Salve,
while doing some research on the ancient Persian costumes and textiles, I went back to the images showing riders and horses at various rock/stone reliefs in Iran carved during the Sassanian Empire period.
Hence, this entry in my blog has been born - bring as many images of the Sassanian horses as I can find in my collections (from various Wikipedia archives, photos and drawings), to have them 'corralled' in one place. Sometimes I find it useful to put all the images of one subject matter next to one another, perhaps some new ideas will have been born out of such compilation.
I am going to start with the drawings, and these are quite extraordinary, since they had been made by famous British traveler, diplomat and draughtsman
Sir Robert Ker Porter, during his travels across the Asia Minor, Turkish 'Arabia,' Georgia and Persia almost 200 years ago - these drawings were published in a two volume account of the travels titled ''
Travels in Georgia, Persia, Armenia, ancient Babylonia, &c. &c. : during the years 1817, 1818, 1819, and 1820''
London 1822.
Sir Robert executed these line drawings with lots of gusto and vibrant skill, and we can see some more detail of tack etc in his drawings than in the photos of the surviving monuments today. The horses are clearly visible(or better say as Sir Robert saw them carved in the rocks in his days): strong, graceful muscular bodies of warhorse, perhaps a Nisaya horse, not unlike the horses shown in VII century Tang Chinese art, eg emperor Tang Tai Zong horses from his mausoleum resemble these a lot. The stallions are collected,
Finally I say stallions because it is known since Herodotus that the Persians rode stallions, a particular equestrian custom they preserved until the modern era.
..
..
..
..
..
..
.. this one particularly interesting - it shows shah Ardashir, the founder of the Sassanian Empire, and his son Shapur I
This another traveler to the Iranian heartland -
Eugene Flandin tomorrow or part 2 if you will
..
On
Livius.org you can quietly pass the time exploring the
Sassanian rock carvings, as the kindly scholar
Jona Lendering organized them according the Sassanian kings' chronology.
Do enjoy
