Religious Art & Worldviews · Artists
The imperial workshops of Darius and Xerxes — masons from across the empire whose Apadana reliefs process twenty-three nations up the stairs with their gifts.
Tagged: Sculpture Ancient Commemorative Political Achaemenid Art Zoroastrianism
Persepolis was built by paid craftsmen drawn from the whole Achaemenid world — Ionians, Egyptians, Medes, Indians — whose hands scholars can still sort in the stone. Their reliefs are the empire's census and its ideology: every nation ascending in order, unarmed, bearing tribute, under the winged figure of the fravahar.
The pictured Apadana wall runs the length of the audience hall's stair: the carving as constitution.
References
Related Across the Site
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- The Great Stupa at Sanchi Art Entry — The oldest stone stupa in India, begun under Ashoka and crowned with four carved gateways: the reliquary mound as Buddhism's first monumental art, and its first aniconic center.
- The Shiva Linga Art Entry — A polished stone shaft rising from its base, bathed daily in water, milk, and flowers: the aniconic murti of Shiva, worshipped not as a symbol of an absent god but as the god's own form.
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- Käthe Kollwitz Artist — The German artist of grief: her Pietà, enlarged in Berlin's Neue Wache, is Germany's central memorial to the victims of war — a mother holding her dead son, made by a mother who lost hers.