Sculpting and Enacting a Topography of Power

Sculpting and Enacting a Topography of Power:
The Ritual, Social, and Environmental Contexts of Sasanian Rock Reliefs

Matthew Canepa
Assistant Professor, Ancient Iran and the Mediterranean World,
College of Charleston, Art History.

Although prevalent throughout the ancient Near East and South Asia, in ancient Iran monumental rock reliefs became one of the most privileged expressions of royal power for millennia of kings of kings, local rulers and priests. By late antiquity, a landscape of power sculpted and shaped by the accumulated efforts of centuries emerged both as a durable collection of cultural practices and a constant challenge and stimulation for succeeding dynasties- Iranian or otherwise. The Sasanian dynasty (224-651) embraced this genre enthusiastically and, once in power, set out with a vengeance to focus this landscape of power discretely around their dynasty. Previous efforts at interpreting these reliefs have largely treated them as panel paintings, divorced from their physical place. In addition, Iran¹s tulmultuous history has left us a dearth of textual evidence and a fragmentary art and architectural heritage making rock reliefs one of the few unquestionably authentic primary sources. By necessity these reliefs have often been mined to provide data for studies of Iranian cultural, political and art history. The overall effect has been to dissect the reliefs from their natural environment and cultural context. While the basic medium, compositional and iconographic similarities imply a certain uniformity between reliefs, I argue that these overarching elements must be understood against the individual contexts afforded by each site at which a rock relief was created. My goal in this talk, therefore, is to establish a foundation for a new approach to the study of Sasanian rock reliefs that explores the deeper environmental and urban contexts of the reliefs and, where useful, engages theoretical material in the humanities and social sciences.