Marlik

MANNAI

The Medes and The Achaemenians

Around the 8^th century BC a provincial form of art, combining local Persian features with those of Assyria and Urartu (eastern Turkey and Soviet Armenia) evolved in the north-west corner of Persia, in the district anciently called Mannai, west of Lake Urumia.

A splendid collection of gold, bronze and ivory objects were found in 1947 at Ziwiyeh (Sakkiz), right on the border of Azerbaijan and Kurdistan. It is particularly significant because it also contains elements, which seem to be the earliest examples of Scythian art.

Golden bracelet decorated with two pairs
of lion cubs lying face to face.
From the treasures of Ziwiyeh; 7^th century BC.

An eagle's head made of gold;
buried during the 7^th century BC in the course
of a Scythian assault on Azerbaijan.

A Golden stag, from Kostromskaya, Scythian, 7^th - 6^th century BC.
The smoothly curved sections divided by sharp ridges
have no counterpart among Luristan bronzes, yet
the way the antlers have been elaborated into abstract
openwork ornament, betrays a similar feeling for form.

In the 7^th century BC Mannai crumbled before the advances of the Scythians who had previously occupied Urartu and the area around Lake Van. When the Scythians arrived in Persia, they enriched their own art with the cultures they encountered, and the influences of Luristan and Urartu appears as one the most important components in their art.

Scythian art remained, and continued to be profoundly attached to its subjects - the stag, the feline, and the bird.

Persian Art
Through The Centuries

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Persian History
Iran before the Iranians