The Sasanian Reliefs of Naqsh-e Rostam

Below the rock-cut tombs of the Achaemenid kings at Naqsh-e Rostam, near Persepolis in Fars, Sasanian kings of the 3rd and 4th centuries CE carved a series of eight large reliefs. They show the founder Ardashir I receiving his crown from the god Ohrmazd, Shapur I’s triumph over Roman emperors, and later kings in combat or with their courts, and together they form the most important single gallery of early Sasanian royal art.

Why here

When Ardashir I overthrew the last Parthian king in 224, he was a regional ruler from Istakhr, a few kilometres away. Naqsh-e Rostam was already ancient: the cliff held the tombs of Darius I and three later Achaemenid kings, and an Elamite relief far older still. By carving his own image beneath them, Ardashir placed the new dynasty in a landscape of past kingship, whether or not he knew exactly who the Achaemenids had been. His successors kept adding to the cliff for about a century.

The site’s modern name, “picture of Rostam”, comes from later local belief that the carvings showed the hero of the Shahnameh. For the Achaemenid tombs, see the places page on Naqsh-e Rostam, which also covers visiting.

The reliefs one by one

1. The investiture of Ardashir I

The earliest Sasanian relief at the site shows two riders facing each other. On the right, the god Ohrmazd holds out a beribboned ring, the symbol of kingship; on the left, Ardashir reaches to take it. Under the hooves of Ohrmazd’s horse lies Ahriman, the evil spirit, with snakes in his hair; under Ardashir’s lies the defeated Parthian king Ardavan IV. The meaning is plain: the victory over the Parthians mirrors the god’s victory over evil. Short labels on the horses, in Middle Persian, Parthian and Greek, name the figures. It is one of the earliest Sasanian investiture scenes and the model for many later ones (see Ardashir I).

2. Shapur I’s triumph over Rome

The most famous relief shows Shapur I on horseback. A Roman in a cloak kneels before him, and the king grips the wrist of a standing Roman. They are usually identified as Philip the Arab, who paid for peace in 244, and Valerian, captured in 260. The scene compresses twenty years of victories into one image. Its history and the debate over the figures are told on the page on the Battle of Edessa and the capture of Valerian.

3. Bahram II and his court

Bahram II had part of the old Elamite relief cut away and replaced with a frontal figure of himself, hands on a long sword, flanked by family members and nobles shown from the chest up. Traces of the Elamite carving survive at the edges. See Bahram II for this king’s unusual family-centred art.

4 and 5. Equestrian combats below the tombs

Below the tomb usually assigned to Darius II, and below that of Darius I, are three jousting scenes in two reliefs: a Sasanian king on horseback driving his lance into a mounted enemy. Below Darius I’s tomb two such scenes are stacked one above the other. Many scholars attribute them to Bahram II, fighting a Roman in one panel and an eastern enemy in another, but the attributions rest on crown shapes and are debated. These combat reliefs were new in Sasanian art and reflect the importance of the heavily armoured cavalryman.

6. The investiture of Narseh

Narseh, who seized the throne in 293, is shown standing to receive the ring of kingship not from Ohrmazd but from a woman wearing a crown, usually identified as the goddess Anahita. Since the Sasanian family had served at the Anahita temple of Istakhr, this choice may stress Narseh’s claim to the family’s traditions after the line of Bahram I. A smaller figure behind him may be his heir.

7. Hormizd II unhorsing an enemy

Below one of the tombs, a king identified as Hormizd II (r. 303–309) knocks an enemy from his horse with his lance. The enemy has not been securely identified; one suggestion is an Armenian prince named Papak. As with the other jousts, the scene is about personal valour.

8. A damaged late relief

A badly worn relief, sometimes attributed to Shapur II, appears to be the last royal carving at the site. After the 4th century kings stopped carving reliefs in Fars; the later monuments of Taq-e Bostan are in the west, near Kermanshah.

Inscriptions on the cliff

The reliefs are not the only Sasanian marks at Naqsh-e Rostam. Opposite the tombs stands the Achaemenid stone tower known as the Ka’ba-ye Zartosht, on whose walls Shapur I had his long trilingual account of his wars inscribed (see the Ka’ba-ye Zartosht inscription). Later the priest Kartir added his own Middle Persian text to the same building, and another version on the cliff. Few sites anywhere combine royal images and royal texts so closely.

Carving and style

The early reliefs are carved in high relief on prepared panels of the cliff face. Figures are large, the king often the tallest, and details such as ribbons, crowns, beards and the folds of trousers are rendered with care. Crowns matter most for historians: each Sasanian king had his own crown, known from coins, and it is mainly by matching crowns that modern scholars identify who is who. Where the crowns are worn or the king may have reused an older design, identifications become uncertain.

Naqsh-e Rajab nearby

A short distance away, in a small rock recess called Naqsh-e Rajab, are four more early Sasanian reliefs: another investiture of Ardashir I, an investiture of Shapur I, Shapur on horseback followed by his nobles, and the bust of Kartir beside his inscription. For the wider story of Sasanian rock carving and silverwork, see Sasanian art: silver, reliefs and silk.