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Updated: May 1, 2025
Under the Parthians and Sassanians, bricks were yellow, oblong, small, and very hard. Details will be found below, The names of various excavated sites are given in brackets as the 'classical' sources of information on certain points, and as the places from which type-antiquities have come to our Museums. Ancient names are in capitals; museums in italics.
I cannot but see degeneracy, and with every age a step further from ancient truth: Rome with less light than Greece; the Sassanians a feebble copy of the Achaemenians: knowledge of the Realities receding ever into the past. A new spirit had been coming in since the beginning of the Christian era, or since the living flame of the last-surviving Mysteries was quenched.
The Khrafcthraghna. Magnificence of the Sassanian Court; the Throne-room, the Seraglio, the Attendants, the Ministers. Midttude of Palaces. Dress of the Monarch: 1, in Peace; 2, in War, Favorite Pastimes of the Kings. Hunting. Maintenance of Paradises. Stag and Boar-hunts. Music. Hawking. Games. Character of the Persian Warfare under the Sassanians. Sassanian Chariots. The Elephant Corps.
The margin, however, shows also in some instances a peculiar device behind the crown, and also a legend, which has been read, but very doubtfully, as "Ormazd." The king's name is given as Iskart or Iskarti. Among the regnal years marked on the reverse have been found the numbers "nineteen" and "twenty." Architecture of the Sassanians. Its Origin. Its Peculiarities. Oblong Square Plan.
The bas-reliefs of the Sassanians are extremely numerous, and though generally rude, and sometimes even grotesque, are not without a certain amount of merit. The reliefs belonging to the time of Sapor I. are generally poor in conception and ill-executed; but in one instance, unless the modern artist has greatly flattered his original, a work of this time is not devoid of some artistic excellence.
"With the accession of the Sassanians, Persia regained much of that power and stability to which she had been so long a stranger.... The improvement in the fine arts at home indicates returning prosperity, and a degree of security unknown since the fall of the Achaemenidae." Fergusson, History of Architecture, vol. i. pp. 381-3, 3d edition.
But, it is in these battle-scenes, as already noticed, that the delineative art of the Sassanians culminates; and it may further be questioned whether the Firuzabad palace is not the finest specimen of their architecture, severe though it be in the character of its ornamentation; so that, even should we surrender the whole of the later works enough will still remain to show that the Sassanians, and the Persians of their day, had merit as artists and builders, a merit the more creditable to them inasmuch as for five centuries they had had no opportunity of cultivating their powers, having been crushed by the domination of a race singularly devoid of artistic aspirations.
The remarkable bas-relief of Artaxerxes described above and figured below in the chapter on the Art of the Sassanians, is accompanied by a bilingual inscription, or perhaps we should say by two bilingual inscriptions, which possess much antiquarian and some historic interest.
Elaborate Decoration at the last-named Palace. Decoration Elsewhere. Arch of Takht-i-Bostan. Sassanian Statuary. Sassanian Bas-reliefs. Estimate of their Artistic Value. Question of the Employment by the Sassanians of Byzantine Artists. General Summary.
The chronicles of the Sassanians, ancient kings of Persia, who extended their empire into the Indies, over all the adjacent islands, and a great way beyond the Ganges, as far as China, acquaint us, that there was formerly a king of that potent family, who was regarded as the most excellent prince of his time.
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