Persian Art

potentates, or the kings of Media, the first Iranian empire established on this territory in the 670s BCE. Two facts give grounds for considering these objects to have been produced for Median rulers.

The intended recipient of these articles would have to be a king to account for the royal symbols of investiture. In other words, the most likely candidates are kings of a Scythian power settled in the Sacasene province of Transcaucasia and conducting raids from there on Urartu and Assyria, the rulers of a “Scythian kingdom” (one of these, Madias, has already been mentioned) who may have adopted the customs of eastern poten

candidate, and he must be an Iranian. Only in this case would the “Scythian animals” have to feature on his belongings, insofar as they were a totem or emblem of his tribe (in Vladimir Abayev’s opinion, for example, the term saka – the name by which some Scythian tribes were known in the Near East – signifies “stag”).

us assume that Ziwiye and the Kelermes burial mounds date from the same period[8]. Despite an abundance of Urartian and Assyrian motifs, the buyer for whom these articles were intended could have been neither an Assyrian nor an Urartian ruler because the pictorial categories of fabulous beasts are grossly confused, which would have been unacceptable in the unified systems of religious imagery of Assyria and Urartu. Thus we must seek another candi

Thus the question of dating is highly important, but at present it remains unresolved. It is not impossible, of course, that it was the Scythians themselves who brought with them to the Near-East the motif of the stag with legs drawn in and branching antlers, the motif of the panther and the stylised image of the griffin’s head[6]. One cannot, however, point to a single similar object of incontrovertible Scythian provenance

It has been suggested that this style emerged in the eastern steppes, perhaps as early as the late 9th century BCE, and then migrated westwards along with its bearers. Two features of “Scythian stylisation” are also characteristic of Ziwiye imagery. One is the generally closed construction of the animal figures (for example, beasts twisted into a circle), resulting in a distortion and simplification of form, and the other is the consequent construction of designs consisting of several entirely distinct planes of geometrical regularity.

underwings” appear on the bodies of the fabulous creatures and the panther).

There are also purely Assyrian compositions on gold, as on ivory, objects. These include a king with a sword defeating a rampant lion. Apart from this, zoomorphic figures are represented on gold objects and even on fragments of pottery. There is a stag with legs drawn in and branching antlers executed in a typically Scythian style, very close to those on famous objects from Scythian barrows, such as the Kelermes or Melgunov swords or the Kelermes pole-axe; a panther with its paws entwined into a ring, almost the same as the famous Kelermes panther or the panther on the gold facing of the Kelermes mirror; the head of a griffin, identical to that on the Kelermes sword; a mountain ram with legs drawn under it, its pose and the treatment of its body identical to those of the Kelermes stag; and, finally, a hare.

nearly all these objects the composition is based on heraldic principles, symmetrical scenes depicting mythical creatures are displayed on either side of the Tree of Life. There are no less than ten versions of the Tree of Life from Ziwiye, consisting of standard S-shaped curves woven into a complex pattern

of imagery which may be cautiously termed “local”.