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Near Eastern Art :
Sassanian Seals : Sassanian Seal
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Sassanian Seal - IL.39
Origin: Central Asia
Circa: 200
BC
to 600
AD
Collection: Near Eastern Art
Style: Sassanian Art
Medium: Agate
Condition: Very Fine
£2,200.00
Location: Great Britain
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| Description |
The Sasanian Empire by Guitty
Azarpay June 2000 The Sasanian
empire (AD 224-642) was the
creation of the last great Iranian
monarchy before the Arab
conquest of Western Asia in the
seventh century. The Sasanians
are best remembered for their
distinctive cultural expressions
and for the longevity of their more
than four centuries of rule. The
Sasanian age was a dynamic time
of cultural and economic revival
when a new Persian ruling house
in southwestern Iran, like the
Achaemenid Persians of a
thousand years before, extended
its dominion over much of
Western and Central Asia, in
territories that stretched from
Transcaucasia to the Indus. The
Sasanian age was also a time of
intensified trade and exchange,
when Iran served as a major
gateway to the transcontinental
Silk Road that linked the West
with China and the Far East. The
Sasanians came into power when
Ardashir I, a provincial ruler of
Persis, in the Iranian heartland of
present-day Fars province,
defeated his Parthian overlord, to
become the ruler of a new
dynasty in Western Asia named
after an ancestral figure. By the
mid third century, ambitious
Sasanian kings extended Persian
power across almost 2,000 miles,
from the Persian Gulf to the Black
Sea, and from Syria's
Mediterranean shore to
Afghanistan. A principal
achievement of the Sasanian
dynasty is its replacement of
feudal leadership with centralized
authority, topped by the king.
Sasanian Iran, which remained a
highly centralized state for over
400 years, forged a fusion of the
offices of church and state, of
religious authority and secular
rule. As head of state, the
dynasty's founder Ardashir (224-
241), a descendant of the
Zoroastrian priesthood of Fars,
also assumed guardianship of the
sacred fire, the symbol of the
national religion. This symbol is
explicit on Sasanian coins where
the reigning monarch, with his
crown and regalia of office,
appears on the obverse, backed
by the sacred fire, the symbol of
the national religion, on the coin's
reverse. The search for meaning
in Sasanian art requires
consideration of that art's
function, of the ways art is used in
Sasanian society. It is the values
of the Sasanian elite that inspire
Sasanian decorative arts such as
engraved gem or sealstone. This
widespread and ubiquitous
cultural relic was a portable,
functional and often highly valued
article, produced for special
purposes such as the fulfillment of
contracts and for commercial
exchange. Archaeological
evidence of the use of the
Sasanian seal is preserved in
ancient clay impressions found on
documents. Intended as contracts
or for the purposes of trade and
exchange, documents were
tagged with wet lumps of clay
impressed with seals as vouchers.
The seal was originally attached to
strings that once wrapped the
letter or perhaps the covered
goods. The clay seal impression
was to be broken and discarded
only at the time of the use of the
sealed article.
- (IL.39)
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