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28 - PARTHIAN ART
- from PART 7 - ART HISTORY
- Edited by E. Yarshater
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- Book:
- The Cambridge History of Iran
- Published online:
- 28 March 2008
- Print publication:
- 14 April 1983, pp 1025-1054
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Summary
The Macedonian conquest of the Orient (334-323 b.c.) suddenly turned Achaemenian Iran into hellenized Iran. For a better understanding of the effects of this change on the arts, it seems necessary briefly to look back on what Achaemenian art had been. In the 6th century b.c., with the Achaemenians achieving for the first time the political unity of the civilized countries of the Ancient Near East, the arts of this area had reached the last stage of their development. At Pasargadae under Cyrus, at Susa and Persepolis under Darius, great palaces had been raised, whose architecture and decoration reflected and blended the various national traditions of the conquered countries: of Mesopotamia, of Egypt, of Anatolia, and even of the Asiatic Greeks.
The purpose of these great sovereigns had been to provide adequate seats for the “universal”, supranational power which Ahura Mazda had granted them. In spite of their architects heavily borrowing from foreign arts, the palaces may be said to be original creations by the peculiar way in which these foreign elements are associated and combined together into a harmonious and new synthesis. It might be suggested that just as the Achaemenian sovereign assumed the new position of a “King of kings”, Achaemenian art was conceived as an “Art of arts”, drawing, by deliberate choice, from the national arts of the Orient, some techniques, architectural forms, figurative or ornamental motifs, and rejecting no less deliberately other techniques, forms and motifs, which, although traditional in these arts, were not found convenient - an art, in short, “superior” to those national arts by reason of a resolute purpose of borrowing from each only “the best”.
Sir John Marshall and Gandhāra Art
- Daniel Schlumberger
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As the Director of the Archaeological Survey of India for more than thirty years, at a time when new finds of Gandhāra art were constantly pouring in, as the excavator of Taxila, as an excavator in Gandhāra itself, Sir John Marshall has had a unique opportunity of building up first-hand knowledge of Gandhāra art. That his views on this great subject should be made known was most desirable, and the Department of Archaeology in Pakistan is to be thanked for having undertaken to publish this volume.
The illustration is abundant and, nearly all of it, excellent. It consists of 152 photographs, of sufficient size (in happy contrast with most of the pictures in Foucher’s Art grécobouddhique, and in some of Sir John Marshall’s own publications, Taxila included), carefully selected and arranged in order to exemplify the development of .‘the Early School’, as seen by Sir John. Many a piece is here properly reproduced for the first time. As a compendium of good pictures the volume will be most useful.
But the book is far more than just an album of well-chosen photographs, with commentary. As the subtitle says, it is a story. This story is told in twelve chapters. An introduction (Chapter 1) deals with the beginnings of Buddhism in India, and with the problem of how Buddhism fared under the Greek princes of the North-West during the second century B.C.… Among the myriads of Buddhist monuments that are preserved there is not one that can be referred with certainty to Greek authorship in that period (p. 4). Chapter 2 is about the Early Indian school of Art. Then come three chapters on the origins: Chapter 3, The Beginning of Gandhāra art: the Šaka period; Chapter 4, The Renaissance of Hellenistic art under the Parthians and its eflect on Gandhāra art; Chapter 5, Childhood of Gandhāra art. To Adolescence two chapters are devoted (Chapters 6 and 7), to Maturity four: Chapter 8 deals with the Period of Maturity in general; Chapter 9 with the Early Maturity period; the two following ones deal with the Later Maturity period, Chapter 10 with the reliefs, and Chapter 11 is about images and decorative carvings. Chapter 12 gives the conclusions.
Surkh Kotal
- Daniel Schlumberger
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Until 1951,th e great archaeological site we now call Surkh Kotal had completely escaped notice. In the autumn of that year, a friend of mine, Sarwar Nasher Khān, informed me that some stones bearing Greek letters had just been found in Northern Afghanistan by a team of workers engaged in building a new road. A few weeks later, we visited the site. It lay some 15 km. to the north-west of Pul-i Khumri, and some 12 km. to the south of Baghlān, two modem industrial centres in the valley of the Kunduz River. Having asked for the find spot, we were shown a ruined structure bordering the new road, at the bottom of a hill (henceforth called ‘ the acropolis ’) projecting like a promontory into the valley, and we could see at once that this structure was but a part of a large fortified enclosure of irregular shape following the contours of the hill-area. Inside this enclosure could be seen a smaller rectangular enclosure, the centre of which was occupied by a large flat-topped mound. Several architectural fragments were lying about. They were made of the local limestone. They included two big column-bases, and what appeared to be the remains of a mighty stele in alto-relievo, 2.20 m. high. Inquiring about the name of the place, we got several contradictory answers, two things only being clear : (1) that the place was a ‘ Kafir Kala ’, a ‘ Heathen’s Castle ’; and (2) that the saddle or pass connecting the hill with the mountains further west was called Surkh Kotal, ‘ The Red Pass ’. In fact the ruin was anonymous, but ‘ Heathen’s Castle, of the Red Pass ’ could be considered a suitable name. We shortened it into ‘ Surkh Kotal ’, ‘ The Red Pass ’.