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The engraved gem which forms the subject of this note (plate I, Al, A2, and fig. 1) is part of the collection of Mr. Richard Falkiner of London. I am grateful to him for allowing me to publish it here, and for placing at my disposal the notes which result from his own inquiries. What is known of the history and provenance of the object may be stated in a few words. It was bought by its present owner from a London dealer who had obtained it at auction.
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- Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 30 , Issue 3 , October 1967 , pp. 512 - 525
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- Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies 1967
References
1 University of London. Report by the Principal for 1965–1966, 24.Google Scholar
2 I am grateful to Dr. Marie-Louise Buhl, of the Antiksamlingen, Nationalmuseet, Copenhagen, for the information that that collection now possesses no trace of our gem, either in the form of its impression, or of reference in correspondence.
3 The handbook of engraved gems, London, Bell and Daldy, 1866, 108.Google Scholar
4 ‘Parthian seals’ in Pope, A. V. (ed.), A survey of Persian art, I, 471.Google Scholar
5 cf. Rostovtzeff, M. I., ‘Seleucid Babylonia: bullae and seals of clay with Greek inscriptions’, Yale Classical Studies, III, 1932, 1–91; Supplementum Epigraphicum Qraecum, VII, 12.Google Scholar
6 Herzfeld, E., ‘Notes on the Achaemenid coinage and some Sasanian mint-names’, Transactions of the International Numismatic Congress, 1936, 413–26.Google Scholar
7 Minns, E. H., ‘Parchments of the Parthian period from Avroman in Kurdistan’, Journal of Hellenic Studies, xxxv, 1915, 23.Google Scholar
8 Scerrato, Umberto, ‘A lost city of Seistan’, Illustrated London News, CCXLIX, 29 10 1966, 21.Google Scholar
9 Debevoise, N. C., ‘The essential characteristics of Parthian and Sasanian glyptic art’, Berytus, I, 1934, 12–18.Google Scholar
10 Debevoise, N. C., ‘Parthian seals’ in Pope, A. U. (ed.), A survey of Persian art, I, 471–4.Google Scholar
11 Borisov, A. Ya. and Lukonin, V. G., Sasanidshie gemmï, Leningrad, 1963, 23–30 and 68.Google Scholar
12 The scheme presented here is greatly simplified, and omits minor details and exceptions. For example only three of the five common Sasanian forms of ring-bezel are typically early. Space is lacking here to define the terms employed, and illustrate the shapes and gemstone materials. Indeed the difficulties of illustrating such points on paper, critical though they often are, are largely responsible for their neglect in the past. However, the present terminology should be clear to readers who have first-hand acquaintance with the material, and it is planned to provide full definitions and illustrations in the forthcoming British Museum catalogue of Sasanian seals.
13 There is evidence, direct or indirect, for the concurrent use under the Parthians both of Greek and Aramaic. Greek is found upon the coins; in the rock inscriptions at Bisitun (OGIS, I, 641); in the letter of A.D. 21 from ‘Artabanus III’—who in view of Sellwood, D. C., ‘The Parthian coins of Gotarzes I, Orodes I, and Sinatruces’, Num. Chron., 1962, 73,Google Scholar has now to be styled ‘Artabanus II’—to the citizens of Susa (C. Bradford Welles, Royal correspondence of the Hellenistic period, 299); and the two earliest Avroman parchments (Minns, E. H., ‘Parchments of the Parthian period from Avroman in Kurdistan’, Journal of Hellenic Studies, xxxv, 1915, 22–65).CrossRefGoogle Scholar The ostraca from Nisā are considered by Sznycer, Maurice, ‘Nouveaux ostraca de Nisa’, Semitica, XII, 1962, 126, to be ‘un araméen déjà bien corrompu … à l'état de décomposition, certes, mais pas encore mort’. Even if, with others, we were to regard them as already Parthian, the fact that the ideograms used in this writing system preserve an element of Aramaic is itself evidence for the role of Aramaic in the Parthian organization. There were no doubt differences in the practice of the various provinces, perhaps even of different levels of the administration, which were finally removed when the written form of Parthian came into general use.Google Scholar
14 For the date of the three Avroman parchments, see Henning, W. B. ‘Mitteliranisch’, in Handbuch der Orientalistik, Abt. I, IV. Bd., Iranistik, 1, Linguistik, Leiden, 1958, 29, with the references there cited. The third parchment, there dated to A.D. 53, is the first undisputed example of written Parthian.Google Scholar
15 Mordtmann, A., ‘Studien über geschnittene Steine mit Pehlevi-Inschriften’, ZDMG, XVIII, 1864, 23, and Taf. IV, no. 49.Google Scholar
16 cf. Justi, Ferdinand, Iranisches Namenbuch, 86–7, Duχkhgr;tnōss, Duχtzanān.Google Scholar
17 The reading of this inscription goes back to Thomas, E., ‘Notes introductory to Sassanian mint monograms and gems’, JRAS, XIII, 1852, p. 421,Google Scholar no. 29; he was followed by Horn, P., ZDMQ, XLIV, 1890, p. 664,Google Scholar no. 809 and Justi, F., Iranisches Namenbuch, 63,Google Scholar s.v. Bānū; also p. 62, s.v. Bānū for the survival of the name in NP. The latest discussion is by Boyce, M., BSOAB, xxx, 1, 1967, 36.Google Scholar
18 Pope, A. U. (ed.), A survey of Persian art, IV, 256Google Scholar Z; Löwy, E., ‘Quesiti intorno alia Lupa Capitolina’, Studi Etruschi, VIII, 1934, p. 78, n. 4;Google ScholarKunstschdtze aus Iran, Vienna, 1963, p. 115, no. 504; 7000 anni d'arte iranica, Mailand, 1963, p. 144, no. 492. For the last three references I am obliged to Dr. Rudolf Noll, of the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, as also for the information that the piece was acquired from the collection of Count Wicsay in 1825.Google Scholar
19 Horn, P. and Steindorf, G., Sassanidische Siegelsteine, no. 1354, and plate III.Google Scholar
20 e.g. Gori, Antonio Francesco, Museum, Florentinum, II, Florence, 1731,Google Scholar plate LIV. Cf. Fiirtwangler, A., Die antiken Gemmen, I, plate XXVIII, no. 58;Google ScholarWalters, H. B., Catalogue of the engraved gems and cameos, Greek, Roman and Etruscan, in the British Museum, London, 1926, nos. 983–8.Google Scholar
21 According to a tradition attested in the Dēnkart (7.3.15–19; cf. A. W. Jackson, Zoroaster, 29), Zoroaster as a child was once exposed by ill-wishers in the lair of a she-wolf, which spared and cherished the child. However, the idea of the prophet having been suckled by a wolf, a representative of the Evil Creation, would seem repugnant to a Zoroastrian. The usual interpretation of the text is therefore that the foster-mother was a sheep, which the wolf had permitted to enter her lair. The examples in glyptic cannot, however, be explained simply in terms of this tradition, since two infants are always represented.
22 ‘Nadpisi Artaksiya (Artasesa I), Tsarya Armenii’, Vestnik Drevney Istorii, LII, 1955, 167.Google Scholar
23 As in the Sasanian Parthian of the Ka'ba-yi Zardusht inscription of Shāpūr I, cf. Martin Sprengling, Third-century Iran, p. 8, 1. 17.
24 Campbell Bonner, Studies in magical amulets, 10.
25 Ed. Gottwaldt, p. 23 and: wa-Farīdūnu ahdatha 'l-ruqā, wa-abda'a 'l-tiryāqa min jirmi 'l-afā'ī, wa-assasa 'l-tibba, un-dalla mina 'l-nabāti mā yadfa'u 'l-āfāti 'an ajsāmi dhawī 'l-arwāh ‘and Farēdūn constructed amulets, and introduced the antidote (made) from the body of vipers, and founded medicine, and pointed out those extracts of herbs which keep away pestilence from the bodies of animate beings …’.
26 ‘Two Manichaean magical texts’, BSOAS, XII, 1, 1947, 39–40.Google Scholar Here attention is incidentally called to the occurrence of the name of Farēdūn in Zoroastrian amulets described by Modi, J. J., Charms or amulets for some diseases of the eye, Bombay, 1894.Google Scholar In his Bibliography of important studies on Old Iranian subjects, Tehran, 1950, p. 16, no. 170, Professor Henning mentioned a further paper by Modi, , Two amulets of ancient Persia and an Avesta amulet, Bombay, 1901, but this work has not been accessible to the present author.Google Scholar
I learn from Professor Boyce that in some manuscripts of the Khurda Avesta, and in the service-books used by Irani Zoroastrian priests to-day (see her ‘ātas;-zohr and āb-zōhr’, JRAS, 1966, 3–4, p. 109, n. 3) there is a text called the Afsūn-i Shāh Parēdōn ‘Incantation of King Farēdūn’, which is immediately followed by another called the Afsūn-i Shāh Parēōn ‘Incantation on account of sickness’; and that both texts are still recited in Iran in rituals for the sick.
27 Darmesteter, J., The Zend-Avesta (Sacred Books of the East, XXIII), II, 221.Google Scholar
28 Sir Aurel Stein, Old routes of western Iran, 141 ff., plates 46 and 47.
28 Firdausi, Shāhnāma, ed. Vullers, Leiden, 1877, p. 49, 11. 286–7; the making of the mace is described ‘like the head of a buffalo’ (bi-sān-i sar-i gāv-mēsh); at p. 53, 1. 359, Farēdūn breaks into the stronghold of Zahhāk and smites with it all who oppose him (yakī gurza'ī gāv-paikar sarash/zadī). On p. 54, 1. 382 Farēdūn says he has come ‘to smite the head of Zahhāk with this ox-shaped mace’ (sarash-rā badīn gurza-yī gāv-chihr/bi-kūbam). The weapon is mentioned again on p. 57, 1. 435, and finally, on p. 59, 1. 483, Farēdūn strikes Zahhāk with the mace (badān gurza-yī gāv-sar dast burd/bi-zad bar sarash …). Although several gods and heroes are spoken of as using a mace amongst other weapons, and there are occasional instances of other heroes using an ox-headed mace in late representations of epic scenes (e.g. by a figure probably intended as Rustam on a jade relief, probably of Tīmūrid date, at Longleat in Wiltshire), the latter instances are probably inspired by renderings of Farēdūn, and there is little doubt that our stone represents the scene described in the last line quoted.