Page 256 - The Art & Architecture of the Ancient Orient_Neat

TIIE ART OF ANCIENT PERSIA
end of Cyrus’ reign,78 but that is by no means certain and, I think, unlikely. In fact, the .
text written against the reliefs differs from the building inscription of Pasargadac which
we quoted above (p. 216). It reads ‘Cyrus, the great king, the Achacmcnid’. The diver­
gence from the building inscription preserved at the gate-house and also on the pilaster
‘Palace P’ can hardly be accidental; lacking the personal pronoun it is a title rather than
a building-inscription; in other words, it may indicate that the figure depicted is Cyrus.
Such a legend would be comprehensible, if the king who completed the reliefs had been,
not Cyrus, but Darius, and this interpretation seems to me the most probable. Achae-
mcnian kings did habitually complete buildings started by their predecessors. They were,
to a quite unusual degree, conscious of their corporate individuality as the dynasty of the
Achaemcnids. The relief would certainly be more comprehensible, if it were considered
to have been carved after the rock relief which Darius I cut at Bchistun (Plate 178 a),
300 feet above springs of clear water, on the road to Eebatana (Hamadan), the former
capital of the Medes. It was cut in the rocks in the sixth year of his reign. It commemor­
ates the victory of Darius over rebel kings and uses a formula introduced in the third
millennium b.c. in Mesopotamia by Naramsin of Akkad (Plate 44) and continually
adhered to in subsequent centuries. The king places his foot on the neck of Gaumata,
the false Smerdis, while the other insurgents appear shackled before him. Above them
hovers Ahuramazda in the winged disk blessing the king with a gesture.
This rock relief shows the new style only just emerging. It ignores the complex
forms used commonly at Persepolis and Susa, and - in the one ease just referred to - at
Pasargadae. Yet the figures are modelled well in die round (in contrast with Figure 116),
and in some of the garments there is a series of folds, where they arc drawn tight by the
belt; it is but one aspect of the tendency to give to relief a greater plasticity than it had
obtained in Egypt or Assyria. At Persepolis this tendency has found expression in a much
more sophisticated rendering of the drapery by means of a formula (e.g. Plate i8oa) de­
veloped in the sixth century in archaic Greek art and actually adopted from about 525
b.c. onwards. Its most striking feature can be described as a ‘convention’ by which ‘the
loose garments of the Persians are arranged in stacked folds with zigzag edges. On the
outer side of the sleeve, when seen in profile, the stacked folds are obliquely placed with
a zigzag edge in one direction; in the lower part of the garment a bunch of vertical folds,
symmetrically stacked in two directions with a zigzag edge running up and down from
a central pleat, is flanked by curving ridges.’79 This convention was, as has been shown,
in use in Greece from about 525 b.c. until the early years of die fifth century, but the
matter is not - and'never was - one of chronology only.80 In Greece the particular con-
vention represents the solution of a problem which had occupied Greek sculptors from
the end of the seventh century; but the ancient Near East had been precluded from con­
sidering it by the non-plastic conception of relief to which it adhered. In Greece a whole
scries of works can be listed,81 to illustrate the various experiments in the rendering of
the clothes as a separate entity folding round the body, experiments lasting throughout
the sixth century b.c. and leading to the formula we have described. This formula
reached Iran with the Ionian craftsmen employed by Darius. Proof of the activity of
such men 111 Persia has quite recently been published. It consists of two drawings lightly

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