Persian secret treasures: An art once lost, Now remembered

The text below is the excerpt from the book Persian Art (ISBN: 9781783107964), written by Vladimir Lukonin and Anatoly Ivanov, published by Parkstone International.

By no means have all of the suggestions in this essay been proved with a satisfactory degree of certainty. There are a number of questionable hypotheses and the result may well be similar to that in a story told by Jalal al-Din Rumi. The son of a padishah was studying magic and had learned to identify objects without seeing them. The padishah, clasping a jewelled ring in his hand, asked him, “What is this?” The prince decided that the object in the hand was round, was connected with minerals and that it had a hole in the middle. “But what exactly is it?” asked the padishah. After long meditation the prince answered: “A millstone…”.

For over a hundred years, specialist studies have looked at the question of when and by what routes the Iranian peoples, above all the Medes and Persians, first emerged onto the plateau.

The first references to these peoples are found in Assyrian texts of the 9th century BCE (the earliest is an inscription by the Assyrian king Shalmaneser III, c. 843 BCE): despite this, specialists have discovered Iranian names for a number of places and rulers in earlier cuneiform texts.

According to one of the most widely held theories, the settlement of Iranian tribes on the present territory of Iran dates back to about the 11th century BCE, and their migration route (at any rate, the migration route of a significant proportion of them) passed through the Caucasus. Another theory traces the Iranian tribes back to Central Asia and has them subsequently (about the 9th century BCE) advancing towards the western borders of the Iranian plateau. Whatever the case, a new ethnic group gradually penetrated into an immensely varied linguistic environment – into regions where dozens of principalities and small city-states existed side-by-side with lands subjugated to the great empires of antiquity – Assyria and Elam. The Iranian tribes, who were cattle-breeders and farmers, had settled on lands belonging to Assyria, Elam, Manna and Urartu and subsequently became dependent on the rulers of these states.

It would seem that these questions of the routes by which the Iranians entered the plateau and of how they settled among the heterogeneous native population of what is now Iran during the 12th and 11th centuries BCE have only an indirect bearing on the history of the culture and art of Iran. However, it was these very questions which inspired archaeological excavations and research, covering a large area into the pre-Iranian and proto-Iranian period, or, in archaeological terminology, Iran’s Iron Age. As a result of intensive work undertaken in Iran by archaeologists from many countries from the early 1950s almost to the present day, the majority of specialists have come to the conclusion that new tribes appeared in the western provinces of Iran (in the Zagros Mountains) during “Iron Age I” (c. 1300-1000 BCE), bringing about sudden changes within the material culture of this region. Some archaeologists suggest that this invasion was “completely clearcut and dramatic”.

Pottery shows drastic changes. Red or grey earthenware vessels appear in place of painted ones and they adopt new shapes – so-called “teapots”, long-stemmed goblets, “tripods”, etc. Burial customs change. Spacious cemeteries appear beyond the city walls and bodies are buried in “stone boxes” or cists. Later, during the lron Age II (c. 1000-800 BCE) and the Iron Age III (c. 800-550 BCE), gradual changes occur within the confines of this culture, which was in essence introduced wholesale from outside. Its spread throughout the Zagros region was at first limited and appears, in theory, not to contradict the resettlement of Iranian tribes known from written records.

Later (during the Iron Age III), it took over practically the whole of western Iran, and this may be linked to the formation and expansion of the Median and Persian states. However, a detailed study of all the hitherto published material destroys this neat picture.

To get a better insight into the Persian Art, continue this exciting adventure by clicking on:

Ebook

Hardcover

You can explore our another title on Persian Miniatures: