48 Matthew P. Canepa considers how the art of the Sasanian Empire in ancient Iran left its mark on the societies that followed

While not as well-known as that of the Achaemenid dynasty ( – BC), the second Persian empire ruled by the Sasanian dynasty (AD – ) is a pivotal but often overlooked period of ancient Western Asian art and archaeological history. Standing at the cusp of the ancient and medieval worlds, the Sasanian empire was the last great Iranian empire to rule over Western Asia before the coming of Islam, extending at its height in the seventh century from the Nile to the Oxus. Over the course of late antiquity, Sasanian art, architecture, and court culture created a new dominant aristocratic common culture in western Eurasia, beguiling their Roman, South Asian, and Chinese contemporaries and deeply imprinting the later Islamic world.

The arts of Sasanian Iran play a central role in two major upcoming exhibitions due to open in London this spring and Los Angeles next year. ‘Epic Iran: Years of Culture’ at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London presents some objects in a survey of Iranian visual and material culture from around BC to the present day, focusing primarily on small objects, manuscripts and textiles as well as modern and contemporary painting and photography. At the Getty Villa in Los Angeles, ‘Persia: Iran and the Classical World’ (scheduled to open in March ), will explore the many exchanges between ancient Iran and the Mediterranean throughout the rise and fall of Iran’s great empires.

Before their rapid ascent to becoming the Iranian kings of kings – an ancient Western Asian imperial title used by the Achaemenids before them – the Sasanians ruled as local kings of the south-western province of Persia amid the ruined palaces and tomb monuments of the first Persian empire. The Sasanians, however, understood their own dynasty to have originated from the ancient and legendary Kayanids, celebrated in the Zoroastrian religion’s sacred texts and in contemporary oral epic traditions. Although the Sasanians were not able to read the Old Persian cuneiform inscriptions, their own Middle Persian inscriptions contain many themes and phrases present in the Achaemenid inscriptions suggesting a robust oral tradition, which amalgamated the historical Achaemenids with Iranian epic