A History of the World in 100 Objects - Dr Neil MacGregor [110]
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Plate showing Shapur II
Silver plate, from Iran
AD 309–379
Richard Strauss’s symphonic poem Thus Spake Zarathustra is familiar to many people from its use in the soundtrack of the film 2001: A Space Odyssey. But few of us know what Zarathustra actually did speak, or even who he was. This is perhaps surprising, because Zarathustra – or, as he is more widely known, Zoroaster – was the founder of one of the great religions of the world. For centuries, along with Judaism, Christianity and Islam, Zoroastrianism was one of the four dominant faiths of the Middle East. It was the oldest of the four – the first of all the text-based religions – and it profoundly influenced the other three. There are still significant Zoroastrian communities all over the world, especially in the religion’s homeland, Iran. Indeed, the Islamic Republic today guarantees reserved seats in its parliament for Jews, Christians and Zoroastrians. In the Iran of 2,000 years ago, Zoroastrianism was the state religion of what was then the Middle Eastern superpower.
The object shown here is a dramatic visualization of power and faith in that Iranian empire. It’s a silver dish from the fourth century, and it shows the king apparently out hunting. In fact, he’s keeping the world safe from chaos.
In Rome at that time Christianity had just become the state religion. Almost contemporaneously, in Iran, the Sasanian Dynasty built a highly centralized state in which secular and religious authority were bound together. At its height this Iranian empire stretched from the Euphrates to the Indus – in modern terms, from Syria to Pakistan. For several centuries it was the equal – and the rival – of Rome in the long struggle to control the Middle East. The Sasanian king shown out hunting on this silver dish is Shapur II, who ruled with resounding success for seventy years, from 309 to 379.
It is a shallow silver dish, about the size and the shape of a small frisbee, made of very high-quality silver, and as you move it around you can see that it has highlights in gold. The king sits confidently astride his mount, and on his head he wears a very large crown with what looks like a winged globe on the top of it. Behind him ribbons flutter over the silver, giving an impression of movement. Everything about his dress is rich – pendant earrings, long-sleeved tunic with carefully embroidered shoulder pads, highly decorated trousers and ribboned shoes. It is an elaborate, carefully worked-out ceremonial image of wealth and power.
You might think that this is pretty predictable: kings have always shown themselves overdressed and dominating animals. But this is much more than a conventional display of prowess and privilege. For the Sasanian kings were not just secular rulers: they were agents of god, and Shapur’s full titles emphasize his religious role: ‘the good worshipper of god, Shapur, the king of Iran and non-Iran, of the divine race of God, the King of Kings’. The god here is of course the god of Zoroastrianism, the religion of the state. The historian Tom Holland tells us about the great prophet and poet Zoroaster:
Zoroaster is the very first prophet in the sense that you would describe Moses or Muhammad as a prophet. No one is entirely sure when, or indeed if, he lived, but if he really did exist then he probably lived in the central Asian steppes in around 1000 BC. Gradually over the course of the centuries and then the millennia his teachings became the focus for what we could probably call a Zoroastrian church. This increasingly became the state faith of the Iranian people, and therefore of the Sasanian Empire when it was established.
The teachings of Zoroaster will sound very familiar to anyone who has been brought up as a Jew, a Christian or a Muslim. Zoroaster was the first prophet to teach that the universe is a battleground between rival forces of good and evil.