'Persia and the Persian Question by the Hon. George Nathaniel Curzon, M.P.' [‎218] (289/748)

218
PERSIA
dress, and swords resembling the king's), following the war-horse of
the monarch, which is saddled, but riderless. On the opposite or right-
hand side of the tablet, the upper row shows a wounded prisoner, and
another captive, with his hands tied behind his back, being led along
by Persian attendants ; while in the lower row the foremost figure
holds two decapitated heads in his hands, and is followed by a number
of prisoners and attendants, among whom is seen a child, in suppliant
attitude, probably the son of the executed leader, and a boy riding a
diminutive elephant. Canon Hawlinson, reasoning from the decadent
style of art, and from the fact that the only monarch on the Sassanian
coins who faces the spectator, and leans both hands on a straight
sword, is Chosroes Kushirwan, has no hesitation in attributing the
bas-relief to the latter sovereign. He may be right, though I can see
no ground whatsoever for entitling the sculpture, as he does, 'Chosroes I.
receiving tribute from the Romans,' the figures of the captives neither
having the features nor the dress of Romans, and every indication
tending to show that the bas-relief commemorates some victory over
an Eastern tribe or people, whose chief was slain.
Such are the sculptured tablets of Shapur. It will be seen that
they share both the merits and the faults of the bas-reliefs of ^Naksh-
Artistic i-Rustam. There is a certain lumbering heaviness of style, and
value a lack of spirituality or idealism. On the other hand, as con
temporary likenesses, and as representations of scenes requiring a
certain stateliness and rigidity of form, they are both interesting and
admirable. There are not at Shapur any of those spirited equestrian
combats which lend such variety and distinction to the remains at
Naksh-i-Rustam and Eiruzabad ; but the ceremonial tablets are the
most grandiose existing record of the earlier Sassanian kings. Above
all, it must be remembered that, coming directly after the Parthian or
Arsacid dynasty, when art had been crushed and had disappeared, these
sculptures testify to a renascence of native ability which is both
creditable and surprising.
There remain to be visited and described the great cave and the
image of Shapur I., the sole ancient statue (with the exception of the
mutilated torso, if it still exists, at Tak-i-Bostan) that survives
and statue in the whole of Persia. Several travellers have failed to find
of Shapur cave, the Iliats of the neighbourhood being some
times absent, and not always truthful. It is situated high up in the
face of the left-hand or north-west cliff of the inner valley of Shapur,
a sheer scarp of rock, 700 feet high, towering above it. The ascent is-
extremely long, rough, and fatiguing; and the climber will hardly
arrive at the mouth within three-quarters of an hour of leaving the
valley bottom. In front of the cavern is a great perpendicular mass-
of rock, over which it is almost impossible to scramble without assist-