Miniature: Rustam Besieging the Fortress of Kafur, from Firdausis’masterpiece (Shanama or The Book of Kings), c. 1330. Gouache on paper, 21.5 × 13 cm. The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg.
Persian carpets (detail).
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.
Firstly, there is no hard evidence of any incontrovertible link between new forms of pottery or decoration that would be necessarily and exclusively attributable to ethnic changes, rather than to other types of change (technical developments, fashion, cultural influences, etc.). Secondly, as far as burial rites are concerned (a factor apparently more closely bound to a specific ethnic group), the picture also turns out to be unclear throughout Iran. Burial rites are not consistent and vary considerably.
Finally, a closer examination of the facts relating to the “archaeological revolution of the Iron Age” leads to the conclusion that the beginning of this period in no way demonstrates either a general unity of culture or any sudden changes.
It would be far more consistent with the process established by written sources to postulate a gradual accumulation of new characteristics within the material culture, taking place over several centuries.
Disputes about archaeological aspects of the early history of Iran or changes in its pottery and rituals appear to be only indirectly linked to the history of Iranian culture and art. Yet it was due to archaeological work from c. 1950–1970 that an unexpected and remarkably vivid page of ancient Iranian culture was revealed.
There were splendid works of art, above all metalwork, that had hitherto remained completely unknown. Archaeologists date these works with varying degrees of success, but the search for the sources of Iranian culture depends on finding an answer to the questions: who produced these works, the local population or the Iranians?; and what do they depict: local, ancient oriental designs or new Iranian ones?
In the summer of 1958, whilst clearing away the remains of a collapsed ceiling from one of the rooms in the fortress of Hasanlu (in the Lake Urmia region), the archaeologist Robert Dyson came upon a man’s hand, the finger-bones covered with verdigris from the plates of a warrior’s bronze gauntlet. When Dyson took over the excavation of the find and began to brush off the bones, a sliver of gold was suddenly revealed. At first the excavator thought he had a bracelet, but the gold went deeper and deeper until a solid gold bowl, eight inches in height and eight in diameter, was revealed. Careful observation of the two skeletons found with that of the man who had carried the bowl, resulted in the following reconstruction: the bowl “was being carried out of the flaming building by one of three men who were on the second floor at the moment it gave way. The leader of the group fell sprawled forward on his face, his arms spread out before him to break the fall, his iron sword with its handle of gold foil caught beneath his chest. The second man, carrying the gold bowl, fell forward on his right shoulder, his left arm with its gauntlet of bronze buttons flung against the wall; his right arm and the bowl dropped in front of him, his skull crushed in its cap of copper. As he fell his companion following on his left also fell, tripping across the bowl-carrier’s feet and plunging into the debris.”[2]
The fortress of Hasanlu, the headquarters of one of the local rulers, was besieged and sacked, apparently at the end of the 9th century BCE or the very beginning of the 8th century. The gold vessel which the warriors of the palace or temple guard were trying to save was a sacred object. Its dimensions are 20.6 × 28 cm, its weight 950g; around the top are scenes of three deities on chariots, with mules harnessed to two of the chariots and a bull to the other, whilst a priest stands in front of the bull with a vessel in his hand. These probably portray the god of thunder, rain or the sky (water streams from the bull’s jaws), the national god wearing a horned crown, and a sun god with a solar disc and wings. In all there are more than twenty different figures on the vessel – gods, heroes, beasts and monsters, scenes of sheep being sacrificed, a hero battling with a dragon-man, the ritual slaughter of a child, the flight of a girl on an eagle.
In all probability, they illustrate local Hurrian myths (which survive in Hittite versions: “The Divine Kingdom”, “The Songs of Ullikummi”) in which the son of the Hurrian deity Anu, the dragon-slayer Kummarbi, features as the main hero. Iconographic and compositional parallels to the scenes on the vessel are also known in the Hittite reliefs of Malatya and Arslan Tepe and on ancient Assyrian and Babylonian seals. This vessel from Hasanlu is the first of a number of metalwork objects whose technique and style are evidence that a new local school and a large artistic centre had developed in north-western Iran at the end of the 2nd or beginning of the 1st millennium BCE.
Illegal excavations have always taken place in Iran – peasants have dug up ancient monuments and sometimes remarkable works of art have appeared on the market, though unfortunately lacking any scientific documentation. This continues to be the case. Gold and silver goblets, found somewhere in Gilan, near the town of Amlash (the centre of the region in which the Marlik burial site is situated), appeared in the mid-1950s, both in antique shops and in private collections. Marvellous zoomorphic ceramic vessels, depicting either zebu-like bulls or antelopes, have also come up for sale.
In 1962, the Archaeological Service of Iran sent a scientific expedition to Gilvan, about nine miles west of the settlement of Roodbar. The archaeologists discovered 53 graves on the hill of Marlik in the form of four different types of “stone box”. Golden goblets were found, several of them very large, up to 20 cm in height and weighing more than 300g (at one time, one of them was even depicted on modern Iranian banknotes), plus gold and bronze vessels, bronze weapons, parts of horse harnesses, pottery (including a great number of zoomorphic vessels in the shape of zebu-like bulls) and ornaments, etc. So far, however, only preliminary reports of these finds and a spate of