Ancient Iranian Decorative Textiles

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ISSN 2152-7237 (print)
ISSN 2153-2060 (online)
The
Silk Road
Volume 13 2015
Contents
In Memoriam: Khaled al-Asaad, 1932-2015 ............................................................................................ [v]
Safe Journey! A Very Short History of Shoes from Korean Tombs
by Youngsook Pak ............................................................................................................... 1
The Emergence of Light: A Re-interpretation of the Painting of Mani’s Birth
in a Japanese Collection
by Wang Yuanyuan 王媛媛 ............................................................................................... 17
When Herakles Followed the Buddha: Power, Protection and Patronage in Gandharan Art
by Jonathan Homrighausen .............................................................................................. 26
Ancient Iranian Decorative Textiles: New Evidence from Archaeological Investigations
and Private Collections
by Matteo Compareti ......................................................................................................... 36
Nomads and Oasis Cities: Central Asia from the 9th to the 13th Century
by Xinru Liu ........................................................................................................................ 45
Maes Titianus, Ptolemy, and the “Stone Tower” on the Great Silk Road
by Igor’ Vasil’evich P’iankov ............................................................................................ 60
The Location of Ptolemy’s Stone Tower: the Case for Sulaiman-Too in Osh
by Riaz Dean ....................................................................................................................... 75
The Test Excavation of the Nanhai No. 1 Shipwreck in 2011: a Detail Leading to the Whole
by Xu Yongjie 许永杰 .......................................................................................................... 84
The Archaeological Assessment of Pajadagh Fortress (Qal’a-e Tashvir), Tashvir Village,
Tarom County, Zanjan Province
by Ali Nourallahi ............................................................................................................... 88
Khermen Denzh Town in Mongolia
by Nikolai N. Kradin, Aleksandr L. Ivliev, Ayudai Ochir, Lkhagvasuren Erdenebold,
Sergei Vasiutin, Svetlana Satantseva, and Evgenii V. Kovychev ........................... 95
The Chinese Inscription on the Lacquerware Unearthed from Tomb 20,
Gol Mod I Site, Mongolia
by Chimiddorj Yeruul-Erdene and Ikue Otani ............................................................. 104
The Ancient Tamga-Signs of Southeast Kazakhstan and Their Owners: The Route from East to
West in the 2nd Century BCE – 2nd Century CE
by Alexei E. Rogozhinskii and Sergey A. Yatsenko ................................................................ 109
(continued)
“The Bridge between Eastern and Western Cultures”

Museum Collections: Assyrian-style Seals of the Silk Road and Their Relationship to Ties
between Iran and Mesopotamia
by Amir Saed Mucheshi .................................................................................... 126
“I was born a dervish and a Flying Dutchman.” Sven Hedin and Ferdinand von Richthofen:
Introduction and Presentation of Unpublished Letters
by
Felix de Montety ............................................................................................ 135
Museum Collections II: Berlin’s “Turfan Collection” Moves to the Center
by Lilla Russell-Smith ......................................................................................... 153
The Mezquita: A Photo Essay
by Daniel C. Waugh ............................................................................................ 158
Reviews
The Dawn of Tibet [Bellezza], by Sam van Schaik ...................................................................................................... 169
[The following all by Daniel C. Waugh:]
From Yuan to Modern China and Mongolia [Rossabi] ................................................................................................. 171
Pamirian Crossroads: Kirghiz and Wakhi of High Asia [Kreutzmann] , with a photo supplement
“Glimpses of the Pamirian Crossroads” ....................................................................................... 173
Akademicheskaia arkheologiia na beregakh Nevy ............................................................................................................ 178
The Silk Road: Interwoven History. Vol. I. Long-distance Trade, Culture, and Society [ed. Walter and Adler] ....... 179
Life along the Silk Road, 2nd ed. [Whiteld] ................................................................................................................. 180
Book notices (written/compiled by Daniel C.Waugh) .......................................................................................... 182
Shelach-Lavi. The Archaeology of Early China.
Vadetskaia et al. Svod pamiatnikov Afanas’evskoi kul’tury.
Selegin and Shelepova. Tiurkskie ritual’nye kompleksy Altaia.
Zhuravlev et al. Iuvelirnye izdeliia iz kurgana Kul’-Oba v so-
branii Istoricheskogo Muzeia.
Minasian. Metalloobrabotka v drevnosti i srednevekov’e.
Jacobs. Reorienting the East. Jewish Travelers to the Medieval
Muslim World.
Kradin. Nomads of Inner Asia in Transition.
Kradin and Ivliev. Istoriia Kidan’skoi imperii Liao (907-1125).
Antonov. Srednevekovye bashkiry.
Rossiiskie ekspeditsii v Tsentral’nuiu Aziiu. Organizatsiia,
polevye issleovaniia, kollektsii 1870–1920-e gg.
Lin. Building a Sacred Mountain: The Buddhist Architecture of
China’s Mount Wutai.
Elikhina. “Obitel’ miloserdiia”. Iskusstvo tibetskogo buddizma:
katalog vystavki.
Complexity of Interaction along the Eurasian Steppe Zone in the
First Millennium CE. Ed. Bemmann; Schmauder.
Nomads as Agents of Cultural Change. The Mongols and Their
Eurasian Predecessors. Ed. Amitai; Biran.
Journal of Asian History. 49 (2015), 1/2. Special Edition Ed.
Kauz: Chinese and Asian Geographical and Cartographical Views
on Central Asia and Its Adjacent Regions.
Bulletin of the Asia Institute. N.S./Vol. 24 (2010) [2014].
Bulletin of the Asia Institute. N.S./Vol. 25 (2011) [2015].
Journal of Inner Asian Art and Archaeology 6/2011 [2015].
Color Plates I – VIII ....................................................................................................................................... after p. 192
ii
Cover: The people of ancient Palmyra: funerary sculptures from the Palmyra tombs, as displayed in the
following museums: the Palmyra Museum, the National Museum (Damascus), the Louvre (Paris), the
British Museum (London), the Ashmolean Museum (Oxford), the Altes Museum (Berlin), the Glyptote-
ket (Copenhagen), the Archaeological Museum (Istanbul), and the Archaeological Museum (Gaziantep).
Photographs all by Daniel C. Waugh.

ReadeRs aRe stRongly encouRaged to view the online veRsion of the jouRnal,
since so many of the illustRations aRe in coloR and can be best appReciated that way.
The Silk Road is an annual publication of the Silkroad Foundation supplied free of charge in a limited print run to academic
libraries. We cannot accept individual subscriptions. Each issue can be viewed and downloaded free of charge at: <http://www.
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iii

In the last few years, very interesting textiles have
appeared on the Internet. Since they all come from
the antiquities market, they are accompanied only by
short descriptions, without any information about
provenance and chronology. Authenticity is the main
problem with all these textiles, and fake artifacts rep-
resent a very big problem for buyers and dealers.
However, just on the basis of iconographic analysis,
some suggestions can be advanced.
Among the most interesting textiles that appeared on
the Internet, two are particularly intriguing because
of their typically Iranian decoration [Figs. 1, 2; Color
Plate II].1 So-called “pearl roundels” with a fantastic
animal inside constitute the main patterns. This fan-
tastic animal is a winged composite creature normally
called simurgh in Farsi (Pahlavi senmurv, Avestan sae-
na maregha). In the present paper, I would like to focus
on this type of iconography, leaving technical issues
to experts in this very specialist eld.
Before discussing possible origins and chronology
for those textiles, a short description of the two spec-
imens and the composite creature called simurgh is
necessary. The rst specimen is a silk fragment mea-
suring 42 x 76 cm that was probably part of a saddle.
A couple of pearl roundels containing one single
Ancient irAniAn DecorAtive textiles:
new eviDence from
ArchAeologicAl investigAtions AnD PrivAte collections
Matteo Compareti
University of California, Berkeley
Fig. 1 (below). Silk textile.
Fig. 2 (right). Cotton shirt with silk lining.
Photos courtesy of Carlo Cristi.
The Silk Road 13 (2015): 36 – 44 + Color Plate II 36 Cupyright © 2015 Matteo Compareti
Cupyright © 2015 The Silkroad Foundation

composite creature embellishes the central part of the
textile while in the upper and lower parts is a row of
birds with a vegetal element in the beak alternating
with galloping rams [Fig. 1]. According to information
that I was able to obtain from the dealer, 14C testing
dates the specimen to the 9th–10th century. The second
specimen constitutes only a portion of an extremely
well-preserved shirt and is embellished with pearl
roundels containing pairs of composite creatures fac-
ing each other on a vegetal pedestal [Fig. 2]. Accord-
ing to 14C testing, this second textile should be dated to
the beginning of the 8th–end of the 9th century. Several
elements on the bodies of the animals but also the rib-
bons attached to the neck of the bird in the rst textile
fragment and the vegetal pedestal in both of them call
to mind typical Iranian decorative elements that have
been considered in the past to be specically Sasanian.
However, these same elements were adopted also by
Sogdian and Byzantine artists and during the Islamic
period. For example, the vegetal pedestal seems to be
a development of the spread wings motif to be found
on one single Sasanian textile (possibly part of a tap-
estry) and on late Sasanian coinage. In fact, late Sasa-
nian sovereigns can be observed on their coins wear-
ing a crown embellished with spread wings used as a
pedestal for astronomical themes.2 These same wings
were later transformed into vegetal decorations, and,
for this reason, those textiles should be dated to the
Islamic era. Also the image of two fantastic creatures
confronting one another points to the Islamic period,
since in Sasanian and Sogdian arts animals are usually
represented individually inside pearl roundels or oth-
er geometric (or vegetal) frames.3
Contrary to what many scholars insist on repeat-
ing, the composite creature with a dog’s face, wings,
and a peacock’s tail does not appear in Sasanian art
except at the very problematic site of Taq-e Bustan
[Fig. 3]. The most recent publications on Taq-e
Bustan consider that it is a late Sasanian monument
and may even have been executed on the cusp between
the pre-Islamic and the Islamic periods (Mode 2006;
Cristoforetti and Scarcia 2013, pp. 344-46). The identi-
cation of the fantastic winged creature as the simurgh
of Iranian mythology, proposed more than sixty years
ago by Kamilla Trever4 and since then never serious-
ly challenged, recently has been reconsidered in the
light of Iranian gurative arts and literary texts. In
the Shahnama (11th century) and its illustrations from
the Islamic period, the simurgh is a giant magical bird
that protects the family of Rustam. As is well known,
Rustam and his father Zal were eastern Iranian he-
roes who originated from Zabulistan. However, the
simurgh in literary texts and Islamic book illustrations
is always a bird. Also, in one early 8th-century Sogdian
painting from Panjikent (Room 41, Sector VI), the only
representation of the simurgh can be identied as a
bird — precisely an owl — reproduced behind a per-
son wearing a leopard skin and, for this reason, iden-
tied as Rustam [Fig. 4].5 In the same Sogdian painting
there is also a ying com-
posite creature in front of
Rustam that could be as-
sociated with the “pseu-
do-simurgh” at Taq-e
Bustan. A very similar
winged composite crea-
ture is represented in a
6th-century Sogdian paint-
ing from the eastern wall
of the northern chapel of
Temple II at Panjikent.
Its protome is part of the
support for the throne of
Fig. 3. Detail of the garment on the equestrian statue on the inner-
most wall of the large grotto at Taq-e Bustan, Kermanshah (Iran).
Photos by Daniel C. Waugh and author
Fig. 4. The so-called “Rustam painted program,” Panjikent ca.
740 (Room 41, Sector VI).
After: Marshak 2002, Fig. 16 (slightly modied).
37

an unidentied goddess [Fig. 5] (Belenitski and Mar-
shak 1981, pp. 70–73). The lower part of the winged
creature was not preserved in that painting; so it is not
possible to state if it was exactly the same creature.
However, a little horn can be observed on his head
and a ower embellishes its cheek.6 The exact same
winged creature (but this time complete) appears in
another Sogdian painting from Afrasiab (pre-Mongol
Samarkand) dated c. 660 on the western wall of the
so-called “Hall of the Ambassadors” [Fig. 6] (Compa-
reti 2009b, pp. 75–76). Every detail, such as the dog’s
face (even with its dangling tongue), is reproduced on
the caftan of a foreign envoy from Bactria-Tokharistan
resembling very much the same motif at Taq-e Bustan
with very small differences. The two composite crea-
tures look very similar and they are almost contempo-
rary. However, the identication of that kind of com-
posite creature as the simurgh of Iranian mythology is
incorrect. In Sogdiana it was a symbolic representa-
tion used to exalt the importance of nobles or rich peo-
ple mainly represented in 8th-century mural paintings
at Panjikent (Azarpay 1975).
If the simurgh in Iranian arts was always a fantastic
bird, how should we identify the ying composite
creature under examination? Very problematic liter-
ary sources suggest that the creature should be identi-
ed with the Iranian concept of farr (Pahlavi xwarrah,
Avestan khwarenah), that is “glory” or “charisma.”7
Moreover, on some 7th-century Sogdian coins imitat-
ing Sasanian emissions of Hormizd IV (579–590) are
countermarks in the shape of that ying composite
creature together with the inscription “farn,” that is,
the Sogdian word for “glory” (Farsi farr) (Nikitin and
Roth 1995). Despite the great importance of the con-
cept of farr in late Sasanian Persia, its representation as
a composite creature comes from Eastern Iranian lands
(Central Asia), as do the rst images of the simurgh.
Furthermore it is worth observing that Biruni called
a fantastic animal resembling a ying fox “Khorasan
khorra” (“Glory of the East”). In doing this, that Mus-
lim author implicitly pointed out the eastern (Iranian)
origins of a kind of dragon probably to be associated
with the ying dog-faced creature (Cristoforetti and
Scarcia 2013, pp. 341–42). The simurgh was a fantastic
and magical bird that had some connections with the
concept of “glory” or “charisma.” For this reason, it
was difcult correctly to separate and identify the two
iconographies that Kamilla Trever had confused in
her studies.8 Therefore, the identication of this com-
posite creature as the simurgh of Iranian mythology is
not justied. Many scholars insist on calling it simurgh,
but the term “pseudo-simurgh” should be preferred.
From a purely iconographic point of view that
winged creature with a dog’s face is rooted in Grae-
co-Etruscan art. It was exported to the East and es-
pecially to Bactria and northwestern India during
Fig. 5. Painting on the eastern wall of the northern chapel of
Temple II, Panjikent (early 6th century).
Fig. 6. Painting on the western wall of the “Hall of the
Ambassadors,” Afrasiab (ca. 660).
Photos by author
38

the Macedonian conquest
of the Persian Empire. That
monster is usually called
ketos in Greek and had de-
nite funerary connections in
Classical art, being a very
appropriate psychopomp,
that is, a creature accompa-
nying the soul of the dead
to the underworld. In fact, it
combines the characteristics
of the dog, which is the animal of Hades, and aquat-
ic ones to cross the underworld rivers and sea. Crea-
tures like this appear not just in funerary arts,9 as can
be observed in a decorative frieze from Herculaneum
(1st century CE). In this latter painting, the compos-
ite creature with a dog’s face also has a pair of wings,
despite the aquatic landscape where it is swimming
together with a winged horse (hippocamp) and a cou-
ple of dolphins [Fig. 7]. Actually, the ketos appeared
in many myths and as a negative monster as well (for
example, in the story of Perseus and Medusa) whose
iconography had great success in the Mediterranean
basin during the pre-Christian and the Christian peri-
ods. Despite the presence of a dog’s face and wings, it
was considered a chthonian creature to be found very
often as the vehicle for Nereids. Its association with
water is rendered perfectly in the Biblical story of Jo-
nah where the Classical iconography of the ketos was
transferred to the leviathan.10 For some reason, the ketos
(and many other Classical subjects) became very pop-
ular in typical Gandharan objects, the so-called “toi-
let-trays,” and, according to some scholars, its iconog-
raphy was used in India to render a local monster with
very strong aquatic connections, the makara (Francfort
1979, p. 89; Stančo 2012, pp. 160–76). The re-appropri-
ation of that creature by eastern Iranian people possi-
bly followed the path of Buddhism (and Hinduism)
in Central Asia, and, in fact, the Indian component in
Sogdian art should not be underestimated.
In Sogdian Buddhist literature, the Indian mythi-
cal bird that was also the vehicle (Sanskrit vahana) of
Vishnu, Garuda, was superimposed on the simurgh,
specically in an unpublished version of the Mahapa-
rinirvana Sutra (Yoshida 2013, p. 206). It is not clear if
something similar could have happened also in gu-
rative arts, although one of the most ancient images
of Garuda as a royal insignia (called Garuda-dhvaja) at
Bharhut, in central India (ca. 1st century BCE), has been
considered by experts to be an unspecied “Western
Asian” borrowing (Guy 2007, p. 18). The problem of
Indo-Iranian interactions from an iconographic point
of view cannot be studied in detail because the Irani-
an aspect is not well known or investigated. Sogdians
and Bactrians had very close relations with India, but
not much is known about Sasanian Persia. As Guitty
Azarpay (1995) observed, Classical and Indian motifs
seem to converge in a silver-gilt dish considered to be
late Sasanian but most probably produced in Bactria
or in the Indo-Iranian border zone [Fig. 8]. In another
early 8th-century fragmentary painting from Panjikent
(Room 23, Sector I), a bird with something in its beak
resembling a snake — and, so, very close to the Indian
iconography for Garuda — can be observed. Even if
from an iconographic point of view that image is de-
nitely rooted in Indian art, some scholars have pro-
Fig.7. Ketos, dolphins, and hippo-
camp on a decorative frieze from
the “Casa del Tramezzo di Legno,”
Herculaneum (Naples), 1st century
CE.
Photo by author
Fig. 8. A Bactrian(?) silver-gilt plate 7th century(?). State
Hermitage Museum, Inv. No. S-217
Photo courtesy of Daniel C. Waugh
39

posed to identify it with various Iranian fantastic birds
of Zoroastrian literature (Marshak 1990, pp. 308–09).
Other birds with something in the beak (such as a ring
or a necklace) appear very often in Sogdian painting
as a symbol of exaltation for the people around them.
Moreover, Zoroastrian literature (Zamyad Yasht 19, 34)
explicitly reports that xwarenah left Yima in the shape
of a falcon and dove into the Worukasha Sea where
the god Apam Napat found it (Malandra 1983, pp.
91–93).
From this long digression, some points should be un-
derlined. The idea of farr was expressed according to a
wide plethora of iconographies in 8th-century Sogdian
paintings (a composite fantastic creature, a bird, a put-
to, etc.)11 and a couple of times as a ying putto (or
Nike) in Sasanian rock reliefs (precisely at Bishapur
II and Bishapur III) [Fig. 9] (Hermann 1998). On the
contrary, the simurgh was always a bird in pre-Islamic
Sogdian paintings and in Islamic book illustrations,
exactly as it is described in written sources. From the
point of view of iconography, the bird in Islamic book
illustrations was denitely rooted in Chinese art, and
it is very possible that its introduction into Persia was
due to the Mongols. Only in a small group of book
illustrations of the Shahnama probably from early
14th-century Mesopotamia or Fars, the simurgh was
not following Chinese models, and, in fact, it could
call to mind the bird in the Rustam paintings at Pan-
jikent (Swietochowski and Carboni 1994, pp. 32, 46,
71–72, 82, 112–13).
Let us now consider the two textiles from the private
collection advertised on the Internet. Several stylistic
elements of these two specimens clearly correspond
to a type of textiles usually referred to as zandaniji.
Many specimens belonging to this group of textiles
are at present part of European museum collections
because they had been imported in great numbers in
the Middle Ages as wrappings of precious holy relics.
Approximately fty years ago, some scholars found
an inscription on a piece of silk preserved at Huy Ca-
thedral in Belgium that belongs to this same group.
According to W. B. Henning, the inscription was in
7th-century Sogdian language and mentioned the term
“zandanichi.” This specic term was immediately as-
sociated with those textiles celebrated in Islamic writ-
ten sources as zandaniji, that is to say, produced in
the village of Zandan, not far from Bukhara.12 All the
evidence seemed to point to the identication of this
little understood type of textiles until a close analysis
of the Huy Cathedral fragment permitted the deter-
mination once and for all that the inscription is not in
Sogdian but in medieval Arabic (probably 9th-10th cen-
tury judging from the epigraphiy) (Sims-Williams and
Khan 2008). Furthermore, it is worth observing that
Boris Marshak (2006) always insisted that zandaniji
were textiles in cotton and not in silk as is reported in
Islamic sources. This does not exclude the possibility
that weavers used to work with cotton could have not
attempted to produce similarly embellished textiles in
silk as well. In any case, the evidence in the sources
should not be neglected. Despite Marshak’s uncer-
tainties and the incorrect identication of the zandaniji
group, it appears very clearly that the textiles of this
kind all share very similar peculiarities not only in
terms of technique but, above all, in their iconograph-
ic decorative elements.
What were the origins of this group of textiles and
which chronology could be proposed? The presence of
animals such as stags or rams with outwardly spread-
ing horns and geometrical elements on their bodies
would suggest an Iranian milieu as do the pearl roun-
del frames. However, many of these patterns had been
accepted in Byzantine art and employed specically
to embellish precious textiles (Muthesius 1997, pp. 94–
98). Nothing like this can be observed in pre-Islamic
Iranian arts from Persia and Central Asia nor on very
rare textile fragments found during excavations or in
reproductions in mural paintings. The preference ac-
corded to confronted animal subjects usually inside
circular frames would point to the Islamic period. In
Sasanian and Sogdian art only single animals can be
seen inside roundel frames that usually are not veg-
etal but geometric. Only the “pseudo-simurgh” points
to an eastern Iranian, that is to say Central Asian, or-
igin for these textiles. However, the composite ying
creature was soon accepted in Byzantine repertoires
and especially in luxury textile production. Even the
Persian origin itself for some of the best known tex-
tiles embellished with this creature inside roundels
such as the Victoria and Albert Museum fragment
[Fig. 10, next page] (Volbach 1966, Fig. 21) or the so-
called Moshchevaia Balka caftan [Fig. 11; Color Plate
II] (Ierusalimskaia 2012, Fig. 143) have begun to be
seriously questioned.13 There is still great uncertain-
Photo courtesy of Daniel C. Waugh
Fig. 9. Detail of Bishapur II rock relief showing
triumph of Shapur I.
40

ty about attribution, although it is now evident that
these textiles cannot be attributed to Sasanian manu-
factures. In fact, they are too late to be Sasanian and,
in any case, the “pseudo-simurgh” appears in Persian
arts only during the Islamic period with the only ex-
ception Taq-e Bustan, where garments and accessories
too seem to be external borrowings. These textiles can-
not be considered pre-Islamic Sogdian either, because,
on stylistic analysis, they do not have precise parallels
in Panjikent paintings.
It is not possible to imagine eastern Central Asia or
the Far East as a place of origin for these textiles. In
fact, the pseudo-simurgh is not attested in the Tarim
Basin despite the great number of Sogdian immi-
grants who lived there and the recovery of many
funerary textiles embellished with Iranian motifs in
the region of Turfan (the so-called fumian). Indeed, in
Chinese art and especially in Sui-early Tang funerary
paintings (6th–8th centuries), there is no evidence for
the use at court of Iranian motifs on textiles (Compa-
reti 2006c, p. 163). However, Chinese written sources
clearly state that in the late Sui period (early 7th centu-
ry) the person responsible for the production of tex-
tiles embellished with “Persian motifs” and other ex-
otic goods was a Sogdian called He Chou (Compareti
2011). Why produce these textiles then if they were
not going to be used by the Chinese? Most likely they
were produced to be exported or presented as gifts to
“barbarian” courts that had diplomatic relations with
China. A great number of textiles embellished with
pearl roundels containing typical Iranian motifs such
as the boar’s head, the winged horse, or a bird with
a necklace in its beak have been found in abundance
outside of China proper. These sites are mainly cem-
eteries such as Turfan, Jargalant in Mongolia, Dulan
(Qinghai or Amdo, that is to say, Eastern Tibet), and
even Japan (Compareti 2006c, pp. 155–58).
If Iranians who lived in China and the Tarim Basin
were involved in the production and exportation of
this kind of textiles, why is there not even one single
example of the pseudo-simurgh in these territories?
Unfortunately, it is not possible to answer this ques-
tion. For some reason, the composite creature that
we call pseudo-simurgh did not have great success
among the people who inhabited the Tarim Basin. On
the other hand, it is possible that the pseudo-simurgh
was not favored in a Buddhist milieu. Not only in the
Tarim Basin but also in other regions of Central Asia
where Buddhism was the main religion such as in
Bactria-Tokharistan and the kingdom of Bamian, this
motif was completely unknown.
Until the publication of those textiles on the Internet,
the pseudo-simurgh was completely foreign to the dec-
orations of this group of textiles. It is also very dif-
cult to determine their authenticity, although every
detail seems to point to genuine ancient specimens. It
should be admitted that the composite creature under
examination could be expected to appear among those
textile decorations, although it would have been much
better to nd it during controlled excavations.
That same composite creature was also a favorite
subject on Islamic textiles and decorative arts during
the Umayyad and Abbasid periods. Christians too ap-
preciated it very much, and it is in the paintings of an
early 13th-century Armenian church at Ani that we can
nd the last occurrence of the pseudo-simurgh, possi-
bly just imitating precious textiles (Compareti 1997–
1999, p. 92). For some unclear reason, that composite
creature was much appreciated in every cultural mi-
lieu in contact with the Iranian world for a very long
Fig. 10. Silk textile fragment, Victoria and
Albert Museum, London.
After: Volbach 1966, Fig. 21Photo by author
Fig. 11. Decoration of a silk caftan from Moshchevaia Balka,
Russia. State Hermitage Museum, Inv. No. Kz 658
41

period, the only exception being those regions where
Buddhism was the main religion.
In conclusion, the most probable place of origin for
those textiles seems to be Sogdiana after Islamization.
In my opinion, the best t is the Samanid emirates
during the 9th–10th centuries.
About the author
Matteo Compareti is the Guitty Azarpay Distinguished
Visiting Professor in the History of the Arts of Iran and
Central Asia at the University of California, Berkeley. Since
completing his Ph.D. at the University of Naples in 2005,
Dr. Compareti has published extensively on the themes of
economic, artistic, and cultural exchange in pre- Islamic and
early Islamic Eurasia. His publications include books on Ira-
nian merchants in the Indian Ocean (2005), Buddhist art in
Sogdiana (2008), and the famous Afrasyab fresco cycle at Sa-
markand (2009). E-mail: <compareti@hotmail.com>
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Notes
1. After a preliminary observation of those textiles that I
found on the Internet completely by chance (on the web
page: <http://www.asianart.com/carlocristi/d10961.html>,
I was able to contact the dealer who put them online. Carlo
Cristi (a member of Asian Art in Brussels) is an Italian dealer
who kindly supplied me with additional information about
those textiles that he considers to be 8th–10th-century Sog-
dian. A third fragment of a silk textile embellished with two
similar ying creature confronting each other inside pearl
roundels is at present kept in the China National Silk Mu-
seum in Hangzhou. My colleague and friend Mariachiara
Gasparini recently presented this fragment together with
many other from that museum collection on the occasion
of a mini-symposium held at the University of California,
Berkeley on 4 December 2015. Cf. Spuhler 2014, Cat. 2.8.
2. Compareti 2010; Compareti 2014. The same pedestal
embellishes a unique Sasanian tapestry fragment bought in
Egypt and at present kept in the Benaki Museum (Athens)
(Compareti 2005, pp. 155–57; Compareti 2009a).
3. For the problem of Sasanian textiles in general, see Com-
pareti 2009a; Bier 2012. For the problem of the attribution of
textiles embellished with the pearl roundels pattern to Sasa-
nian or Sogdian manufactures, see Compareti 2004.
4. Kamilla Vasil’evna Trever (1892–1974) was a Russian
orientalist who wrote extensively on many subjects about
ancient Caucasus, Iran and Central Asia. She published a
study on the identication of the simurgh in 1938 and con-
tinued to propose her conclusions on many other occasions.
Her ideas have been widely accepted, although scholars
such as Alessandro Bausani and Boris Marshak were never
convinced and openly criticized her (Compareti 2006a). The
original study in Russian (Senmurv-Paskudzh, sobaka-ptitsa,
Leningrad, 1938) has recently been presented in English as
well (Trever 2005).
5. Compareti 2013, pp. 25–27. I presented these new ideas
about the “real” simurgh in the paintings of the so-called
“Blue Room” at Panjikent (Room 41, Sector VI) on the oc-
casion of the conference in honor of B. I. Marshak and V. G.
Shkoda: “Pre-Islamic Past of Middle Asia and Eastern Iran”,
St.Petersburg (Russia), October 23rd-25th 2013. The article is
going to be published in the proceedings of that conference
as: “Simurgh or Farr? On the Representation of Fantastic
Creatures in the Sogdian ‘Rustam Cycle’ at Penjikent,” Jour-
nal of Inner Asian Art and Archaeology, forthcoming volume 8.
6. The small horn and the dangling tongue present a clear
parallel with the gure of another fantastic creature, the
mušhuššu that in much earlier Mesopotamian art usually
accompanies the main Babylonian god Marduk (Black and
Green 1992, pp. 166, 177–78).
7. Compareti 2006a; Cristoforetti and Scarcia 2013, pp. 339–
43; Shenkar 2014, pp. 131–33. The concept of farr was very
important in ancient Iranian cultures and especially under
the late Sasanians, because without his “glory” or “charis-
ma” a king could not reign. Similar concepts are attested in
many ancient cultures. It is very probable that the Iranian
idea of farr had some connections with the concept of Sume-
rian melam (Akkadian melammu) that was expressed as a
kind of halo around the gods. In some Assyrian sealings, the
goddess Ishtar is represented as a crowned woman stand-
ing on a lion and surrounded by stars (Watanabe 1992). See
also Shenkar 2014, Fig. 165. In ancient Mesopotamian art, no
fantastic creature used as a symbol to represent the melammu
is attested, although, as already observed in note 6 of this
study, some characteristics of the pseudo-simurgh can possi-
bly be considered borrowings of the monster-hypostasis of
Marduk, the mušhuššu.
8. Trever 2005. The problem is now discussed in Compareti
2006a. Once more from eastern Iran, and specically from
Bactria, there comes a unique iconographical personication
of the concept of farr, in Bactrian pharro. It is reproduced on
inscribed Kushan gold coins as a male god sometimes re-
sembling Hermes or a haloed man wearing a caftan with a
spear in one hand and re (or an undistinguished object) in
the other (Gnoli 1996).
9. The ketos (sometimes even repeated two times) represents
one of the most favored motifs to be found on Etruscan and
later Roman sarcophagi (Shepard 1940, pp. 79–84).
10. Boardman 1987; Uehlinger 1999. Among the ear-
ly 10th-century exterior reliefs of the Armenian church of
Aght’amar (today in eastern Turkey) where many Biblical
scenes can be observed, in the place of the leviathan there is
a winged composite creature resembling both the ketos and
the pseudo-simugh (Compareti 1997–1999, p. 91; Compareti
2014, pp. 17–19). The Armenians just reproduced an iconog-
raphy that was already attested in early Christian art for that
specic sea monster.
11. Even if not expressly associated with the idea of farr,
these motifs have already been collected in Azarpay 1975.
12. Shepherd and Henning 1959; Compareti 2006b. For re-
cent 14C analysis on textiles of this type, see Verhecken-Lam-
mens et al. 2006.
13. A third specimen very similar to the Victoria and Albert
Museum and the Moshchevaia Balka textiles is the so-called
“Saint Helen shroud,” at present kept in the Musée de la
Mode et du Textile, Paris (Inv. 16364). According to a recent
study, it should be dated to the 9th-century “Eastern Medi-
terranean or Iran (?)” (Demange 2006).
44

1 (above).. Silk textile.
2 (right). Cotton shirt with silk lining.
3 (below). Decoration of a silk caftan from Moshchevaia
Balka, Russia. State Hermitage Museum, Inv. No. Kz 658
Photos courtesy of Carlo Cristi
Photo © Matteo Compareti
Plate II
[Compareti, Ancient Iranian,” pp. 36, 41]