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Near Eastern Art :
Sassanian Seals : Sassanian Seal
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Sassanian Seal - IL.1
Origin: Central Asia
Circa: 200
AD
to 600
AD
Dimensions:
1.25" (3.2cm) high
Collection: Near Eastern Art
Style: Sassanian Art
Medium: Agate
Condition: Very Fine
Additional Information: 3 cm diameter
£8,500.00
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.1)
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