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Roman Emperors in the Sassanian Reliefs

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2012

B. C. MacDermot
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Extract

The purpose of this paper is to put forward a new interpretation of five rock-reliefs in the province of Fars, S. Persia, which have been held to commemorate the capture of the Emperor Valerian near Edessa in A.D. 260. These reliefs may be grouped according to the number of Romans present.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Roman Studies , Volume 44 , Issue 1-2 , November 1954 , pp. 76 - 80
Copyright
Copyright © B. C. MacDermot 1954. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

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References

1 Bishapur is the old name of the place now called Shapur, near Kazerun, and is used here to avoid confusion with the kings who are called Shapur. There are six reliefs in a narrow gorge. I number those on the Kazerun side of the river—working upstream—nos. 1 and 2: those on the other side—downstream—nos. 3 to 6.

No. 2 is also illustrated by Herzfeld, Iran in the Ancient East, pl. CXVI, bottom.

2 Illustrated by Herzfeld, o.c., pl. CXVI, top.

3 Herzfeld, , Archaeologische Mitteilungen aus Iran, IX, 1938, 104Google Scholar.

4 Cf. Zonaras, 619.

5 The only photograph of this relief is the very distorted one published by Sir Stein, Aurel, ‘An Archaeological Tour of the Ancient Persis,’ Iraq III, 1936Google Scholar, pl. XVII.

6 Illustrated by Herzfeld, Iran in the Ancient East, pl. CXIV, top.

7 Naqsh-i-Rustam, the site of four Achaemenian tombs and eight—or according to the latest count (Ghirshman, , Artibus Asiae, XIII, 1950, 97Google Scholar) nine—Sassanian reliefs, is about four miles from Persepolis. I number the reliefs from the west. Hard by is the tower-house called the Kaaba-i-Zardusht, an Achaemenian building, upon the walls of which Shapur placed his long inscription.

8 Herzfeld, o.c., pl. CXIII and CXIV, bottom.

9 Travels in Georgia, Persia, etc., 1, 543. Followed by Rawlinson, The Seven Great Monarchies, III, pl. XIII, XIV; Sarre and Herzfeld, Iranische Felsreliefs, 79; and apparently Olmstead, ‘The mid-third Century of the Christian Era,’ Classical Philology, 1942, 398–9.

10 Trig. tyr. 11.

11 So Rostovtzeff, , ‘Res gestae Divi Saporis and Dura,’ Berytus, 1943, n. 56Google Scholar.

12 Cf. Delbrueck, Num. Chron. 1948, 28.

13 Ammianus Marcellinus, XXIII, 5. 3. Malalas, XII, 295.

14 Only Ammianus suggests another date, ‘Gallieni temporibus,’ but this is vague.

15 Sprengling, , Amer. Journ. of Sem. Languages, LVII, 1940, 330, and 341 ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and LVIII, 1041, 169 ff.

16 Herzfeld, , Archaeological History of Iran, 85Google Scholar.

17 Herzfeld, , Iran in the Ancient East, 312Google Scholar.

18 I am assuming that the standing Roman as well as the suppliant is meant to be an emperor since he also wears a wreath.

19 The only available text of the inscription, which exists in two forms of Pahlavi, as well as Greek, is that of Sprengling, , Amer. Journ. of Sem. Lang., LVII, 1940, 360 and 373Google Scholar. The Greek text is here quoted as restored to its original script from Sprengling's latinization by Caratelli, G. Pugliese, La Parola del Passato, II, 1947, 211 ffGoogle Scholar.

20 Berytus, 1943, 30, n. 36; Budge, and King, , The Annals of the Kings of Assyria, I, 69Google Scholar.

21 cf. the marble portrait bust, Bernoulli, , Römische Ikonographie II, 3Google Scholar, plate XXXVIIIb.

22 ibid., pl. XLa. The tip of the nose is modern; cf. Amelung, Die Sculpturen des Vaticanischen Museums (1903), Bd. I, 149, Taf. 20, no. 124, with frontal view.

23 We know from his own inscription (Sprengling, Amer. Jour. of Sent. Lang., 1940, 204) and from that of Shapur (ibid., 414) that this dignitary, the Mobed Kartir, was already prominent in the time of Shapur. The inscription accompanying this figure mentions events in the reign of Bahram II, nearly twenty years later.

24 Thomas, ‘Sassanian Inscriptions,’ Journ. of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1868, 301, n. 2.

25 τὸν πρὸς Πέρσας κατέλυσε πόλεμον, παραχωρήσας αὐτοῖς Μεσοποταμίας καὶ Ἀρμενίας. Zonaras 624. The verbal correspondence between the accounts of Shapur and Zonaras is very striking, and suggests a source relationship.

26 Herzfeld, Archaeological History of Iran, 81.

27 At Firuzabad, Iran in the Ancient East pl. CIX. At Naqsh-i-Rustam, Iranische Felsreliefs, pl. VI, VIII. Ghirshman, , Artibus Asiae XIII, 1950, 88, fig. 4Google Scholar.

28 For trampled bodies—not individualized—compare the cameo of Licinius, Babelon, Camées de la Bibliothéque Nationale, no. 308. For the combination of allegorical and realistic elements on a single sculptured panel, Hamberg, Studies in Roman Imperial Art plate 11.