con­
junction of new demands and established native skill that produced a fresh outcrop of
original work in the seventh century in western Persia.
A recent discovery illuminates the tangle of relationships which made up the art of
the period. It was made at Zawiyeh, near Sakkiz in Azerbaijan.11 Sakkiz seems to pre­
serve the name of the Scythians or Sakai,12 which makes it likely diat the modem town
survives on the site of their ephemeral capital in Iran. Here a hoard of gold, silver, and
ivory objects had been buried, a heterogeneous collection, as die history of the Scythi ans
would lead us to expect. There are four groups: Assyrian, Scythian, Assyro-Scythian,
and native. Purely Assyrian are a gold bracelet with snarling lions,13 and a number of
carved ivories showing goats and ‘sacred trees’, scenes of lion-hunts resembling the re­
liefs of Assurbanipal.14 Purely Scythian arc a small gold figure of an ibex15 and the
large silver dish ornamented with gold studs along its rim and measuring fifteen inches
in diameter (Figure 101). To appreciate their importance we must remember that
Scythian ait is best known to us from tombs in south Russia.16 It appears diere as a
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