Firuzabad II, is the 1st of the 3 investiture relief attributed to the sasanian king Ardashir Ist, and can be considered as the primary step on the evolution of the definition of the pictural rules determining the way a sasanian king want his investiture to be immortalized by the carving of a rock relief. See a contextual view.

After his victorious revolt against his Parthian rulers, Ardeshir founded the 2nd Persian empire and as all the dynasties witch previously ruled the Iranian plateau, he celebrated his accession to the power and emphasized the legitimacy of such accession by carving a rock relief showing he owned the power from the divine willing. He therefore ordered the carving of an investiture scene at the center of his homeland, the province of Fars, close to is city of Gur located in the vicinity of modern Firuzabad. For this first representation, the sasanian artists carved a scene showing Ardeshir getting the ring of power (called farshiang) from the hand of Ahuramazda. The god holds on his other hand a stick symbolizing the divine power (called barsom). Behind the king, a servant protects the king from the flies, and 3 noblemen are witnessing the investiture, one of them being probably the prince Shapur, future successor of Ardeshir. Being in fact the first try, this carving is interesting as it shows the very first step of the developpement of the royal imaging during the sasanian era: the register is not contained into a complete rectangular frame, as will progressively be in nearly all the future reliefs: the frame here was used to prepare only the left side of the carving. The scene is still pedestrian and isocephalic: the characters are all standing up on the ground, and not yet riding horses, thereby, the head of the king is not upper those of the secondary characters such as the nobles. The scene is not symmetric yet, the king and the god are facing each other, but the attribution of the ring is not at the center of the scene. Later, on Ardashir’s 2nd and 3rd investiture reliefs at Naqsh-e Rajab III and at [#//www.flickr.com/photos/dynamosquito/3115287063/ Naqsh-e Rostam I], the scenes will progressively become symmetric, not isocephalic, and equestrian. This maturation will in fact give the birth to a real canon of the royal imaging, wich will be respected by Ardashir’s successors such as Shapur Ist, or Bahram Ist.

The technical execution is still very plane and the volume is less marked than on later reliefs. The image is still very static, sign that at the begining of the sasanian dynasty, the carving style is still very influenced by the parthian, as also testify the type of baggy trousers looking exactly like the parthian ones (see this parthian relief at behistun on Bijan's stream ). If the carving cannot be considered as mature, this relief shows a major evolvement compared to those made in previous times: Ahuramazda in now represented in a human form being equalized with the king, and not as a winged disk standing above the king as on the Achaemenian reliefs such as Darius’s relief at Behistun (on Bijan’s stream)) : during the sasanian, the mazdean religion has been like never before an instrument of domination and power serving the king, until the point it became the state religion under High priest Kartir. The sasanian relief particularly reflects this evolution.

Thx to [#//www.flickr.com/photos/bijantaravels/ Bijan1351] for posting his precious pictures