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Detail of the elamite rock relief said Kul-e Farah IV: rank of adoring/praying devotes. City of Izeh, Khuzestan province, Iran.
Photo taken by dynamosquito:
The relief is the 4th of a set of 6 carved on rocks and cliffs of a little gorge at the South East of Izeh, ancient elamite city of Ayapir. It was discovered in the 19th century by the british orientalist traveller and archaeologist Austen Henry Layard, This one, as the others of this site dates of the 7-8th centuries BC.
It consists in the representation of either a royal audience, or a religious office, featuring a female character as testify the dressing, haircut, and of a high social rank if not royal as testify the bigger dimensions compared to the other characters. This main character is is surrounded by multiple ranks of praying or adoring devotes, the ranks are carved on all the disposable surfaces left by the rocks and the natural volumes. The position of the ranks is determined by the form of the roc, ranks can then be separated by large natural riffs. Another royal character is shown enthroned.
The carving is not deep, using a very slight volume, enabling the possibility of perspective. Added to such technical factors, the location on a cliff, unprotected by an upper volume, explains why most of the relief is so damaged. Such religious and royal representation is a classic theme in the elamite art of rock reliefs. The disposition in ranks probably inspired the later Persian achaemenian reliefs as one can see in Naqsh-e Rostam or in Persepolis
