The Medes

A Reassessment of the Archaeological Evidence

by BRUNO GENITO

0. Introduction

The difficulties encountered in limiting the vast bibliography collected to theessential themes and reducing it to a common denominator concerning the cul-ture of the Medes prevented me from carrying out my original plan: to preparean analytical bibliography on the Medes ( 1 ).

The fact that it was impossible to form a bibliography on this ancientpeople meant, therefore, that they could only appear as a remote, abstract pointof reference in a piece of bibliographical research.

However, this negative realisation little by little gave way to a new ap-proach to my work: if, in fact, the original approach to the problem had turnedout to be impracticable, because of the incompatibility of my plan with the docu-mentation I had gathered, then this was the problem to be analysed and solvedwithin a vaster historiographical dimension. Thus I arrived at the real objectof my investigation.

I have tackled this following a methodological line based on the dialecticcontrast between everything that has ostensibly been written on the Medes, andwhat can be actually defined as such ( 2 ).

The fact that historians concentrate on the urban aspect of the Median em-

(*) I am indebted to prof. Gnoli who kindly discussed with me all the most importantquestions of Median history, to prof. Scerrato for having prompted me to undertake thiswork and for his aid and advice. Many thanks are also due to prof. Tosi for discussingwith me the history of the problem, to profs. Rossi, D'Erme, Taddei for having read thetext, to profs. Parlato, Silvi, Cagni, Vattioni, Silvestri, Piemontese and Sancisi-Weerdenburgfor discussing with me some aspects of the work. I should like to thank Mr McGilvrayfor the English translation.

(1) This bibliography, was announced years ago (cf. Genito 1982: 197, fn. 4). Ofcourse, the form it can take and the title would be different; the theme could be the archaeo-logical cultures of north-west Iran between the 8th and 6th centuries B.C.

(2) The attribution of any material fragment to a given ethnic group is virtually im-possible if its peculiar character can not be definitely ascribed to the group. Of course, this

pire (') and the phonetic correspondence between Ecbatana and Hamadan (4) havefavoured an archaeological approach according to which it has therefore beensupposed that any excavations carried out there may provide data. However, theexpectation that these excavations () may solve all the problems about thispeople (Frye 1963: 99), has tended to push into the background some historicallybetter-founded reasons for increasing all archaeological activity in the territoryof the ancient Medes (ibid.: 98-102).

The complex yet crucial nature of the period going from the end of the7th century to the first half of the 6th century B.C. (Muscarella 1973:76) has prevented modern historians from casting sufficient light on events thatcan be chronologically correlated with the development of the Median confed-eration C'). However, the most recent archaeological research has already pro-vided findings that help to view the problem from a new perspective ( 7 ).

is possible only when the cultural features of the group are known, and such cases are notso common in archaeological research. It is also possible when the archaeological context showsepigraphic traces that allow more precise definition. Not even pottery, which was untilrecently considered a most reliable guide, can guarantee the link between pot and peoplegiven by the identity of pottery culture with ethnic groups (cf. Kramer 1977: 92-112, andmore recently Cleuziou forthcoming: 1-4). As we shall see, the case of the Medes,though not unique, is emblematic of certain way of conceiving of relations between givenmaterials and peoples.

(3) Herodotus in particular shows the transition from village life to the city, in theera of Deioces (Her. I 95-97). There is no reference in Assyrian sources to great cities,but only to fortresses and villages (cf. Luckenbill 1926: vol. II).

(4) This coincidence led to the supposition that the Ecbatana of Herodotus correspondedto the present Hamadan, Hangmatana (ancient Persian), Agmaten(u) (Babylonian), Akmetha(Biblical); these words all seem to have to do with 'meeting place' and 'assembly place' (cf.D'jakonov 1985: 109, fn. 2).

(5) Apart from the findings of De Morgan (1896) the French conducted some explora-tory digs at Hamadan at the beginning of the century, which brought to light most of theobjects belonging to the so-called 'treasure of Hamadan' (cf. Vanden Berghe 1958: 108-10,and Muscarella 1980). Further exploratory digs have taken place more recently at TepeMusalla, the hill south-east of the present Hamadan, but the results have been disappointing;cf. Mehryar (1972) and Azarnoush (1975). On the same problems cf. also Frye 1984: 76, 80.

(5) This information comes from Herodotus, too (Her. I, 101). Apart from the diffi-culty of linguistic interpretation of the names of the six tribes in which he divides theMedes (Bonsai, Paretakenoi Strouxates, Arizantoi Boudioi and Magoi) the social and economicnature of the confederation is unclear. It seems possible to relate an Iranian etymologyto Paretakenoi, Magoi and Arizantoi (cf. Frye 1984: 67); in this connection see D'jakonov(1985: 74-75) who offers the theory of limited and occasion unity rather than a stable,lasting alliance.

(7) We are referring to the archaeological discoveries at Tepe Nash-i Jan (cf. Stronach1969, 1973, 1978), Godin Tepe (cf. Young 1969, 1974), and Baba Jan (cf. Goff 1968, 1969,1970, 1977), all of which occurred in the area which ancient sources assigned to theMedes.

I intend to frame this essay within the dynamics of the archeology and his-tory of art. This approach has proved valid in a great deal of studies on theMedes. And I am convinced that any historical-archaeological investigation ofancient Iran must review all the artistic production of the relevant period (Id.1977a, 1977b). In the light of a critical review of this sort, taking into accountthe already uneasy relations between archaeology and the history of art ('), certainapproaches to research on the reconstruction of the history of the Medes, basedon exclusively stylistic analysis of objects that have not been precisely dated(D'Amore 1978), appear out-dated.

If historiographical research over a period of a century and a half has revealedits limits ('), and the more recent art-history approach ( 10 ) has turned out to beinadequate to tackle the problem, especially at the methodological level, archaeo-logical enquiry has begun to offer new perspectives within which to view themyth of the Medes (cf. fn. 7).

Encouraged by discussions and exchanges of ideas with my colleagues, I haveworked from these preliminary considerations towards the idea of reviewingstudies on the Medes. I also intend to draw attention to the most controversialaspects of the question in an attempt to trace all the features of a real archaeo-logical-historical case.

1. Art History

Unlike studies on Achaemenian art, studies on Median art are relativelyrecent and, apart from a few vague references varily proffered at the end of thelast century (De Morgan 1896: 234-59), all concentrated in the last thirty years.

(5) This does not seem the right place to recount the history of this relationship.Suffice it to say that it was at the end of the sixties, with the so-called 'New Archaeology '

growing out of the American anthropological school, that the break with the old-style art-history methodology was most striking. The publication of 'Analytical Archaeology ' (Clarke1968) starkly revealed the differences between the approaches, but it also set out to be apolitical and ideological manifesto, proclaiming the 'loss of innocence' of archaeologicalresearch. According to this programme, it was no longer enough to carry out a historicalreconstruction of the events and economic structures of ancient societies, but study ex-tended to the patterns of behaviour that could be deduced from material remains, andthese were in turn organised according to anthropological schemes. The echo of this breakaway from earlier ideologies and methods came much more recently in Italy (cf. Caran-dini 1975, 1979) and the chances of restoring a sense of continuity still seem remote.Taddei ""(1'979) had some interesting remarks to make on the subject, legitimately defend-ing the complete independence of the historian of ancient art from the historian of thematerial culture who is also concerned with the economic impliciations.

(9) See the chapter on the history of the historiographical problem below.(10)See the chapter on the art-history problem below.

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Interest in the cultural dimension of this people, who in fact enjoy greathistoriographical advantages ( 11 ), has grown enormously in the last few years.The chance discovery of the treasure of Ziwiye, as it was without any scientificcontrols (") encouraged the market in fakes and, in fact, contributed to thegrowth of an antique market, already a traditional activity in Iran (ibid.: 236).

What had not been produced by the discovery of the treasure of Oxus(Dalton 1905) and that of the so-called treasure of Hamadan (Vanden Berghe1959: 108-10 and Muscarella 1980: 31-35), and the bronzes of Luristan (Godard1931: 5-193) was caused by the Ziwiye discovery alone in less than thirty years.It first delayed, and then prevented, perhaps irreversibly, a complete understand-ing of the artistic products of the first centuries of the 1st. millennium B.C. (Mu-scarella 1977a, 1977b, 1980).

It must, however, be born in mind that unlike the many and varied historio-graphical studies and analyses in the second half of the last century, recent art-historical publications are few and far between, and are of a totally differentnature from that which had been a feature of historiographical investigation.Apart from the few authors that have dwelt to some extent on the artistic pro-duction of the Medes (Ghirshman 1963), most of those who have tackled thistheme have, in fact, shown all too clearly their lack of documentation. A fewhints, a few words, a picture in muted if not negative tones of this production,almost as if they had at all costs to identify it and attribute it to that people.

This phenomenon, which is interesting to analyse, relates to that category of`submerged' or `vanished' peoples who are supposed to have played a vital rolein the history of mankind, but have unfortunately left few traces which are of noavail in reconstructing their history. This heterogeneous group of peoples, em-pires and ancient kingdoms, labelled `forgotten' ( 19 ), for one reason or anotherhas unjustly slipped into historical oblivion ( 14 ). In other cases these peopleshave provided the clearest examples of a distortion of history caused by theinformation that the elite of conquerors has always given about the defeated,

(15) The oldest 'history of the Medes' can be considered to be the one by Rawlinson(1862), who later dedicated a major study to the subject (Rawlinson 1865).

(12) There is a rich bibliography on the treasure found in 1949 (cf. A. Godard 1950:5-136). See the more recent articles by O.W. Muscarella (1977a, 1977b).

(19) Sewell was the first to use this category relating to the Vijayanagar empire, atthe beginning of the century (1900). Cf. L. Woolley (1953) for Mesopotamia, Rawlinson(1912) for central Asia, and finally Bacon (1963).

(14) This is also true of nomadic or semi-nomadic peoples like the Sarmatians, Massa-getae, etc., living on the fringes of the great settled empires, and only sporadically cominginto the 'limelight' of history, although they played a decisive role in the international poli-tics of the era. In this connection cf. Briant (1982, 1984), who dwells on the role of thepeoples on the fringes of the Achaemenian empire.

adapted to their ideological framework ( 15 ). The Medes, however, represent theexact contrary of this in their art-historical dimension, and perhaps for this veryreason are more exemplary. The `presumed' artistic production of the Medeshas been subjected to exaggeration and artificial magnification, so that the fewdata really available have been distorted and even altered (Muscarella 1980). Inconclusion, rather than speaking of a people `submerged' by history, we can speakof a people that have `emerged' from nothing ( 16 )

If the great works and countless historical essays have always taken thechronicles of peoples for granted, deriving their information primarily fromancient classical and oriental sources, the publications of the last thirty yearsshow a total lack of reliable information.

Apart from the abstract concept of its anticipation of achaemenid figurativeforms, and the syncretistic nature of its mediation of the various artistic koineof the early centuries of the 1st millennium in North-Western Iran, the art of theMedes seems to exist in the heads of scholars through sheer necessity ratherthan actual documentation.

The concept of an autonomous art of the Medes was for a long time prac-tically alien to the scholars, who grouped them indiscriminately with the Persians,as regards both language and race (Dalton 1905: ,XII). The oldest referenceto artistic production of Mede origin is to be found in Dalton (ibid.: XVI) whenhe attributes to it, among the many objects of the achaemenid era belonging tothe treasure of Oxus, a gold cup (fig. 1) (ibid.: pl. VIII: 18) and a sheath (ibid.:pls. II, IX 22) (fig. 2).

Despite the fact that so little was yet known about the Medes, he consideredtheir art, the metal-work above all, a cultural link between the Assyrians, theUrartians and the Achaemenians; a new form of syncretistic art, heir of the As-syrians and forerunner of the achaemenid.

In the most important manuals of ancient oriental art history, and in themany exhibitions of Persian art that were held in a number of big cities betweenthe twenties and the sixties, we can see that until 1956 there was no explicitreference to the Median population ( 1i ), and until 1962 not a hint as to theirbeing autonomous producers of art ( 1B ). It was supposed that the vaulted build-

(15)In the west peoples like the Carthaginians and the Samnites were completely de-stroyed by the Romans, to the extent that for centuries they were totally forgotten by history.

(16)Clearly a paradox; of course I have no intention of casting doubt on the existenceof a people called the Medes.

(17)When the Rome exhibition on Iranian art, the first of its kind in Italy, was organ-ised by IsMEO (Rome 1956).

(55) When the exhibition on Iranian art was organised in Paris and repeated in otherEuropean capitals in the following years (cf. Paris 1962).

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Fig. 1 - Golden cup from Oxus Treasure (British Museum).

Fig. 2 - Golden scabbard from Oxus Treasure (British Museum).

ings of the Sasanian era were Achaemenian, and the Medes did not really seemto exist (Dieulafoy 1885), while the brief duration of their kingdom became themain reason for the lack of any autonomous art (Perrot-Chipiez 1890: 773).At the same time, however, if traces of this art had ever been Mound, theycould only have presented a certain affinity to that of the Babylonians and theAssyrians, the only peoples that the Medes had come into contact with(ibid.: 773).

In two manuals of Iranian art history published twenty years apart, thebeginning of the history of art in Persia is supposed to coincide with the dynastyof the Achaemenians (Sarre 1923; Contenau 1947). Similarly, in the famousLondon exhibition that dynasty was taken as the starting point of Persiancivilisation as an autonomous culture distinct from the others of the ancienteast ( 19 ). In fact, of the nine galleries dedicated to it, only the first containedmaterials from the most ancient era, and immediately after the Luristan bronzes,dated between 1400 and 400 B.C., the famous sculptures of Susa and Persepoliswere displayed. The Medes were also totally ignored in the Leningrad exhi-bition (=°) and in the related Congress held in the same city some years later ( 21 ).

Despite the absence of traces or remains of monuments of the Median era,the theory that they underwent a strong influence from the Chaldeans seemedacceptable during those years, while the `palace of Ecbatana' became the necessaryprototype of that of Cirus at Pasargade (Wesendonk 1931: 99-100).

The publications of SPA at the end of the thirties marked a real cultural.water-shed in the approach to Persian art. This immense labour, undertakenunder the auspices of the Institute of Archeology and Iranian Art, brought anend to the rough and ready approach to art materials found in Iranian territoryand the beginning of a new stage in research. The aim was now to trace . thegradual, organic development of art in Persia. The original project (SPA 1938:X) dating back to 1926 worked under the assumption that all the contributions

(") Cf. London 1931; the exhibition was held in Burlington House, London.(20)The 1931 Leningrad exhibition displayed no fewer than 25,000 objects in 84

rooms, covering a period of 6000 years and an area extending from Siberia to India, Khotanand Asia Minor. For a brief outline see Ackerman 1936: 45-52.

(21)Cf. Leningrad 1939. This is the third International Congress of Iranian Art andArchaeology, after those held in Philadelphia in 1926 in connection with the exhibitionheld in the Pennsylvania Museum in the same year, and the 1931 Congress held in Londonon the occasion of the Burlington House Exhibition. In the only article relevant to thediscussion I have so far presented (cf. Moghadam 1939: 130-34) there was no referenceto the Medes or their art, although the subject is so closely connected to the origins ofart in Persia. For a brief history of these congresses, usually held in association with artexhibitions, cf. Pope 1976: XXIV-XXX. The last meeting was in Munich in 1976 (cf.Berlin 1979).

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could be contained in two volumes, but after the exhibitions of Persian art inLondon and Leningrad with their respective congresses the two volumes became,thirteen ('').

This initiative, supported by the most celebrated scholars of Iranian art ofthe era, such as Grabar, Shepherd, Barnett, Ghirshman, Godard, came about asa result of the realisation that there was a great deal of ignorance about Persianart compared with the other great ancient civilisations. But above all it wasinspired by the idea of tracing a common cultural matrix in Persian art througha study of its entire development. The event had great success, thanks also tothe wealth of graphic and photographic illustrations that gave the publicationa decidedly modern look (Monneret de Villard 1938: XIII): In particular, itsanctioned recognition of the forces working to liberalise archaeological researchin Persia, which until then had been a monopoly of the French. The UnitedStates were particularly involved in this struggle (' 3 ).

`Median times' are, however, only named once in SPA, and here in connec-tion with the continuity in the use of wooden columns on the Iranian plateau.The idea of a Median art existing at all was still to be developed, but some signsshortly after show the general trend scholars were beginning to adopt. The factthat there was a `cultural vacuum' before the Achaemenians in itself present thetheoretical premises for the formulation of an art of the Medes. The void was,in fact, easily attributed to the people that had produced the bronzes of Luristan(Ackerman 1940: 2), which were being discovered during that period (Godard1931: 5-193). At the same time, Achaemenian art, which was still taken to bethe first stage in Persian art in the New York exhibition, was defined as 'uni-versal yet local, monumental yet delicate, traditional yet inventive' (New York1940: I), as if to justify with this evocation of its unique nature the hugecultural investment of SPA.

Among the twenty halls housing the exhibition, the fifth contained thebronzes of Luristan and Kuh-i-Dasht, while the eleventh presented a series ofobjects, above all bronzes of small dimensions belonging to a loosely defined` pre-Achaemenian' era ('"). Nor was any reference made to Median art in the

(23) To the thirteen original volumes must be added vol. XIV, which came out in 1967with the minutes of the Fourth International Congress of Iranian Art and Archaeology.

(z3) From 1894 on the Persian sovereign Qajar Nasser ed Din Shah had reserved themonopoly on excavations in Persia for the Delegation Archeologique Francaise en Perse. In1897 De Morgan was put in charge of the 'Delegation'. The monopoly lasted until 1929,when the creation of the 'National Archaeological Service in Persia' offered the opportunityto overcome the system of concessions, and the liberalisation that the Americans had beenpressing for was largely achieved.

(34) These are 19 objects labelled pre-Achaemenian: a bronze bull's head published byPope; two more bronze bull's heads; a terracotta lion's head, published in SPA I: 307,

Cernuschi Museum in 1948 (Paris 1949) but the publication of the treasure ofZiwiye (Godard 1950) sparked off a long, heated quarrel among scholars. Theybegan intense discussions on the stylistic or chronological attribution of this orthat object belonging to the treasure, which as a whole could be dated aroundthe early centuries of the 1st millennium B.C. The circumstances of the findingare still veiled in mystery and arouse serious doubts, 40 years after the event,as to whether it actually took place at all (Muscarella 1977a). However, theyevidently provided a convenient way of filling in the real void in documentation.There was a spate of bizarre and occasionally contradictory analyses and distor-tion of the facts to protect personal interests in a sort of race to arrive at theaccepted attributions. The first identification of the Mannaeans' traditional art(Godard 1950), connected with that of the Assyrians, and destined, thanks toits simplicity, to conquer a nomadic people like the Scythians, was the first resultto come out of stylistic interpretations of the many objects making up thetreasure. According to Godard this art work, which must have been considerablyinfluenced by Assyrian models (1950), represented a sort of supply of luxuryarticles that the Mannaeans had passed on to the Scythians, a people of nomadsand invaders who had direct commercial relations with the former. At practicallythe same time these objects began to be interpreted as expressions of a distinctartistic current with many stylistic variations, among which the predominant oneturned out to be Medo-Iranian (Ghirshman 1950: 201). If a few puzzling pointsremained about the history of the Medes, arising virtually from Herodotus' ac-count alone (Furon 1951: 46), and if there were still some doubts as to whetherit was really possible to talk of an art of the Medes (Monneret de Villard 1954:29-30), there were new contributions on the debate over the Ziwiye treasure(Godard 1951: 240-45) and further attributions to Median art (Falkner 1952:129-32). There were new suggestions about the dating, which was consideredto be later than the 8th century, and any involvement of the Scythians, whichhad until then been thought possible, was ruled out (Barnett 1956: 111-16).More general discussions attempted to take in the whole of Median culture; someclaimed to have found traces of it at Pasargade - as this was one of the firstcities built by the Achaemenians, it was the most likely to show the transitionof cultural values from the Medes to the new dynasty (Id. 1957: 75). Attri-

fig. 73; another bronze bull's head, published in SPA I: 357, and presented in the cata-logue, pl. IV, fig. 108; a standing goat-like figurine in bronze; a bronze handle; thefigure of a man; a bronze bull; a theriomorphic lamp-holder in bronze; two couchant bronzelions, one of which published in SPA I: 357, and presented in the catalogue, pl. IV, fig.107 D; a guide for reins; a cart accessory; a bronze horse; the bronze head of a man,published in SPA I: 356-57, and shown in the catalogue, pl. IV, fig. 107; the bearded headof a man in bronze, published in Pope 1931: 87, and SPA I: 355-56, presented in the cata-logue, pl. IV, fig. 105-6; two star-shaped bracts.

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butions went as far as identifying one of the characters depicted on the sheathof a sword from the Oxus treasure as Astyages, the last king of the Medes (ibid.:55-57). By now we are close to a formulation of Median art, soon to be madeexplicitly (Id. 1962: 77-85).

In 1956 the Medes made their first appearance in the chronological tablesof the Ismeo exhibition dedicated to Persian art, even though there was nosection specifically dealing with them. However, they were the main point ofreference under the heading: `Other Currents of Iranian Art' (Roma 1956: 103-108). The objects on display, coming from Azerbaigian and Hasanlu in particu-lar, but also from Sakkiz, Amlash, Lahijan, Khorvin and Kermanshah, dating fromthe second half of the 2nd millennium B.C. to the early part of the followingmillennium, anticipated the pre-Achaemenian cultural scene. This was particularlytrue of the archaeological discoveries that had been recently made, or were stillbeing made during those years ( 25 ). Other sections on Kalar Dasht and Ziwiyeclarified and extended what was known about the first centuries of the 1stmillennium B.C. (Roma 1956: 109-24).

In the mid-fifties the rock tombs of north-west Iran were unequivocallydefined as `medischen Tracht von grossen Wert' (Von der Osten 1956: 57).Apart from odd discoveries at Hamadan, they had already been described as theonly `Median' archaeological material, though in a rather general geographical andhistorical application of the term (Herzfeld 1941: 200). Some objects belongingto the treasure of Ziwiye which came closest to the style of the Luristan bronzeswere supposed to have been manufactured for the Medes or another Iranianpeople. Another current, the Syrian, which had 'not yet been drawn into theissue, was now added to the usual ones, the Assyrian and the Urartu, whichcame up for attribution of the treasure (Von der Osten 1956: 57).

The picture was by now gradually getting clearer and more uniform. Afterthe first attempts to fill in a gap in documentation with Median culture, thenext step was wholesale attribution, with all the inevitable consequences.

The new stage began with the identification of a gold cup, which may havecome from Hamadan, as an article of Median art (Kantor 1957: 9-20, figs. 10-11). It was richly ornamented with animal designs, and the attribution to Med-ian craftsmanship provoked a considerable stir. But while Kantor had offeredhis hypothesis with caution, the following years were marked by a series of articlesand publications that made extreme efforts to define Median art once and forall. Previously, while recognising the many problems involved, it had beensupposed to consist in a distinct style that was at the same time close to the

(25) For a detailed analysis, see Vanden Berghe 1959.

Assyrian and Achaemenian traditions ( 26 ). Now three sword sheaths coming fromplaces far away from each other cast a different light on the matter. Theseobjects ( 27 ) were compared with the famous sheath of the Oxus treasure andwere considered the clearest examples of Median art, an expression of the mediat-ing role that Median culture was supposed to have played in the transmissionof iconography from Urartu culture to the Achaemenians (figs. 3-4) x( 28 ). Ziwiyeonce again came to the forefront when the famous container decorated withscenes of tribute was considered to be an Assyrian object that could be placedchronologically in a period previous to the 7th century ( 29). The connectionwith Median culture was, however, soon found; the central figure was interpretedas a person of rank, probably an Assyrian Viceroy, and the nine men, arrangedin three groups, and adorned in the same way, as some Medes depicted takingpart in a homage.

The Medes and their capital, Ecbatana, together with a chronological tableanalogous to the one used in Rome, were inserted into the introduction to theParis exhibition (Paris 1962). Thanks to the great international acclaim it re-ceived, this exhibition was then repeated with practically the same features, inother 'European capitals within the space of a few years ( 30 ) With an eye tothe latest excavations and findings that had taken place on the plateau, it for-mulated and codified the linear development of Iranian art in such a way thateven today, twenty years later, it remains a practically unchanged reference pointfor historians in this field. The second hall of the exhibition, dedicated to Iranianproto-history (Paris 1962: 7-13) introduced the denomination of a proto-Median

(2s) The author returned to the subject some years later, with regard to a gold frag-ment from Ziwiye (cf. Kantor 1960). While repeating that Median art was problematic,she claimed that, stylistically, the cup could correspond to what one would expect fromMedian artists.

(27) They are short swords of the akinakes type and their respective sheaths, found insouthern Russia. They belonged respectively to the treasure of Kelermes (a tributary ofthe River Kuban, near Maikop), the treasure of Melgunov (the name of a general whofound a funeral mound near Elisavetgrad, now Kirovgrad, between the Rivers Bug andDneiper, in 1763) and the treasure of Certomlyk (in Crimea, near Nikopolis on the Dneiper).For the Kelermes treasure, see Pharmakovsky 1904: 100-1; for that of Melgunov, Pridik(1911) and Minns (1913: fig. 152; for that of Certomlyk, Kondakov, Tolstoi, Reinach(1866-1873).

(29) Cf. Barnett 1962. In the decorative element of a stylised tree between two calves 'heads the author identifies an aspect of Urartian iconography, destined to pass, throughthe mediation of the Medes, into the Achaemenian repertory where it appeared in thetypical capitals with double protome.

(29)Cf. Wilkinson 1960: 213-20.(30)Cf. Milano 1963, Essen 1962, Gand-Bruxelles-Utrecht 1966.

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people, attributed to the inhabitants of the B necropolis of Syalk ("). This necrop-olis was represented by a set of funerary objects, ritual vases with long spoutsvariously and curiously painted ( 92 ). The artistic production of Kalar Dasht dif-ferent but connected with the same cultural background, was also presented, as-sociated with that of Khurvin and Hasanlu, while objects from Amlash, in thethird hall, were presented as characteristic proto-Iranian art between the 9thand 8th centuries. The fourth and fifth halls displayed the Luristan bronzesas art works of a population of Iranian knights, the Cimmerians who sharedwith the Medes a common cultural `koine' ( 83 ). Special emphasis was given to thismetalwork which, thanks to its high level of craftsmanship and iconographicalinvention, was hailed as a unique case in the history of the plastic arts in ancientAsia (Paris 1962: 92).

Among the objects described as Median, those coming from the 1913 Hama-dan excavations (39) were taken to be of the same type and period as thosedescribed above, partly because of their characteristic animal decorations, butabove all simply because they came from Hamadan. The fact that an object camefrom Hamadan/Ecbatana was thought to be decisive for dating and attribution.

No doubts were entertained by those intent on tracing the precise develop-ment of Persian art. Thus the Ziwiye treasure in the sixth hall of the exhibi-tion, though found by pure chance and lacking in any serious archaeological con -text, served to derive the basic concepts of Scythian art. And this art, inspiredby the steppe and its animal life, is interpreted as the catalyst of all the stylisticfeatures in north-west Iran, with, of course, the art of the Medes and Cimmer-ians playing its role (Paris 1962: 81-102).

It only took a few years for these objects to be used `instrumentally', asthe occasions arose, to fill gaps in art-history documentation. According to the

(31)The interpretation of the archaeological data regarding Syalk offered by Ghirshman(1939: 108-10) dated the culture revealed in necropolis B to the 10th and 9th cen-turies B.C.; in relation to this, also see Boehmer 1965: 802-22; Dyson Jr. 1965: 193-217; Young 1965: 53-85; and again Ghirshman, 1977: 45-59, who repeats the main sub-stance of his hypothesis.

(32)Cf. Ghirshman 1939; we shall refer to just a few examples (Id. 1939: 5.1548,S.905, S.511, S.872, S.871, S.870) and, in the exhibition Art en Iran (Paris 1962) pl. IV-V.

(33)A people of Iranian origin mention-ed by Herodotus (1 6, 15, 16, 103; IV 1, 11,13, and in the Bible (Gen., XIII 10; XIV 11; XIX 1, 15) who appeared in north-westIran between the 8th and 7th centuries, anticipating the Scythian invasion. Tracesof peoples of Cimmerian origin have apparently been found in the west, in the Carpathianplain. Cf. Parducz 1952, 1954, 1955; Harmatta 1984: 12-13. For the general history ofthe problem, see Harmatta 1946-48; Sulimirski 1960; Cozzoli 1968 and D'jakonov 1981.

(34)I am referring to a gold cup (cat. 159) with two lion-shaped handles, and thetwo lions opposite each other on their shoulders with one common head (Paris 1962: pl. 51).

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requirements of the time, they were variously presented as products of theScythians, Cimmerians, Medes etc. The only cry of alarm, which was in facttotally ignored, was provoked by clandestine excavations in the early sixties: therisk was. that they could plunge the origins of Persian art into obscurity. Wrap-ped in mystery as these origins were, the findings of those years did little toclarify and much to confuse them (Melikiani 1961: 67-73). Fortuitous andclandestine excavations were actually the two sides of the same coin, and Ziwiyeironically represented merely `the most beautiful enigma of contemporary ar-chaeology', without, however, remaining an isolated case (ibid.: 69).

The exhibitions in Essen, Milan, and Utrecht (cf. fn. 41), repeating the suc-cess of the one in Paris, only confirmed the conception, prevailing in inter-national cultural circles, of the organic, linear development of Persian art. It wassupposed that, from the tentative stylistic hints of things to come offered bythe first Iranian tribes scattered over the plateau, it then fully developed its`universal' figurative awesomeness with the monarchy of the Achaemenians.

The scholar who most whole-heartedly took on this role was R. Ghirshman.Though he had acknowledged that nothing was known of Median civilisation(Vanden Berghe 1959: VIII), just a few years later he offered a thorough ex-planation of all his ideas concerning this people, in two articles (Id. 1962: 165-79, and 1964a: 88-94) and in an extensive publication (Id. 1963). The ideasGhirshman expounded in those years were the extreme consequence of a fewlimited suggestions he had made long before (Id. 1939: 108). Thus, in hispersonal career as a scholar and archeologist, he fell victim to the paradox thatthe archaeological data that he had brought to light were demeaned by their art-historical interpretation, almost always insufficiently founded. The Luristanbronzes and those of the votive deposit, together with those of the tombs ofSurkh Dum (Schmidt 1938: 205-16; Pope 1936: 120-25) were, in fact, con-sidered by Ghirshman the homogeneous artistic expression of a people unitedby common cultural features. The Medes and the Cimmerians, both peoples ofknights still in semi-nomadic conditions, gathered in a sort of religious league ofstates (Ghirshman 1962: 167), were supposed to have represented in these objectstheir religious and funerary ideology, consisting of the symbols and rites of every-day life. Among the objects from Luristan, the silver plaque in the CincinnatiArt. Museum is considered to be particularly significant (Id. 1958: 37-42) . (fig. 5)as a figurative expression of a primitive religion with its typically Iranian ritesand beliefs, linked to the related themes of national and religious consciousness;a cultural reflection, therefore, of the political phenomenon that was coming aboutin the north-west Iranian territory during those years (8th and 7thcenturies B.C.). The comparison of small gold plaques found in the Oxustreasure with those found in the sanctuary of Surkh Dum although the twogroups show considerable stylistic differences, reveals the same iconographical

Fig. 5 - Silver plaque from Luristan (Cincinnati Art Museum).

conception, the same motivations that produce a single ritual gesture, belongingto a pre-Achaemenian world, and therefore Median. The existence of a Median-Cimmerians cultural koine was further justified by the comparison (Ghirshman1964a) between the vase with the long spout and the figure of a person inrelief that came from Luristan (Godard 1931: pl. LXI 223) with another similarone coming from Hamadan (fig. 6) (Ghirshman 1963: fig. 122). These twoobjects, both probably of the votive type, were interpreted as the expression of

Fig. 6 - Long-spouted bronze vase fromHamadan.

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a homogeneous cultural background that could be dated between the 8th and6th centuries B.C., and which was supposed to have spread east and west overa vast area during the first centuries of the 1st millennium B.C., moving fromLuristan, via Ecbatana, as far as the banks of the Oxus ( 35 ). Thus it emergesquite clearly that the only way to trace the art of the Medes, the main pointof reference for that culture, consists in unravelling• the most difficult art-historycases of ancient Iran: the findings from Luristan, Ecbatana and Oxus, whichpose the most controversial problems with the vaguest outlines.

The bas-reliefs decorating the rock tombs of Dukkan-i Daud, Kizqapan ('")(fig. 7) and Sakavand (") were also interpreted as if they were clearly part ofa Median figurative culture, as indeed Ghirshman traced the gold cup in theCincinnati Art Museum to Median workshops (1963: fig. 125) together withthe series of bronze statuettes of animals coming from Hamadan, already displayedin Paris (ibid.: fig. 124) (fig. 8). The Ziwiyé treasure, already attributed toMannaean people (Godard 1931) as well as Scythian, Medo-Scythian or Medo-Cimmerian ( a8 ) underwent a further slight variation of interpretation to becomethe expression of different cultures superimposed on each other simultaneously.And so the artistic style of the Ziwiyé objects manages to reflect on the onehand the tumultuous actions of the Scythians in the 7th century, and on theother to reveal Median art anticipating that of the Achaemenians (Ghirshman1963). While remaining, in point of fact, still hardly distinguishable from thatof other peoples such as the Scythians, Cimmerians etc., Median art must, ac-cording to Ghirshman's scheme, be identified at all costs. If this is a problem,it is after all one whose solution is already known. The numerous findings ofobjects of obscure origin and lacking in any stratigraphical context left ampleroom for attributions and datings; a good example is offered by the fibulas thatcame from the Kermanshah area (Id. 1964b: 90-107) (fig. 9), easily associatedwith the art of Luristan, and therefore Medo-Cimmerian. These triangular fib-

(35)The hypothesis, which appears perfectly credible within the field of a'homo-geneous culture', is becoming more difficult to support not only comparing it to more recentchronological interpretations dating many of the objects of the Oxus 'treasure' in a later period(cf. Kuz'mina 1976a, 1976b), but above all if one considers the relationship of ethnic group-material culture-religious culture, leading quite naturally to the Medes.

(36)Only the second of the two reliefs has been made the subject of a specificpublication, cf. Edmonds 1934: fig. 2; at any rate, the first shows a priest holding abarsom, the second two worshippers at the sides of an altar.

(9°) Cf. the two articles by Von Gall (1966, 1974).(') Cf. Muscarella 1977 a. Apart from recounting the history of the various objects

that have, at one time or another, been held to be part of the treasure, O.W. Muscarellareviews, with undisguised irony, the interpretations that have been put forward over aperiod of thirty years.

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Fig. 7 - Tomb from Kizkapan in Northwestern Iran.

Fig. 8- Bronze animals from Hamadan (Bibliothéque Nationale, Paris).

Fig. 9 - Fibulae from Kermanshah.

ulas (Stronach 1959: IV 201), are decorated with grotesque human figures thatprobably hark back to Assyrian monsters (Calmeyer 1974: 112-27). Associatedwith examples entirely lacking in any archaeological value, they succeed, likethe Luristan bronzes, in expressing `toute la richesse de l'iconographie des bron-zes du Luristan, tout ce monde d'etre composites qui reflectent la mythologieet les croyances d'un peuple qui conserva son attachement à la vie nomade et àses traditions' (Ghirshman 1964b: 95). Evaluations of this sort doubled theerror potential, while the search for the distinctive features of Median art ap-proached an almost spasmodic rhythm. This required very considerable workon the theory that was rarely rewarded. At times related to a Medo-Cimmerian`koine', at others to a Scythian-Cimmerian one, and so on, as if the terms wereinterchangeable, it was not really the `Median' objects that were so `indefinable'and 'elusive' so much as the categories and parameters used to define them. If

every people has its own values, culturally and ethnically composite as they maybe, its language, religion, institutions and art will alwàys have a precise indepen-dent form, unique, unrepeatable, and distinct from that of the others. If it isdifficult to identify its art and call it by the name of the people it 'belongs'to, it is both possible and necessary to resort to a term that can include thevarious cultural elements composing it.

The main contradiction does not seem to consist in the fact that `Median'art revolves about a confused mass of styles and forms of expression. The realproblem is that such vague types of artistic production are attributed to a peopleotherwise well-defined historiographically, with their cities, their basic historicalfacts, and the important role played in the history of ancient Iran for the trans-mission of cultural values. It is difficult to imagine a people capable of forminga`state' (' p ), as tradition has it, that is not equally capable of developing themesand features of its own in the sphere of the arts. If it is a facile applicationof determinism to make the equation State-artistic production, it would at thesame time be very hard to claim a homogeneous social and cultural system forthe Medes and the Achaemenians with the art-history documentation we have athand ("°). In any case, the dominant idea is always that if little is known aboutMedian art, this is only because so little material has been found, but the littlewe have is of such high quality as to favour the idea of a great sumptuous art (>'').

Shades of scepticism went side by side with certain attributions while theidea of a further possibility of reconstructing Median art gained ground: the icono-graphical analysis of that `people' in the reliefs of Persepolis .(Porada 1965:142-46).

Quite a different attitude to the problem emerges in the case of those striv-ing to preserve an `archaeological ' approach (Dyson 1963a: 32-37), avoidingchronological or ethnological attributions of the Ziwiyé treasure, and makingevery effort to supply the possible archaeological co-ordinates of the site as they

(39) We entirely agree with Sancisi-Weerdenburg (1985: 1) when she states that 'theMedian Empire was much less an empite than is commonly assumed'.

(A0) In the light of our present knowledge, there appears to be a considerable differencebetween Achaemenian and Median culture; the arrival of the Achaemenian dynasty marksthe transition from an archaeological culture to the height of that of the Iron Age III(cf. Young 1965: 59). And there appears a monumental lithic architecture that was un-precedented on the plateau (cf. De Francovich 1966: 201-60; Young 1966; Dyson 1977:155-70), an art with a pronounced ideological character (cf. Root 1979), and trilingualepigraphy of powerful expressiveness and ideological contents (cf. Kent 1953). All theseaspects are clearly the material reflection of the social and economic complexity charac-terising the Achaemenian period. There have been found no traces revealing such a degreeof complexity for the Medes.

(") We are referring to objects of quality and great artistic value attributed to thetreasures of Hamadan, Ziwiyé and Oxus.

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surveyed the hill where the finding was supposed to have occurred. Fragmentsof enamelled wall-tiles ("°) and of fine and course red-painted pottery in triangles,as well as the three-winged socketed arrows ("), though chronologically useful,could not be directly associated with the treasure, which thus remained withoutany plausible historical positing.

The Mannaean interpretation of the treasure still had some supporters, tak-ing a wider view that assumed marked Mesopotamian iconographical features,with reminescences of Nergal, the god of death and war, of Ishtahr and of thescenes on soapstone vases from Khafajeh ( a "). More complex art-history theorieswere appearing on the scene, as in the case of a silver cup (in the AshmoleanMuseum, Oxford), defined as Achaemenian when it was acquired, but then at-tributed to the Median era (Hamilton 1966: 1-17) (fig. 10). The premises aresignificant enough; the object presumably came from Hamadan, but this was a`story too stereotyped to have much archaeological significance'; nevertheless,we read that 'it may be' (ibid.: 1). This is like saying that the lack of any ar-chaeological context for the discoveries of Hamadan made it impossible to guaran-tee that the object was of Median production, but if the object itself could beinterpreted as Median through a study of its style, then it would be easier toaccept the idea that it came from that city. The cup was put to exhaustivemorphological comparisons with Assyrian metal and pottery cups of a periodspanning from the end of the 8th to the end of the 6th centuries. If thesemorphological comparisons seemed convincing, the stylistic and iconographicalanalysis of the two decorations on the inner and outer part turned out as beingtotally unsatisfactory. In fact, the cup was interpreted to be the product of twodifferent phases; the outer part done in Assyria, and the inner one a later embel-lishment done in Media, in a provincial style, far from the Assyrian manner andlacking the quality of Achaemenian work. They even went as far as detectingthe hand of a particular artist who had produced other objects (-05 )

("a) These tiles with white, yellow and blue decoration must have been similar to theAssyrian ones decorating the sacred Road, the gate of Ishtar and the throne-room in Babylon.

(43) The question of the Scythian-type arrow heads, 'three winged socketed' has longbeen debated. Generally speaking, one can say that they were the fruit of technical inno-vations due to great changes in military tactics and strategy, and that they began to circulatein Iran territory from the second half of the 8th century on. For more recent views ofthe problem, see S, Cleuziou 1977: 187-99, and the clear graphic summary by Medveskaja1982: fig. 15.

(9&) Cf. Wilkinson 1963: 274-84; among other things, the author adopts Godard's oldidea about the possible identity between Ziwiyé and Zibié, the ancient -capital of the Man-naean kingdom.

(45) The morphological comparisons are with metal and pottery cups of the Assyrianera, that can be dated about the end of the 8th century, and those coming from Sinçerli(Hamilton 1966: fig. 2a), from Nimrud (ibid,: figs. 1 and 3a) arid from Tell Halaf (ibid.:

Silvar. :t,hib^lr.^n ryGq,aA:.

b insl n lc

,, ,

Fig. 10 - Silver cup from Hamadan (Ashmolean Museum, Oxford).

A slightly more original contribution regarding the Ziwiyé treasure camefrom P. Amandry (1966: 109-29) Twenty years after the finding, he was thefirst to notice that there was no descriptive catalogue of the objects. This wason the occasion of the exhibition held at the Petit Palais in Paris in 1961 (Paris1962) where some of the objects were on display. However, he only got half-way, incapable of denying once and for all the legitimacy of the treasure. Infact he contradictorily set about attempting new attributions, while at the sametime beginning to doubt the authenticity of some of the objects.

fig. 3b). Stylistic comparisons were with some lions on a seal from Susa (ibid.: fig. 7),a pendant from Hamadan (ibid.: fig. 8), with the ways of representing a lion's head inobjects from Sinçerli (ibid.: fig. 10a) and Ziwiyé (ibid.: fig. 10b), with the 'Schimmer'bronze mirror (ibid.: fig. 12), some Assyrian reliefs (ibid.: fig. 13a-b-c-d and fig. 14a) andfinally with the ways of representing an animals' hind legs in objects from Karmir Blur(ibid.: fig. 16a). The internal decoration of the engraved object is an engraved rose with18 petals radiating from two concentric circles and forming the centre of a larger rosemade up of ridges and channels occupying the curving rim; the outer part, chased andhammered, consists of two rampant lions coming to meet set within a ring formed by twoconcentric circles.

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The problem of a material Median culture was tackled, on more than oneoccasion, with a completely different approach by those at work in one of themost interesting areas as regards ancient Iranian history: the valleys of Solduzand of Ushnu (Dyson 1968a: 82-101). Archaeological excavations had got underway here during those years.

The sites of Hasanlù (Muscarella 1966: 121-35; 1971: 263-66), Agrab Tepe(Id. 1973: 47-76), Dinkha (Id. 1968b: 187-96) and Dalma, in a geographicalarea of vital importance for paths of access to the plateau from the north ('"),showed, in their long sequences, an iron-age culture spanning several periods.At Hasanlù the period of reference for the Median era, the third, consisted of twodistinct stages: 1.11 a, and II•I b. While offering considerable architectural remainsand material culture, it showed nothing to clarify the ethnic condition of the inhabi-tants. Both in the case of the Indo-European population (Persians) (Muscarella1966) and the non-Indo-European one (Mannaeans) (Dyson 1964) the nature ofthe figurative culture attested to by some really fine examples, like the famousgold vase or a silver drinking vessel, remained unclear ("). The chronologicalspan of Hasanlù IV (1000-800 B.C,), which the objects belong to, linked themwith others of great artistic quality discovered at Marlik and at Kaluraz (Ne-gahban 1968: figs. 80-81, pls. XXIV-XXXII; Hakemi 1968: pl. XXXIII) andmade it possible to place them in a homogeneous artistic context in the IronAge, even though the chronological placing remained uncertain (Biscione 1974).As well as detecting a ritual nature in the scenes depicted on these objects,scholars pointed out the similarity of their iconographical themes to Assirian-Mesopotamian ones - animals walking one behind the other, for example,divinities and scenes of victory, with the defeated following the conqueror'schariot on foot. At the same time, however, some of the technical details ofthe silver vase of Hasanlù, which had points in common with those of the Marlikvase and the gold-work of Kaluraz, offered the opportunity to speak of homo-geneous artistic production, showing a Median influence among the elementsforming it (Hakemi 1968: 65). This case, apparently different from those sofar examined, has a point in common with the previous ones: the very slightimportance attached to the archaeological significance of the findings. As inthe other cases where, faced with objects of unknown origin and archaeologicalcontext, there was no hesitation in identifying and defining a`Mediad art, sonow, with archaeological excavations attesting to a material culture of difficult

(» This is the road that had to befollowed by anyone wishing to reach the plateau,coming from the north and having passed the Caucasus.

(") These objects have inspired various stylistic and iconographical interpretations; cf.Pouran 1965: 127 ff., 1965b, and Porada 1967: 2971-78; for mythological and religious in-terpretations of the themes represented, see Kurockin 1974: 34-47.

ethnical-cultural attribution, resort was made to the category of Median art ina negative sense, in the form of the influences it exerted on other cultures.

A very different case was noted at Marlik. From here, high quality artworks had been put into circulation in Gilan, Mazanderan and Azerbaigian, andthe influence reached the regions adjoining the Caucasus, Luristan, Urartu, theKashan area, the Achaemenians and, of course, the Medes (Negahban 1968: 2).

In this confused mass of attributions, influences and circulation of styles,the first doubts were raised about such apparently simple, but really mislead-ing methods. According to Muscarella, the archaeological unfoundedness of thecategory `Median art' could be traced back to the method used to define it.Stylistic analyses alone, on objects and materials lacking any archaeological con-text, showed how insufficient they were for full art-historical understanding(Muscarella 1968a: 7-18).

Some, however, remained blindly optimistic about the future prospects ofMedian archaeology. At the end of the sixties they asserted that, even thoughexcavation of Ecbatana/Hamadan would cost twenty million dollars, the financialeffort would certainly be rewarded with the finding of written texts (Samadi1969: 98). A messianic hope possessed our author, who claimed: '11 n'y aaucune raison pour que les Elamites, les Kassites et les Urartes connaissent l'écriturecunéiforme, et que les Mèdes l'ignorent. Il est évident qu'un jour avec ladécouverte de ces textes on établira les rapports existants entre les habitants des

plateaux' (ibid.: 98).It was only with the first excavations in the territory of Media, chronologi-

cally relevant to the period in which tradition had always maintained the Medeshad lived, that a certain realism arrived, The archaeological documentation be-lied the art-historical theories, bringing out their methodological limitations (cf.

fn. 7).Most of the material culture of Bâbà Jân, Godin Tepe and Niish-i-Jân

brought no contribution to the reconstruction of Median culture, but offered onlya few elements of possible use for the history of the production of pottery andarchitecture ('"). A long period of studies and researches that had tried to fill in thegap in art-historical documentation of production with abstract stylistic/iconogra-phical schemes, until shortly before the only theoretical approach to the problem,and that had found in Median art anticipations of the Achaemenian style, hadnow to come to terms with a new archaeological picture.

The expectation that these findings would confirm famous attributions likethat of the Ziwiyé and Oxus treaures was largely confounded, even though thenew contributions they made to the debate made up, to a considerable extent,

(4e) Generally recognised, even by art historians; cf. Calmeyer 1974: 112, and Amiet

1977: 247-51-

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for the reality of the negative proof (Calmeyer 1974: 112-14). North-west Iranof the 8th and 7th centuries offered archaeological traces of a materialculture that was totally different from that anticipated by chance findings ofobjects and a purely art-historical approach.

The consequences on the theoretical level were not, however, as overwhelm-ing as one might have imagined, as art-historians still only partially acknowledgedthe new turn of events. Having, in fact, recognised the impossibility of recon-structing Median figurative culture, which could now be analysed only throughdesigns on seals and painted pottery from the B necropolis at Syalk, the habitof making attributions was still hard to die. The objects dealt with were, how-ever, the same that had been analysed some time before with the same aim (Herz-feld 1930: 116-17), and comparisons revealed the same old limitations, becausethey were again carried out with objects lacking archaeological value (Calmeyer1974: 116). The same Luristan-type jugs, already interpreted as Median objects(Ghirshman 1964a), were again offered in the same way (Calmeyer 1974) asobjects which, having been found in Median territory of the seventh century,could only be Median (ibid.: fig. 7). The evident resemblance of the humanfigures decorating these objects to demoniac Babylonian and Assyrian beings onthe one hand, and to the figures on the painted Syalk pottery on the other, gaverise to hypotheses that had already been proposed at the beginning of the cen-tury ( 49 ). Thus the little analysed cultural unity between Mesopotamia andwestern Iran was susceptible to different stylistic analyses that, unlike the tra-ditional ones, guaranteed more interesting prospects and results. The scantymaterial documentation of Nûsh-i-Jân ( 50 ) for the first time offered comparisonwithin an archaeological context with the fibulas of the Foroughi collection, saidto originate from Kermanshah. This made a more direct comparison with stylesand themes from Mesopotamia acceptable in the case of the common decorativeuse of these demoniac figures in Iranian territory ( 51 ). However, these compari-sons, offering glimpses of very different prospects for the ancient history of north-west Iran, were still anchored to pure stylistic analysis, and already appearedless convincing when the attempt was made to develop them more extensively.In this respect, to tell the truth, the business of searching for stylistic elements,

(49)Cf. Chipiez-Perrot 1890: 773, who put forward the possibility that ancient Iran,during the first centuries of the 1st millennium, took Mesopotamia as a particular cul-tural reference point.

(50)In particular, we are referring to the bronze pendant with a Pazusu-shaped head,showing undeniable stylistic connections with monsters of the Assyrian tradition. For ageneral approach to this iconographic problem see Frank 1941 and Klengel 1959-60 andthe more recent Moorey 1965 and Curtis 1984.

(51)Cf. Ghirshman 1964b: 90-107, who associated these figures with a mythological/spiritual Iranian background.

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now Mannaean, now Scythian, now Cimmerians, Mardian, Lurian or Urartianas if they were the characteristic elements of figurative Median culture, was begin-ning to lose all sense. At the same time, it was becoming much more useful toresort to the only original source of suggestions and iconographical stimuli thatnorth-west Iran could have had available in that period: Mesopotamia.

This sort of Irano-Mesopotamian koine could thus forrn a sort of culturalunderground, made of symbolic correspondences acquired over the centuries, aheritage in which demons (Klengel (1959-60) formed the tip of the iceberg (Cal-meyer 1974: 125-27).

Pre-Achaemenian artistic production did not, from this point of view, somuch express those great values attributed to it, as less brilliant elements oficonography close to the Mesopotamian ones, not linked to the official symbolicvalues that Mesopotamia had been elaborating for over a millennium, but tothe folk character of a repressed culture, consisting of demons, genies, spirits etc.(Id. 1974) ( 5 -).

A decisive contribution to exploding another of the wide-spread myths con-cerning the art and architecture of the Medes came from more up-to-date analy-ses and interpretations of the rock-tombs in north-west Iran. Here, a wholeseries of architectural elements, instead of being interpreted as anticipating theforms employed in Persepolis, were rightly placed in a later period, in the post-Achaemenian era (Von Gall 1966).

Yet another contribution to the debate on the Ziwiyé treasure came fromGhirshman, who felt duty-bound to clarify some points. He admitted that theobjects as an entire group had never really been published, and that there hadalways been too much confusion over their qualitative and quantitative pro-portions (Ghirshman 1973: 445-52). To allow an exhaustive study of this im-portant treasure in the future, the author distinguished no fewer than 341objects according to the material, and these made up the entire corpus. This con-tribution, with its noble though belated purpose, did not, however, succeed inclearing up all the doubts; practically not a step forward was made, becausethere is no indication of the criteria adopted by the author in attributing theindividual pieces of the treasure.

With two more contributions almost at the same time we were back toattributions based on purely stylistic interpretations. In the first of these twocases it was again Ghirshman (1974: pls. III-IV) who saw a Mede in a warriorpursued by three Assyrians, a scene depicted in a bas-relief from Tiglat-Pileser,that had already been considered Urartu (Barnett-Falkner 1962: pls. LXIV-

(» This observation seems convincing. For the first time it poses the question of aMesopotamian artistic culture, different and distant in symbols and traditions from thefirst one, a non-monumental culture, not so explicitly symbolic, but equally relevant.

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é

LXV). The main reason for this hypothesis, the author explained, was the head-gear surmounted by a ribbon that recalled a bronze warrior from Khurvin(Ghirshman 1974: pl. IV a, b) and a wooden statuette corning from Ziwiyé.Again, we are in the field of abstract stylistic comparisons that not only fail tooffer any information about the real iconography adopted by the Medes, buteven as to whether the iconography used by the Assyrians really correspondedto that of the people it was supposed to refer to. In the second case, a Persianauthor (Rahbar 1975) actually interpreted a helmet as being Median after arambling art-historical discussion touching on Greek Hellenistic production andthat of the Near East.

Art-historians finally realised that it was impossible to continue discussingin abstract terms the art of a people of which practically nothing was known,and then only thanks to the work of those who had been most sensitive tothe delicate relationship between the history of art and archaeology (Muscarella1977a: 153-207; 1977b: 197-219). The meeting point between these twodisciplines, the antique market, over which an ambiguous veil of silence hadalways hung, thus became a favoured field of analysis, and above all of moralcondemnation against the fabrication of fakes.

The great quantity of objects that had not come from excavations, all usedto reconstruct the art history of the ancient Near East, represent the screenbehind which scholars passed off fakes as authentic pieces, giving wide circulationto the distorting elements of history. The complicated network of connectionsbetween the forger, the dealer and the collector came under accusation for thefirst time, without sparing the organisation and management of institutes respon-sible for the protection and conservation of works of art. The museums, in theperson of the directors, were, in fact, involved in the responsibility for the saleand purchase of fakes, together with the state authorities supporting them; allparties in a murky matter, partly through a spirit of nationalism that they havenot yet got over, partly through keen rivalry. The greatest responsibility, how-ever, falls on the shoulders of the scholar who gives the blessing of his authorityto `culturally' dishonest operations which contribute to the spreading of histori-cal falsehoods. The only possible defence for a historian of ancient art againstthe danger of fakes is to master ancient techniques, in all their details, and soto understand the mechanism of the production and manufacture of the objectsfrom the within. `Ideological' constructions of entire artistic productions are,generally speaking, the most dangerous consequences, because they fill up realgaps in documentation, as the Ziwiyé treasure shows all too clearly. Despite thistraumatic accusation, the conclusions to be drawn are not same for all. Whilesome recognise that we cannot speak of Median art (Amiet 1977), but at themost only of some examples of monumental architecture that can be attributedto that people, there are still others trying to pick out the various artistic cur-

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rents characterising the Iranian scabbards of the first millennium, comparing thestyle with that of those depicted in the famous bas-reliefs of Persepolis (D'Amo-re 1978: 5-25). Again, these are procedures anticipated by Porada (1965) who,on the one hand considers the correspondence between the iconographical trans-position of objects and their concrete existence to be direct, and on the other thatattribution to an ethnic group can take iconographical representation as thepoint of reference ( u3 ). The old idea of the mediating role of the Medes in thefield of styles came back into vogue; in other words, a form of syncretism basedon a dangerous interchangeability of styles that appears to acquire validitythrough its mere existence, without any other specification. However, somescholars of art history show how it is possible to avoid resorting to the categoryof Median art (Mazzoni 1977) and, while defining three different currents forthe ivory production of Ziwiyé, as far as north-west Iran is concerned speakonly of a figurative culture originating in the place. The only valid comparisonfor the production bf these objects remains, in fact, after over a century ofstudies and archaeological tradition on the plateau, the group of ivories fromHasanlù (Muscarella 1980: 221). Among the findings particularly linked withthe history of the Medes we should not forget the ones that over a period oftime have come to form the so-called Hamadan treasure, a group of cups, in-scribed slabs, and some small sculptures, among which a considerable numberof real artistic quality, probably uncovered at Hamadan or its surroundings ( 54 )

I mention these objects last, as they have been constantly added to over a spanof forty years, and therefore are not bound to any particular phase of the historyof the problem. Apart from the epigraphic data provided by a few slabs, theirhistorical relevance to the Achaemenian era is slight, and practically nil as far asthe Medes are concerned.

The fascination of the ancient, unburied capital, Ecbatana, enhanced by

(53) In this respect, the attempt made by Walser (1966: 102-3) to attribute the icon-ography appearing in the reliefs of Persepolis to particular ethnic groups is exemplary. Thesame problem has recently been tackled with the linguistic approach, too. Rossi's hypoth-esis (1981: 180) seems particularly interesting. He considers such criteria for interpret-ation doubtful if not actually misleading.

(5°) The case of the objects coming from Hamadan approaches the grotesque; apartfrom those mentioned by De Morgan (1896: figs. 157-60), the others from the Frenchexpedition of Fossey and Virolleaud in 1914, like the bronze animal figurines (Ghirsh-man 1963: figs. 122-24), the gold and silver tablets, the cylindrical seal, the inscribedsilver cup (cf. Herzfeld 1930: 115), the gold `rytha' (cf. Anonymous 1955, 1956) and theinscribed gold cup of Darius together make up a group of objects that are not only ofunknown origin, but, apart from the fakes (Muscarella 1977a: 108), come mainly fromclandestine excavations, for which there is no evidence even that they actually took place,at Hamadan and surroundings, and elsewhere. For a history of the problem, see Musca-rella 1980: 1-34.

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the descriptions of Herodotus and Polibius, and the presence of gold objects,have evidently contributed to create the myth of a treasure of the city whichwas sacked and burnt by Alexander the Great. The scanty documentation refer-ring to the finding favoured the circulation of arbitrary attributions and identi-fications, often based on the blatant contradictions of certain scholars ( 55 )

2. Archaeology

De Morgan's reflections on Ecbatana ninety years ago represent the firstmodern attempt to correlate data supplied by historical sources with archaeo-logical documentation (De Morgan 1896: 234).

Convinced that the Medes were not an Aryan race ( 58), and certain that itwas Hamadan, not Takht-i-Suleiman, that stood on the site of the ancient Ecba-tana, the French scholar left us a brief but useful topographical outline of theruins of ancient Hamadan. His information is not, however, scientifically soundenough to be taken as a reliable point of reference. Still, it represents the sumof all the knowledge there was on the ancient capital of the Medes at that time.

The impossibility of finding the ancient buildings of that city `au milieu dece chaos de maisons, de masures et de ruines du moyen âge' (Id.: 236) showedwhat little promise there is for any archaeological activity on the Medes.

Over seventy years later, the main reasons that had held up the start andthen the development of Median archaeology inevitably emerged; the ancientcapital, Ecbatana, had been almost totally integrated into the modern city ofHamadan (Stronach 1968: 177-86) ( 5' ).

The money-making business of gathering together everything of value, orthought to be so, that could be found in the surroundings of the city, hadalready begun, as De Morgan reminds us. He, in fact, was forced to recognise

(sa) Cf. Muscarella 1980: 31, fn. 16, where he gives a report of the case of LeBreton, who arbitrarily decided to associate the bronze spout of a jug with one towhich it probably did not belong.

(5» Here De Morgan embraces the theories of J. Oppert (1879), who maintainedthat the Medes were a Turanian people. This aspect of the matter had practically polar-ised the attention of scholars for over sixty years. It is to be noted that the authormakes a distinction between the ancient Turans (Medes, Susians, Mannaeans), and the mod-ern ones (like the Turks, Mongols, Hungarians and Finns).

(» The same concern has recently been repeated by Frye (1984: 80); however, Icannot share the opinion that the lack of excavations at Hamadan is the main reason forthe backwardness of the archaeology of the Medes. Briant even adduces political, as wellas technical reasons, for this lack (1984: 78). It is surely not through mere chance thatthere is so little archaeological documentation for the territory of Hamadan and the wholeof Media (Sancisi-Weerdenburg 1985: 1).

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that `il n'existe plus guère aujourd'hui de parties de l'antique Ecbatana qui n'aientété exploitées ' (De Morgan 1896: 236).

The lack of any traces of buildings of ancient Ecbatana thus led to thehypothesis that only a material that left no traces once it was destroyed couldhave been used by the Medes; in other words plain brick. Moreover, the lay-outand architectural solutions they adopted could not have had much to do withthose of the Achaemenians, or those at Persepolis and Pasargade (ibid.: 240-42).

Overrating the historical reliability of classical writers like Herodotus orPolibius, De Morgan found in their descriptions a confirmation of his hypo-thesis; the cities and palaces they write of turned out, in reality, to be com-pletely different from those built by the dynasty of the Achaemenians (

58 )

It is worth noting that many of the basic misunderstandings still markingthe approach to,the problem of the Medes arose from this conception. Blindfaith in the data provided by these sources, together with the absolute lack ofmaterial evidence, offered the ideal conditions for the progressive distortion ofhistorical facts.

Coming to the topographical survey, our French author was compelled toreveal that there was no group of ruins that could be of the Median periodin the plan of the principal ancient monuments of the city (ibid.: 249, fig.

156) ( 59).Apart from the discovery of the Oxus treasure (

RO ), it was in the thirtiesthat the great archaeological expeditions with programmes centering around theproblem of the Medes were launched.

But the great expectations of the Ray Archaeological Expedition of the FineArts Museum of Boston, in co-operation with the University Museum of Pen-nsylvania, were for the most part shattered. The intention had been to find anuninterrupted sequence of levels of settlement from the Median to the Islamiceras in the city of Ravy. In fact, according to the Biblical historiographical tra-dition, Ravy should have been the ancient capital of the Medes before the so-

(") Wesendonk 's attitude to these palaces (1931: 5-10) formulated less than forty yearslater appears really singular; cf. fn. 25.

(59) The archaeologists 'lucky ' enough to work on this territory were, after all, tocome to the same conclusions, cf. Mehryar (1972) and Azarnoush (1975)-

(so) The discovery of the treasure took place in 1877 in the vicinity of Amu-Darya,presumably near Kuad. It consisted altogether of no fewer than 200 gold and silverobjects and about 1,500 coins. Dalton's is still the only complete publication (1905).It was reprinted in 1926 and again in 1964. On this subject see Zejmal ' 1952: 28, 40;Ghirshman 1964a: 88-94 and again Zejmal' 1979. There is still a great deal of doubt, how-ever, about how and when the discovery took place, cf. iMuscarella 1980: 26, even thoughmore recent discoveries in the same area have made the existence of a temple seem a possi-bility (Litvinskij 1981: 133-66).

39[29]

called Deioces' descendents expansion (Raghes 1934: 46). The only data avail-able refer to a protohistorical phase with painted pottery (Schmidt 1935-36:41-49) and above all to a much significant Islamic period (Id. 1935: 139-41).

These initial results were duly confirmed by the second series of excavations,in which plain and gray pottery from the Iron Age was found (Starr 1936 a-b).

To the same period belongs a truly singular archaeological experience; onewhich is still today the umpteenth unsolved mystery of Iranian archaeology. Iam referring to the expedition of the American Institute in Luristan, 1936-37.The most striking thing about the Luristan expeditions is not so much the im-possibility of making historical use of the data they provide, as the paradoxicalfact that, in the archaeological panorama of ancient Iran, they constitute a nervecentre which seems to hold the key to all the most important questions. How-ever, the lack of adequate archaeological documentation makes it impossible tofind any solution to the problems of the famous bronzes of Luristan ( sl) andthe religious and cultural aspects in which certain examples of its material cultureare steeped. The latter are still today the object of difficult stylistic and art-historical analyses (" 2).

Apart from the pottery found at Chekhba Saba (Pope 1936: 125) withplastic representations of human figures dating from the beginning of the firstmillenium, what aroused the greatest interest of the expedition was a discoveryof a construction on the ridge of the hill of Surkh Dum. This was later to beidentified by means of the characteristics of the objects found within it and by

(el) The discovery of the bronzes of Luristan dates from 1928, when some local peoplefound decorated pieces of metal. These were immediately sold at Harsin (Godard 1931).The case has remained practically unsolved since then. Not even the further archaeologicalexcavations in the area, such as the ones at Giyan (Contenau-Ghirshman 1935) or the morerecent ones at Bâbâ Jan (Goff 1968, 1969, 1970, 1977, 1978), have been able to offer anysolution. The specific bibliography and that on Luristan in general is vast, cf. VandenBerghe 1959 and the more recent Vanden Berghe 1979 with the supplement 19784980.We should like to draw attention to the works of Ackerman (1940), Dussaud (1949),Ghirshman (1950, 1962, 1964a), Dossin (1962), Calmeyer (1969), Moorey (1974), Amiet(1976), De Clerc-Foibe (1978) and finally De Waele (1982: 96), which excludes the possi-bility of associating any metal from north-west Iran with the Medes or Persian beforethe Achaemenian domination.

(» Cf. Amiet 1976: 99-115, which well emphasises that sort of `metallurgical no-madism' at the root of the culture of Luristan in the first millennium B.C. This wouldindicate that the culture of the Zagros was substantially extraneous to the great Iranianinvasion. According to the author, it is impossible to correlate the culture of Luristanwith that of the Medes, who could at the most have found an outlet in that region onlyat the moment of the economic and political end of the `States of the Zagros'. The grow-ing strength of the Iranian tribes could have occupied the area of the high valleys ofLuristan, even if only in an economic sense, without altering the old ethnic balance only inthat moment.

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features related to its planimetry as a sanctuary of the 1st millennium B.C.,contemporary with the Neo-Assyrian Empire (°'). On the basis of a Kassite sealwith a cuneiform inscription found there, it is considered that the most probabledating of the ruins would be between the Kassite period and halfway through the1st millenium B.C.

The elements which favoured a religious interpretation of the constructionwere: the walls of crude brick on stone foundations, the finding of some`stamps' on important points in the main room and a small square podium coveredwith plaster, which may have been an altar . ( e4 ).

The scarce documentation offered us in the accounts of the excavation,however, has made it impossible to give an accurate reconstruction of the ma-terial that was actually found. Among this were numerous objects from astoreroom discovered in the floor of a room adjoining the central one ( fi5 )

What was, however, immediately drawn attention to was the lack of anycorrespondence whatsoever between the cultural characteristics indicated by theobjects and those of the famous `horse culture' of Luristan. Moreover, it mustbe pointed out that this discrepancy seems to anticipate by fifty years the anal-ogous conclusions drawn in connection with the discoveries of Bâ'bâ Jân (Goff1968: 128-29), and also emphasises the two failures with which archaeologicalactivity regarding the Pre-Achaemenian period had begun on the plateau (").

The first archaeological appraisal which Herzfeld made of the discoveries

(03) Not many buildings of a ritual character from the Achaemenian era have beenfound on the plateau. Apart from the cases of the tower-temples of Pasargade, Naqsh-i-Rustam and Zendan-i-Suleiman which are planimetrically related to Urartian styles (Stronach1967: 278-88), we should like to recall the examples of Susa (Schippmann 1971: 273-74),of Dahan-i-Ghulaman (Scerrato 1966:

9-30)

and, in the Median era, Nnsh-i-Jân (Stronach1973: 1-28). For a synthesis of the question, see Yamamoto 1979 and Stronach 1981.

(84) From the descriptions in our possession, it is not possible to reconstruct the formor type of the altar of Surkh Dum. For a typological review of the hearth in the Iranianarea and its typological and constructional influence on the fire altar, see Genito 1982:195-245 and Genito, in press.

(ss) Among the materials in the storeroom, we should like to mention pestles, brooches,mirrors, cylindrical seals, hundreds of bronze standards and plaques decorated (in repousse)with scenes of a religious character, cf. Schmidt 1938: 205-16. On the enigma of the ex-cavations at Surkh Dum cf. Muscarella 1981. By. a kind of a minireport (and not `a pre-liminary' one cf. ibid.: 333) the author points out quite well the absolute lacking of anystratigraphical context at Surkh Dum publishing few objects coming from there. The objectswhich now belong to the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York) actually represent theonly published objects with regard to the amount of the once considered to come fromthere.

(» This is the umpteenth coincidence and naturally leads one to think that it is nota matter of mere chance (cf. fn. 57).

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points to the Median period as the most obscure of the whole of the ancienthistory of Iran (Herzfeld 1935).

He also indicates the lack in Persian culture of a historiography in thewestern sense as the principal obstacle to the casting of light on the most ancientperiods of Iranian history. He is referring to the tendency of Persian culturewhereby myth and history are hopelessly entangled; where every historical tra-dition is transformed into legend and every legend into history; and whichshrouds the Median period in a mist of uncertainties from which not even Hero-dotus can rescue it.

With regard to historical reconstruction, the identification of the Deioces'dynasty with the Keyàniân kings of Avesta and the epic of Ferdowsi was pro-posed. As far as archaeology is concerned, the publication of the excavationsof Giyan (Contenau-Ghirshman 1935) and Syalk (Ghirshman 1938-39: 1-11) onthe one hand, and the attempt to set the archaeological history of Iran in thewider context of that of the ancient Near East (Herzfeld 1941) on the other,were the most significant contributions made at the end of the 1930's.

The tombs of Tepe Giyan, a small village to the south-west of Nihavendin Luristan, do not really come within the sphere of the problems we are dealingwith here, at least from the point of view that was adopted in dealing with theirchronological and cultural aspects (Contenau-Ghirshman 1935). Although theproposed dating, which is divided into five periods, from the 4th to the begin-ning of the 1st millenium, seems to exclude any connection with the history ofthe Medes, the geographical location of these discoveries, a stone's throw fromMedia, nevertheless posed again the problem of the role of the population ofGiyan in the light of the arrival of the Iranian tribes on the plateau.

However, the time was not yet ripe and, apart from purely chronologicalquestions, the connections between Giyan and the Medes were barely mentioned.The Medes and the archaeological and historical-artistic problems concerningthem were still remote from the cultural awareness of most people; and the ge-neral conditions of international archaeological culture at the time were not yetsuch as to permit the explosion of interest in the Medes that characterised the1950's ( fi°).

(B7) The role of the international antique market has yet to be completely clarified. Inthe fifties it must have greatly influenced the aims and the results of archaeological researchin Iran. It will probably be impossible to get right to the bottom of the matter. Withregard to this question, there was an interesting attempt by Pope (1939: 177-95) to exorcisethe phenomenon of the faking of objects of art on the occasion of the III Congress of IranianArt and Archaeology in Leningrad. The American author declared that he was very worriedabout the danger represented by fakes but, at the same time, saw this danger from a verydifferent point of view from the one that we are accustomed to today. His intention wasto eliminate the prejudice that tended to consider an object a fake in the first place if it

At the same time, attention was once more drawn to the constant factorof the whole of the history of Median archaeology, i.e. the discrepancy betweenthe character of the archaeological discoveries and what was discovered casually.The Luristan that was explored by archaeologists systematically gave the lieto the Luristan of clandestine plundering. Only one of the tombs of Giyan wasfitted out with the range of items typical of Luristan, consisting of armour,standards and ritual objects, while all the others were fitted out simply, withordinary objects.

A phenomenon analogous to that of Giyan seems to be repeated in an evenmore striking fashion at Syalk, a settlement which is of prime importance forthe history of the peopling of the central-eastern part of the plateau because ofthe great length of its sequence. The B necropolis of Syalk, chronologicallysituated in a period much closer to Giyan than that traditionally considered asMedian, and geographically located in a region not far from Ecbatana, was at-tributed to the Medes ( 8B ). This proposal was, however, made on the sly, asthough it were a mere detail deduced from a context of more general consider-ations. The hypothesis, which was not, in fact, presented as something certain,indirectly reflects, in my opinion, the fact that the international antique marketat the time did not consider the Median. period ready for commercialization.This operation was to be carried out a long time later and with very differentresults. While Ghirshman was forced at that time to honestly admit the almosttotal lack of evidence of the material culture of the Medes (1938), years laterhe was to speak of his discovery in very different circumstances and in verydifferent terms ( e').

While the rock tombs of north-west Iran continued to provide the onlymaterial traces of the Medes the Median era as a whole was still a completelyobscure period in the history of Iran. The passage from the prehistorical epochto the Achaemenian could therefore only be interpreted as an abrupt and im-mediate turning-point (Herzfeld 1941).

A list of the new archaeological elements and discoveries of those years waspublished in a handy bibliographical synthesis (Vanden Berghe 1959), which did

did not correspond to certain of the principal stylistic criteria adopted by the critics ofthe time. His speech was, however, so wide-ranging as to indicate not only a deep under-standing of the problem, but above all that, in the face of numerous expressions of mis-trust from all over with regard to objects from Luristan etc., he wanted to keep his dis-tance from a phenomenon that was more widespread than he himself thought. Thus heactually proposed new criteria of stylistic interpretation of artistic objects, which would alsotake into account the more strictly technical aspects of the same,

(8B) Cf. Ghirshman 1938-39: 108-10; cf. fn. 43.(e9) We are referring to the ideas he expressed in the fifties (1951) and repeated

in the sixties (1963), where the Medes are given a very precise and definite role.

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43

not, however, bring out the great transformations in historical and archaeologicalresearch of those years or, above all, the general cultural context in which thiswork was carried out. The division of the bibliography into geographical regionsallowed concentration on particular subjects and the compilation of useful littlecatalogues; but it did not permit more time to be spent on more specific subjects.The problems concerning the Medes were not, in fact, dealt with; and in thesummarised chronological tables the Achaemenian period follows directly afterthe Elamite.

Other discoveries made in those years seemed to give the `coup de grâce'to those who believed that there still existed some possibility of finding archaeo-logical traces relating to the Medes. The discovery of Hasanlù ('°) and thediscoveries regarding the Urartu kingdom (°') were, in fact, an archaeologicalconfirmation in the north-western territories of Iran, but did not supply anyuseful information for the reconstruction of the Median culture.

This archaeological activity in Iran arose from the need to understand fullythe problematic question of the arrival of the Iranians on the plateau, and toattempt to clarify, in the light of this problem, the historical and archaeologicalreality of the Medes, a people mentioned repeatedly by the ancient sources.Nothing strikingly 'Iranian' and therefore `Median' presented itself to the eyesof the excavators. However, perhaps the least exciting traces, which equallywell suggested a Pre-Achaemenian iron age, gave a clear glimpse of great ethnicand cultural variety ( 72).

The new prospects that opened up in the study and the analysis of thesettlements in north-west Iran contributed to a clarification of the historicalevents regarding two peoples: the Mannaeans, who had been practically unknownup to then, and the Urartians, on whom the interest of archaeological research inthe Near East had been concentrated only sporadically ( T '). The characteristicpainted pottery of Hasanlù, with its geometrical designs and triangles, related onthe one hand to that of Tepe Giyan, and to the Khabur ware of Syria and Iran

(70) The news of the discovery was given at the end of the fifties (cf. Dyson 1958:25-32). In the years following, the project was worked out (cf. Id. 1960a: 10-11 and1960b: 118-29), with a series of campaigns (cf. Id. 1961: 63-64 and 1963b: 131-33). Thefirst conclusive evaluations appeared halfway through the sixties (cf. Id. 1965: 193-217 and1968b: 39-58).

('I) The bibliography regarding Urartu is so vast. We shall indicate only a fewfundamental works, such as Van Loon (1966), Piotrovskij (1967), Azarpay (1968) andBurney (1971).

(Ta) Consider the numerous questions of ethnic ad cultural character regarding the Man-naeans and the Urartians, who seem to have polarized all the cultures of the II andIII iron ages in north-west Iran.

(73) The bibliography is somewhat limited for the Mannaeans too; the fundamentalworks are Melikisvili (1949) and Boehmer (1964).

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on the other ( 74 ), brought out the historical and cultural consistency of the settle-ment. The presence of the 'gray ware cemetery' with the characteristic forms(spouted pitchers), which were also painted and dated from the 1st millenium,together with the morphological connections with the ware found in the Bnecropolis of Syalk, left open the possibility of even greater correlations ( T5 ).

The signs of a terrible fire at Hasanlù caused by a military attack by theUrartians, who razed the citadel to the ground, and the discovery of the burntbuilding II, were the most significant results of the 1960 campaign (Dyson1961: 63-64). . The campaign of 1962 (Id. 1963: 131-33) brought further clari-fication regarding the pottery production and allowed the III period to be dividedinto two sub-phases: III B, the more ancient, and III A, the more recent. Thematerial culture showed signs of various cultural influences, Assyrian and Urart-ian, but the burnt building III became the planimetrical point of reference forthe evolution of the hypostyle hall in Iran ( 7`). Discussions on the ethnicalnature of the people resident at Hasanlù in the IV and III periods led only toconclusions based on stylistic and iconographical appraisals of the figures rep-resented on the objects found (Id. 1964: 3-11). The fact that the figures werenot depicted wearing trousers, the characteristic article of the Indo Europeanwardrobe, led to the inhabitants of Hasanlù being considered an autocthonouspeople who had resided in the area for some time and were influenced by theMannaeans and culturally impregnated with Mesopotamian characteristics.

The lack of knowledge as to the authors of the figures and their points ofreference led iconographical interpretation to draw facile ethnical and culturalconclusions, asserting a relation of identity between those who portray and whatis portrayed, with regard to Hasanlù, considering the attempts at interpretationof certain iconographical themes on the vase of gold. These are first held to besimilar to Avestic myths (Kurockin 1974: 34-47), and then to Hurrite myths(Porada 1967). This is dbviously only an example of a procedure widespreadamong historians of art; and they are not alone in this. The criteria used forthe attribution of a work of art, already problematic in itself, become complicatedout of all proportion when it is a matter of ancient art. Here the lack of anyprecise historical support whatsoever makes is impossible for stylistic interpret-ation by itself to offer a full explanation of an object or, above all, what it

(7A) The `khabur ware' (cf. Hrouda 1957) found in Syria and Iraq and dating frombetween 1800 and 1500 B.C. and, above all, the discovery at Hasanlù of certain objects,among which a short bronze sword with inlaid wood in the hilt, a type known in Lur-istan in the XII century, were historically the most important elements that the Americanarchaeologists concentrated their attention on.

(75) That is to say that Hasanlù was evidently in the centre of cultural mediations be-tween Mesopotamia, the cultures of the north (Urartu) and those of the east (Iranian?).

('s) The question is still one of fundamental importance for the architectural devel-opment of the peoples on the plateau (cf. Young 1966: 59 and Dyson 1977: 155-70).

45[35]

represents. The degree of approximation in this field is enormous and ignoranceof these limitations is unforgivable in those who stubbornly go on consideringartistic style as a sort of `deus ex machina', good for all situations (").

Periods IV and III, together with the moment of the transition from oneto the other, constitute in Hasanlù the chronological points of reference to theB necropolis of Syalk and, therefore, to the history of the Medes (Dyson 1965).

However, similarities between the two sites, which are more apparent thanreal, have not produced precise support for the hypothesis of a similarity intheir forms of pottery. The culture of Syalk B, which was also the first tointroduce triangle decoration on the plateau (Ghirshman 1938-39), differedfrom that of Hasanlù above all because it expressed characteristics of its own,that were typical of the VIII century. Links with Hasanlù appear to have beencaused rather by the nature of certain of the cultural characteristics of the latter,which managed to become lasting poles of reference in the nearby territories.The `gray ware' tradition of Syalk B can, in fact, be dated back to the anal-ogous tradition of Hasanlù without, however, necessitating the hypothesis of theexistence of common ethnic groups supposed to have produced it ( 7e ).

On the other hand, links between Hasanlù and Zendan-i-Suleiman and cer-tain similarities in pottery production with Geoy (Burton-Brown 1951: 153-75)and Yanik «Burney 1964: 60), allow us to view Hasanlù as a sort of bridgebetween the area of Urartian influence and Iran in the era when Urartu beganto expand to the west and was able to put an end to the Assyrian control ofAsia Minor (Piotrovokij 1967: 41-42).

The numerous points of comparison between Ziwiyé and Hasanlù III B,which had brought out certain aspects of contemporaneity between the two sites(Dyson 1965), at the same time posed again the unsettled question of the realextension of the Scythian domination of Iran. This problem had become veryinteresting after the discovery of a tomb with horses at Hasanlù (7 ').

This system of burial, which some classical authors had dwelt on at such

(T') To tell the truth, it is not only art historians who use their own interpretativecriteria as a sort of master-key. See the acute analyses of Kramer (1977: 91-112) andMedvedskaya (1982: 96-100) concerning the pottery.

(''a ) The painted wate of Syalk B would seem to represent the culture of the VIIIcentury, which followed the tradition of the monochrome grey ware of Hasanlù.

(79) Cf. Dyson 1965: 208-9; this is a tomb on two levels which has never beencompletely published. In the lower part, there are the skeletons of four horses, and thisis supposed to demonstrate the possibility that peoples of the Scythian type had alreadyarrived in the area halfway through the 8th century of possibly at the end of the 9th.This interesting hypothesis is not adequately backed up by the excavation report of Radand Hakemi (1950) which, apart from the description of the tomb, does not give a clearand precise idea of the quality of the objects found there, such as a bronze bit, studs andbone necklaces. For a sketch of the tomb, see Ghirshman 1963: fig. 131. For the questionof the Scythians at Hasanlù, cf. Kurockin 1982: 43-48.

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length (Herodotus IV 71) and which was generally attributed to Scythianpeoples, was probably a practice widely diffused both in space and time. Its Cen-tral Asian origin is attested to here and there throughout the Eurasian steppe ( 80 ).

The objects found at Zendan-i=Suleiman completed the picture of archaeo-logical research in north-west Iran in those years. The two main periods of oc-cupation, one of which was related to a Mannaean sanctuary consisting of agreat circular building at the foot of a crater, and the other to a later phaseof habitation, chronologically situated around the 8th century, furnished fur-ther clarifications regarding the culture of Iron Age II in Iran and a new viewof relations between the kingdom of Manna and the plateau (Oehler 1961, 1962;Boehmer 1965a).

The similarities among the pottery of Zendan-i-Suleiman, of Ziwiyé andHasanlù posed yet again the question of an Iranian culture of the north-westwith which the Medes seemed to have had no links whatsoever. The religiousaspect of the settlement seemed of particular interest because of the presenceof a lake in the middle of a crater ( B1 ). The connections between the Zoroastrianideology on the one hand, and the ideology that had arisen from the Khurrite-Mannaean background on the other, allowed a completely new interpretation ofthe religious culture that had probably developed on the plateau with regard tothe extent of Magism, which had hitherto been considered predominant.

The excavations of the sites of Bâbâ Jân (Goff 1968, 1969, 1970, 1977),Nzish-i-Jân (Stronach 1969, 1973, 1978) and Godin Tepe (Young 1969, 1974)(fig. 11), the first situated in Luristan and the other two in the heart of Media,were a milestone in archaeological research for the Pre-Achaemenian period.

The geographical location of these `settlements' and above all their dating,which is backed up in two cases ( 82 ) by radiocarbon analysis, together with someevidence of material culture dating from between the 8th and 7th centuries,fully justify the euphoria and satisfaction that greeted these discoveries, whichwere seen as the first material evidence of the Medes that archaeology had broughtto light ( 83 ).

(ao) This is not the place to go into this question in detail. Let it suffices for nowto recall that the tradition appears in all Central Asia and in Hungary too (cf. Parducz1952, 1954, 1955), on in the island of Salamina (cf. Rizza 1986: 294-97; for middle agescf. Balint 1982.

(B') The lake and the mountain are among the recurrent myths found in tales ofAvesta (cf. YC XIX 65-69) and have been referred on different occasions to a number ofdistant geographical contexts which correspond to the description of Avesta, cf. Gnoli 1967: 7-39.

(» Cf. Stronach 1978: 10 and Young 1969: 31.(s3) Whether or not this people was ethnically Median is a practically unanswerable

question. It must, however, be pointed out that the area in which the discoveries weremade were all, except Bâbü Jân, in the territory of Media.

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Fig. 11 - General plan of Northwestern Iran.

In the case of the citadel of Godin (Young 1969: 34), of the fortified build-ings and the painted room of Bæbâ Jân (Goff 1968: 131-32; 1978: 42) and thefort of the religious edifice of Nnsh-i-Jân (Stronach 1978: 10), the dating pro-posed by the archaeologists, which varies between late Iron Age II and Iron AgeIII (we are referring to the principal periods of occupation), agreed perfectlywith the traditional chronology of the history of the Medes. However, insteadof emphasising this chronological agreement, I think it is worthwhile to lingera little over the nature of the archaeological traces that were brought to light.

They constitute a sort of `zero point' in the material documentation of a peoplewho lived in Media in the era closest to that which historiography has assigned tothe Medes.

It was, in fact, the `settlements' themselves that constituted the indirect,and most striking, confirmation of the groundlessness of the historiographicaland historical-artistic appraisals that I have already dealt with at length and thathad, up to then, wildly exaggerated the extent and the nature of the historyof the Medes.

Having brought to light, in fact, nothing even approaching the idea of the`Medes' that had grown up over the years, these archaeological traces scaleddown to what may be its proper limits the `empire' that had traditionally beenconsidered as an anticipation of Achaemenian greatness and home of a greatand luxurious art.

The reality of the archaeological documentation turned out to be far removedfrom that culture of luxury consisting exclusively of jewellery and treasures, mid-way between Assyrian, Urartian and Achaemenian influences, that had beendreamt up rather than based on concrete facts. No object of particular artisticvalue was found in those excavations. Even the few examples of material cul=ture of worth are very far removed in quality from those generally attributedto Median art ( s")

Apart from a few other objects (see below) that offer interesting data forchronological comparison, and the pottery that can be correlated with that ofIron Ages H and III, it is above all the architecture that attracts the attentionof whoever approaches these archaeological remains.

Thus a typical situation regarding the documentation of the Medes is re-peated: the elements blown up and overestimated by historiography are system-atically proven groundless by the material documentation; those which hadreceived little or no attention turn out to be the only concrete evidence.

Median architecture, on which the attention of the ancient historians hadconcentrated so much ( 8 '), had, in fact, been completely excluded from a centuryand a half of discussions and analyses. In the light of these excavations, it be-came the only concrete evidence of that period in the north-west of Iran.

The contemporary presence in the three sites of a fortified unit, a roomwith columns of probably ceremonial character and, in one case, also of one or

(eh) The quality of the few examples of material culture found on the three sites bearsabsolutely no comparison with the luxury and display of objects such as those from the`treasures' of Hamadan or Oxus.

(85) Consider the descriptions of Herodotus (I 98) and Polybius (27, 6-13) of Ecbatanaand its palaces.

GODIN TEPE •BISITVN •

D 1

A

• HAMADÂN (ECBATANA)

• TEPE NVSH-I JAN

• ZIwIYE

^•.i

BqBq J;CN TEPE •

48

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49

more `religious' constructions ( BB), is evidence of the functional articulation ofspace of an advanced culture. The superseding of the elementary undifferentiatedspatial unit that was typical of Mesopotamia and the Near East (Gullini 1970-71: 181-273) is the most direct evidence of a hierarchical social order, one wish-ing in this way to keep its principal moments of social aggregation unified anddistinct ( 87 ).

These three requirements (the military-defensive, the public-ceremonial andthe public-religious) evidently correspond to a social and economic change broughtabout by the emergence of a political structure that was either centralised or wellon the way to being so. This structure had to deal with military attacks fromoutside but, at the same time, had its own differentiated social and religiousrhythms, during which the solemn moments of the community were cadenced bya prince, a leader or a king.

In contrast to this substantial conceptual unity, there are some planimetrical dif-ferences to be found in the buildings on the three sites. Whereas the two rooms withcolumns of Godin Tepe (fig. 12) and that of Nnsh-i-Jâ.n (fig. 13) are self-sufficientspatial units, the functional and spatial identity of those of Bâbâ Jân (figs. 14-15) requires adjoining rooms. The room of Bàbà Jàn ( 8B ) with the ceiling ofpainted tiles and the bases of two great columns could be interpreted as thebasic architectonic unit of the tribes of central Zagros (fig. 15). The central roomof the `manor' (fig. 14) could, in turn, constitute, together with building IIti ofHasanlù which it resembles, the subsequent moment of a slow and continuousplanimetrical development that began with a simple room with columns with anantechamber and steps leading to a second floor, as had happened at Hasanlùin burnt building II, The passage from the phase 2 of the `manor', with wideprojecting towers, to phase 1 marks a functional transformation probably dueto changes in military strategy. The corner towers, which were suitable for con-trolling the plain and protecting it from enemy attack, were eliminated fromthe planimetry. This reduced the extent of wall surface open to more complexand dangerous assaults, which may have been based in the 7th and 8th cen-turies on the use of a battering-ram (Goff 1977: 119).

The numerous structural and planimetrical anticipations of the Iranian archi-

(88) We are referring to Bàbâ Jân (cf. Goff 1977; 118-27). In this case the term of`religious' must to be taken in the large sense of `ideological'.

.(87 ) What we are dealing with here is a political élite formed on the basis of a hier-archical type of social stratification. A great number of workers were necessary for the build-ing of such fortresses, which obviously point to a need for safety brought about by particularperiods of danger, in the military sense as well.

(ea) For a reconstruction of the ceiling of the painted room of Bàbà Jàn, see Henrickson1983: 81-96.

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Fig. 12 - Columned halls from Godin Tepe.

Fig. 13 - Tepe Niish-i Jàn, Plan of the site: 1. Central Temple,

Old Western Building,3. Fort, 4. Columned Hall.

tectonic characteristics of a later period which have been found on these sitesrepresent the link between the cultures of the 8th-7th centuries in north-westIran and the palatial styles of the Achaemenian era. The adoption of the roomwith columns, a planimetrical element whose development can by now be tracedwith precision, and of a particular lighting system (`clerestorey lighting'), mayhave been the first attempts at the architectonic solutions based on an originaltradition of the plateau that were later to spread throughout the AchaemenianEmpire ( 89 ).

The great capacity of the storerooms of the fort of Nnsh-i-Jàn, not to mentionthat of analagous rooms in the fort of Godin Tepe ( 90 ), and the great labourforce which it may be presumed was necessary to build the 'manor' of Bâbâ Jân(Id. 1968: 114) suggest not only an era of relative prosperity but also a verydeveloped social organisation. Little is yet known about the nature of this or-ganisation, but it appears reasonable to - assume that it played a decisive role inthe building of the great public edifices, which required concentration of meansand control of the economic surplus ( 91 ). There is evidence of a religious life onlyat Nnsh-i-Jàn. Its altar with up-sidedown steps, so similar to those we see rep-resented on Achaemenian relief (92), adds further historical and religious elementsto Media, whose historiographical tradition is already so rich in references toits spirituality (98 ) (fig. 16).

(aB) The room with columns is, as is well known, the planimetrical element most wide-spread in the architectonic culture of the Achaemenian era. It is distinct from analogousbut different structures such as the hypostyle room of ancient Egypt, and is also an originalcontribution in the use of stone, having some precedents in wood in the rooms of Bàbâ Jàn,Nzish-i-Jân and Godin Tepe. It fully expresses the new requirements in the matter of publicdisplay of the newly-formed royal house, which intended to offer a completely new imageof itself with regard to the traditional conceptions of kingship.

(9D) It has been estimated that the latter were capable of holding some 22,000 bushelsof wheat. Cf. Collins 1974: 25.

(91) In any case, what we are dealing with is a social and economic situation of econ-omic surplus. It is still not clear whether this is to be attributed to the development ofa Median state structure or rather to the benefits the Iranian tribes to the east of theAssyrian empire began to gain from their location on the outskirts of a great empire. Cf.Sancisi-Weerdenburg 1985: 1-15.

(» Cf. Stronach 1973: fig. 6. For a domestic stepped altar in Sistan (Iran) cf. Scer-rato 1979; for a typological examination of the fire altars in the Pre-Achaemenian era cf.Genito (forthcoming); for the relations between hearth and altar see Genito 1982.

(sa) The reference to the religious centrality of the territory of ancient Media is inevi-tably linked to such figures as the Magi and Zarathustra (cf. Benveniste 1938) and Przyluski1940). The hypothesis that Zarathustra might have been a native of Media (cf. Jackson 1899and Gray 1929) is no longer considered valid. Today the most probably geographical areafor the spreading of Zoroastrian thought is generally held to have been Sistan (cf. Gnoli1967 and 1980).

Fig. 14 - Bâbà Jàn, Plan of Central Mound manors.

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Fig. 15 - Bâbâ Jân, Isometric reconstruction of Fort and Painted Chamber.

IMTN/fOYTN lL[.1101L1

[tlTlM'E1T [1[wTIGNS

The use of the vault, even though made up of long mudsbrick segmentsresting on small ledges on the walls below (Stronach 1969: pl. Vb), is itselfa confirmation of an ancient origin of Iranian tradition.

The numerous hearths of Bâbâ Jân (Goff 1977:

103-18) and,

above

all,the use of wall decoration with blind windows of Nûsh-i-Jân (Stronach

1973:fig. 5) also seem to anticipate those decorative elements which were to be usedlater in Iranian territory (94 ).

The `Median' architecture to be seen on the three sites provides considerablematerial for reflection, especially when compared with the picture painted for usby the historiography of the ancient world.. We have yet to find either the nu-merous villages spoken of by Herodotus or the remains of planimetries and ur-ban articulations resembling the descriptions of Ecbatana. It could hardly beotherwise if we consider the historical value of the sources, which are 'alwayshalfway between myth and reality. What is of more use in the historical senseare the traces we have found of an architecture that was probably not royalbut certainly worthy of respect. Its characteristics are those peculiar to theplateau and the requirements of defence seem to have been the prime consider-ation.

The fact that the three citadels flourished at almost the same time and ina radius of a few kilometres (95 ) suggests that living conditions were hom-ogeneous, even though the problem of the ethnic and cultural nature of the peoplesis still unsolved (see fn. 83).

The discovery of the same material culture in the three settlements has notenabled us to give conclusive answers, but it does seem certain that the ar-chaeological levels belong to the horizon between Iron Ages H and ILI (Young1965). As we have already said, there have been few finds of any value. BâbâJân has yielded an anthropomorphic vase (fig. 17) which is similar to otherexamples of animalistic sculpture (figs. 18-19) (Ghirshman 1963: figs. 108, 391)but cannot be dated with precision, and the remains of the skeleton of a horse(Goff 1969: 123-26), which offers some elements of chronological comparisonbecause of the characteristics of the funeral fittings. There are also a lion-headedbronze pin (Id. 1978: fig. 14, no. 29), an anthropomorphic tube (ibid.: 38,fig. 14 no. 26) - the only objects in any way similar to the metalwork of Lu-ristan - and two simple boW and elbow fibulas (ibid.: fig. 14 nos. 3-4). Nnsh-i-Jân offers a bronze elbow fibula with cross hatched incisions on each arm(Stronach 1969: 166, pl. Xb), a head-shaped pendant of Pazusu (ibid.: pl. Xc)

ïi1 fEaTON A-.

(» We are referring to the blind windows of the Ka'aba-i Zardusht at Naqsh-i Rustam(cf. Schmidt 1970: Pls. 11-12), or those of an analogous monument at Zendan-i Suleiman(cf. Stronach 1967: 278-88).

(95) The distance is approximâtely fifty kilometres. See the map on fig. 11.

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55

R^N

A

CTT^ ^-'T

Fig. 16 - Tepe Nash-i Jân, The Fire Temple, Plan, elevation and section ofthe fire altar.

Fig. 17 - Bàbà Jàn, Anthropomorphic vase.

Fig. 18 - Anthropomorphic vase from Luristan

Fig. 19 - Anthropomorphic vase from Luristan(Private collection).

(Private collection).

and three quadruple spiral silver beads. Godin Tepe has provided a bronze fibulawhich may be compared stylistically to types found in Assyria in the 8th cen-tury ( 96 )

These few objects may be dated from the 8th to 7th centuries and, if noth-ing else, provide a homogeneous chronological frame in which all the rest mayeasily be placed.

The failure of casual discoveries to correspond to those of a typical archaeo-logical excavation in Luristan seems to persist at Bàbâ Jân. Our knowledgeof the metallurgical production of the region is, in fact, limited to objects spor-adically found. This is not only because its ritual and ceremonial character isclosely linked to finds made in tombs but also, perhaps, because the nature ofthese finds permits of no other correlation ("). Apart from its elements ofsimilarity with the other two, Bàbâ Jân is the site which permits, above allbecause of the variety of the finds made there, the most numerous and thewidest range of comparisons with the other settlements of the same period inthe northwestern part of Iran. Certain decorative patterns of the painted tiles,which constitute a distinctive system of architectonic decoration, recall kassitemotifs and those of Syalk ("). The boot-shaped clay sculptures (Goff 1978: 38,fig. 13 no. 2) are strikingly similar to certain bronze objects found among theruins of Hamadan (De Morgan 1896: fig. 158 nos. 13-15) (figs. 20-21).

While the analysis of the pottery sequences of the three sites does succeed

Fig. 20 - Bàbâ Jàn. Boot-shaped claysculptures.

(9B) Of the three sites, only Nûsh-i-Jàn has, in part, been analysed in terms of thedetails of the minor objects found there (cf. Curtis 1984). These analyses confirm thedating of the 7th century for most of the objects found on the site and, in particular,suggest a new interpretation of the storeroom with the silver objects (cf. Stronach 1969:16). As had already been suggested (Bivar 1971: 97-111), it may have been a depositoryof the currency of the time (Curtis 1984: 16-21), analogous to those of the traditional sys-tems of Assyria and Babylonia, which had entered into the culture of the plateau.

(97)It is known that the operations of people concerned with the illegal gathering ofobjects have more negative consequences in the case of tombs than of settlements. Thelatter are of greater extension and, therefore, not so liable to total destruction.

(98)Cf. Ghirshman 1938-39: pls. IX-XV, LIV, LXIV, LXVII, LXIX, LXXX, LXXXII,LXXXIII, LXXXV, LXXXVII, LXXXVIII, XCI.

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Fig. 21 - Bronze objects from Hamadan (De Morgan).

in singling out certain similar shapes and types, it cannot go beyond a generalsimilarity of classes of product and offer a homogeneous interpretation. Fromthe material published so far, which has little statistical relevance from thequantitative point of view, it is impossible to deduce typological relations onwhich to base general historical interpretations. In other words, a certain mor-phological homogeneity is not enough to define an object as belonging to aparticular ethnic and cultural group (°°). The comparisons made and the paral-lels drawn, even if frequent, just about enable us to distinguish the characteristicspeculiar to each site. Only in a few cases do they allow us to point to anoriginal capacity for autonomous elaboration ('°°) In any case, the overall pic-ture we have obtained from the three sites can be correlated to the so-called'late buff ware horizon', even if the two subgroups this production was dividedinto are not exactly reflected here. In fact, the northern group, which includesHasanlù III, Ziwiyé and Zendan (Young 1965: 72 ff.), and should also includethe pottery production of the three sites, offers limited, albeit precise, similaritiesonly with some types of carinated bowls from Godin (Id. 1969: figs. 43-44)and Bàbâ. Jàn (Goff 1978: fig. 10 no. 6, fig. 11 no. 14; 1970: fig. 7 nos. 2-6,fig. 8 nos. 8-9).

The painted pottery of Bâbà Jân has certain similarities with that of othercultures of Iron Age II in the northwestern part of Iran, such as Dinkha Tepe

(°H) Cf. Kramer 1977: 91-112 and, more recently, Cleuziou forthcoming: 1-4.( 10°) We are referring the certain particular types that seem to have been worked

out and produced at Nnsh-i-Jân in the third phase (Stronach 1969: 13).

II (Muscarella 1968b, 1974). The culture of Khurvin (Vanden Berghe 1964),which has been seen as mediating in the north the use and diffusion of particularmorphological types (" 1), has made possible hypotheses as to a sort of typologicaldependence of the southwestern areas on the northern (Goff 1978: 35). Thereis no need to point out that this typological interpretation does no more than sug-gest a hypothesis of historical character, according to which typological depen-dency is simply supposed to reflect the access routes to the plateau used by theIranians.

Comparisons between Bàbà Jàn and Khurvin on the one hand, and Hasanlùand Syalk ('°") on the other, confirm that the sites in question belong to thecommon horizon of the 'red on buff pottery' (Young 1965). The use of the one-handled jar decorated with painted triangles and with pendants around theneck, of the jar decorated with dots and blobs or with réctangles (Ghirshrnan1938-39), the latter being reminiscent of the tiles of Bàbà Jàn, are the mostevident examples of similarities and parallels. These may not have been fullyunderstood as yet, but offer a wide range of possible interpretations. In fact,the possibility cannot be ruled out that it was the characteristics of regionally-distinct cultural areas to predominate in Iron Age III, rather than those of ahomogeneous and unitary 'Median' area.

All of the above-mentioned decorative elements have been interpreted asthe iconography most used by the early Iranians just as similarities between thegrey ware of Iron Age II found in the Elburz mountains and that of Bàbà Jànhave been interpreted as traces of Iranian penetration into the Zagros at thebeginning of the 9th century (:Goff 1978: 36). Even if the culture of Bâbâ JànIII and 11 has explicitly been considered as introduced by the Medes, in myopinion it is difficult to attribute all of these characteristics to the Medes withany degree of certainty. This position seems to be obviously one dictated bythe need to find a strict correlation between historical and archaeological data,rather than one arising naturally from the cultural contexts at our disposal. Itis a way of using 'history' to fill in the gaps left by archaeological analysis.The temptation is very strong and, evidently, not easy to resist (ibid.: 42).

A first archaeological approach to the problem of the archaeological cultures ofthe north-west of Iran was attempted in order to correlate the written sources andarchaeological data with the question of the arrival of the Iranians on the plateau(Young 1965: 53-85). The characteristic painted pottery (Id. 1967: 11-34) of

( 101 ) We are referring to the so-called beak-spouted teapot (cf. Vanden Berghe 1964:tomb 5 no. 1, tomb 8 no. 5, tomb 9 nos. 5, tomb 11 no. 1, tomb 12 no. 2).

(1°Z) In this case, we are referring to the same beak-spouted teapot, but also to thetubular-spouted teapot (cf. Dyson 1965: pI. XXXVIII), to the cups and the lugged-globularjar (Dyson 1965: pl. XI) and to the trough-spouted jugs (Dyson 1965: pl. XLII).

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Iron Age III, completely unknown until then and recognised as having beenbrought by the Medes, is supposed to have been only the material expressionof the wide homogeneity and cultural unity of a social and economic structureof the state type ('°') The fragmentation of Iron Age II, on the other hand, issupposed to mark the arrival of the Iranians on the plateau some time aroundthe 1st milleniutn. The inadequacy of such categories of historical interpretation,which start by picking out a similarity in one of the aspects of the archaeologicalcultures and then tend to consider these cultures homogeneous in all their otheraspects, has recently been drawn attention to (Medveskaija 1982: 96-100). Infact, so far as Iron Age I is concerned, no confirmation has been forthcomingof a transformation of the material culture so great as to reflect the arrival ofa new ethnic group on the plateau. Similarly, with regard to Iron Ages II andIII, the cultural unity which should be associated with social and economicphenomena of the state type has turned out to be less robust than might reason-ably have been expected. It appears evident . that a certain type of `diffusionism'was fed by the need to give some reply to the scarce documentation of thefacts. As regards the end of the 2nd millenium, the question is not whetheror not the Iranians really arrived on the plateau, but rather whether or not itis possible to have archaeological evidence of this. For the period from the 9thto the 7th centuries, a similar question must be put with regard to the arrivalof the Medes: is there or is there not archaeological evidence of this? It isevident that the answer can only be interlocutory in the one case, and negativein the other. In the first case, in fact, it is necessary to await new finds, ormore illuminating discoveries that have been made so far. In the second case, onecan but observe the incompatibility there is between the material and archaeo-logical evidence and the historical and artistic view that has been consideredreliable up to now.

The analyses of the historical geography of the territory of the northwestof Iran and of the Zagros in the light of the Assyrian sources (Levine 1973, 1974,1977a) are no less complex than those of a more strictly historical nature. Theyhave managed to put together a picture of the economic and productive re-sources and of the monopoly of long-distance trade, i.e. the situation determiningthe fate of the foreign policy of the states of the time (Burney 1977: 1-18).This is a famework in which the Median state also has its own logical position.Unfortunately, however, the lack of material documentation has always boundthe history of the Medes necessarily to the analysis of single elements of art,

(l03) This hypothesis must, naturally, be treated with due caution, since the materialtraces relating to the Medes that have been found so far would seem, from the point of viewof political anthropology applied to ancient societies, to indicate the opposite, if anything.See what Sancisi-Weerdenburg (1985) has to say on this subject.

languag•e or material culture, which have been interpreted as decisive evidenceof their arrival on the plateau and settling there

From the lingustic point of view, the spread of Iranian languages has notbeen seen as depending on the formation of Iranian states ( 105 ). It is, in fact,excluded by the largely Iranian character of Neo-Assyrian onomatology whichwould appear to be the effect of a profound Iranisation of the area begin -ning long before (Grantovskij 1971: 347-48). From the `archaeological ' pointof view, on the other hand, the use of `tab-handles' in certain pottery formswhose prototypes are to be found in Transcaucasia around the year 1000(Ghirshman 1977: 49) has been taken as unmistakable evidence of the arrivalof the Iranians. The Median culture of Syalk and Luristan have even been putforward again recently as different moments of one and the same process ofdevelopment. The former is supposed to represent a culture of warriors newlyarrived on the plateau. The latter is held to be the culture of a more matureand evolved people who made the religious ceremony one of the fundamentalsthat their existence revolved around (ibid.: 56-57). Yet again, the prime con-sideration here is the need to make the written sources correspond to the materialdocumentation, even at the risk of distorting the former and misinterpreting thelatter. The route taken by the Iranians to arrive on the plateau can, therefore,only be the one described by Herodotus and already used by the Cimmeriansand the Scythians. The Medes of Syalk can only belong to the tribe indicatedby Herodotus and denominated Paratacenes of the region of Partukka or Par-takka, a term that appears in the inscription of Asharaddon ('")

The shackles of a monolinear conception of the cultural development ofthe Iranian tribes has so far precluded the possibility of distinguishing the realdynamics of the meeting between the new arrivals and the indigenous peoples.Here the part played by a people such as the Medes can only be measured bythe delicate balance between the reducing of ethnic differences to an indistinctcongeries of peoples and the creation of different groups, each one clearly sep-arate from the others.

('"4) From the historical point of view, cf. Sancisi-Weerdenburg (1979) for the firstattempt to debunk the historiographical treatment the Medes had always received.

(ios) The linguistic approach to the `Median question' is much more complex thanwe can summarize here. A short history of the problem could start from Herzfeld's article(1938) about the Median and Parthian languages relationships. After the publication ofthe epigraphic material from Persepolis (Cameron 1948; 1-Iallock 1969) and the attemptsof reconstructing the indeuropean language (cf. Mayrhofer 1966, Kammenhuber 1968), andthe most recent contribution of Mayrhofer (1968), Grantovskij (1970, 1971), the questionis still opened (cf. Rossi 1981, 1984). The way opened by Burrow (1973) who identified akind of protoindoaryan language has not been much followed.

( 106 ) The term appears in the Assyrian annals of Asharadon. For a historical and ety-mological treatment of the terms, see Piemontese 1969.

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The formation and the change mechanisms of ethnic groups have, perhaps,not been sufficiently studied as yet. However, a line of research which beganto bear in mind other aspects as well would, perhaps, be able to distinguishthe limits and boundaries between the individual groups as measured in termsof three orders of variables: their level of competitiveness, their ethnocentricforce and the differentiation in the power achieved ( 104 ).

3. Sources and Historiography

Historiography poses completely different problems. On the one hand wehave the rich and articulated harvest of the written accounts of the ancientsources, on the other there is the vast historiographical exegesis that has beencarried out on them over the years. Together they constitute the two poles ofa whole series of problems that have still to be solved. The undeniable historicalvalue of the sources, regardless of the considerable interpretative problems theypresent, is a brute fact that even the most experienced archaeological approachhas to come to terms with. At the same time, it has represented a considerablestimulus to the efforts of archaeologists to discover the material traces of theculture of the Medes ( 1DR )

I am neither competent to discuss here, nor so presumptuous as to attemptto do so, the numerous philological and historical aspects of the question. Forthe sake of completeness, however, I do think it necessary to give a brief reviewof the most significant historiographical moments of the study of the Medes.

Without wishing to compare the historiographical situation with the archaeo-logical and art-historical fields, which I have already dealt with, it does seemworthwhile to point out the great distance separating the former from the latterin terms of quantity and, especially, content.

In comparison with the historiographical production of the second half ofthe last century, which was full of vast general works and weighty articles,the archaeological and art-historical production was relatively less numerous.However, it was also distinguished, as I have already pointed out, by the inad-equacy of the data available, which often led to scholars giving free rein to theirfancies in their efforts to blow them up into something of importance.

The historiographical problem of the Medes presents itself on the first read-

( 107 ) Even though the comparison may seem too rash and modernistic, see McGuire1982: 159.

(i°e ) A careful examination of the work involved in the discoveries of Nnsh-i-Jàn, BàbàJan and Godin Tepe will reveal the constant effort made by the authors to relate theirmaterial data to the data of the classical sources (cf. Stronach 1969: 2-8 and especiallyGoff 1978: 40-42).

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ing of the Assyrian sources. These are the most ancient written references tothis people ( 1U9 ) and by no means easy to decipher. The few pieces of infor-mation that can be deduced from them are not, in fact, free of interpretativedifficulties. However, because of their great age, the period of time they cover(9th-7th centuries B.C.) and the geographical context they are located in theyrepresent the obligatory starting point for whoever wishes w embark on the studyof the ancient history of Iran ( 11°)

Because of their fragmentary nature and incompleteness, they offer littleinformation that can be made use of historically. However, although it is little,it is also clear because the Medes are always referred to in relation to a homo-geneous political and military framework. A people called `Mada' living in thearea near the barrier formed by Mt. Bikni (now unanimously identified withMt. Alvand and no longer with Damavand) began at a certain point to posea constant threat to the east of the borders of the Assyrian state.

Persian sources also have little to offer: some direct evidence from theAchaemenian era (Kent 1953) and the rest, concerning the legendary history ofIran, taken from poets of the Muslim epoch (11) These legends had great suc-cess in Europe in the nineteenth century and still find the occasional proselyteeven today. Little use can be made of them, however, from a scientific pointof view (112)

Many different problems are posed by the whole of the Greek historiogra-phy, from Herodotus to Ctesias. While richer and more detailed than its As-syrian counterpart, it presents internal contradictions and is greatly influencedby the cultural and methodological premisses laid down by Hecataeus with regardto the writing of history ( 13 )

The Assyrian texts involve problems of historical geography which havegiven rise to the most varied hypotheses over the years

(x14)

However, the

( 10B) The Luckenbill critical edition of Assyrian inscriptions (1926) is still fundamental.The two more recent volumes of Grayson (1975 and 1976) dont include the chronologicalperiod which we have related to.

( 110) See, for example, Young 1965 and Stronach 1967, who begin their discussionwith a brief examination of the Assyrian sources. See also, naturally, fn. 108.

("') We are referring in particular to the `Shahnameh ' by Ferdowsi.(1^) The efforts made by Safa (1975: 23-30) do not seem acceptable. In trying to

give credibility to the national Iranian legends, he has come to be completely conditionedby them. Gharakhani (1975-76) and Jaf (1976) use in the same way the traditional basisof the iranian legends. In the first case trying to explain and interpretate some archaeo-logical remains, in the second one trying to single out some ethnic survival of the ancientMedes.

('^a ) Cf. Mazzarino 1966: 23-52 and 70-83. For the Herodotean tradition cf. D'jakonov1985: 89, fn. 1.

( 114 ) It should suffice if one considers the geographic reconstructions of Lenormant (1871),Thureau-Dangin (1912) and, much more recently, Levine (1973, 1974, 1977b). Some other

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analysis of the passages from Herodotus is far more complex and difficult; notonly because of the historical and cultural context the narrative is part of, butespecially because of the extension and articulation of the narrative itself. Thework of Herodotus, in fact, appears as a`logos' in the true sense of the word,even if his version of events concerning the Medes is clearly subordinated tothe prime objective he had in mind: that of preparing the reader for the `greatevent' of the Persian wars ("®). Everything, that is to say, is aimed at thehistorical, ethnographical, political, economic and military presentation of Persia,the country with which the Greek world was going through a phase of acutemilitary tension. This tension was such as to represent a traumatic moment ofnational awareness on the cultural level. The Greek version of the histories ofthe peoples of the east was based on an attempt to reconcile the events whichhad really happened with Hellenic mythology, by inserting them into the ironlogic of genealogies in which an eponymous hero constituted the origin of apeople ( 116 ) This is the reason why the protagonists of the events related byHerodotus come across as characters out of fiotion; those of Xenophon as menstripped of their public characters; and those of Ctesias as unreal. Given theparticularly courtly language of the inscriptions, the few personages mentionedin the Assyrian sources are devoid of any historical substance whatsoever.

The whole of the modern historiographical tradition has necessarily beenbased on the framework of events supplied by the sources in working out acomplex and often richly-detailed `History of the Medes' ( 114 ). This approach hasalso been greatly influenced by the question of the arrival of the Aryans on

questions come out from the comparative use of the classic sources. It was very f amousfor example the onomastic relationship between the name `Dayaukku' and the Iierodotean`Deioces' or between `xaafrpetia' and Phraortes. Some recent echoes about this question canbe observed in Labat 1961, Cavaignac 1961, D'jakonov 1985: 80.

(115) More recent analyses with an anthropological background (cf. Drews 1973: 160 andHelm 1981: 85-91) seem to have demonstrated the uselessness of certain interpretationalcontroversies by approaching the question from a totally new direction. The analysis ofthe formation mechanisms of popular sagas (cf. Thompson 1974: 311-14) has brought outhow the legends of eponymous heroes or initiators of historical cycles of the peoples ofancient times were born. Among these, we could very well include a personage such asDeioces. It goes without saying that the Greek sources are too partial for one to trust tothem blindly and, above all, under the influence of the unilinear theory of evolution ofsociety from nomadism to agriculture (cf. Briant 1984: 79).

(l's) Cf. apart from the already-mentioned Helm (1981), also Drews (1973).(11') These are considerations that can easily be deduced from the first reading of the

texts. See the case of the chronological location of the episode of the lunar eclipse and,therefore, of the end of the war between the Lydians and the Medes (Herodotus I 74, 3),which led to complicated astronomical calculations in the last century (cf. Bosanquet 1860:39-69). Recently this has been at the centre of debate between scholars yet again (cf.Huxley 1965 and . Sacchi 1965).

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the plateau and the racial myth connected with them (" e ). The spreading ofthe idea of the nation, which had begun to form the background to all historio-graphical theories at the end of the eighteenth century, became the frame intowhich the Medes were inserted with a national dignity equal to that of the othergreat peoples of the ancient Middle East, the Persians, the Assyrians, theBabylonians and so on.

By no means the last to make its influence felt was the comparative-recon-structional methodological approach of the newborn school of Indo-Europeanlinguistics, which provided the analytical tools to decipher the ancient inscrip-tions (Bopp 1816). Considered as belonging to a`Turanic' rather than an Aryanlanguage, the second version of the Achaemenian inscriptions became an oppor-tunity to reconstruct a Median language with all its characteristics of syllabi-cation, endings and cases (De Saulcy (1849, 1850) (""''». It was also to serveas a prop for the greater cultural operation, then under way, of defining thecharacteristics of a Median nation. In this way the cultural stimuli of the ideaof the nation were combined with those of the comparative-reconstructionalmethod in linguistics, and, within a more general framework of the nations ofthe ancient Middle East, the Medes were identified under the various denomi-nations of `Median Power ' , `Median Country ' or `Median Moriarchy (Rawlinson1862).

In rhe space of 30 to 35 years, we go from the absolute silence with regardto the Medes to be found in the accounts of travellers at the beginning of thelast century to the working out of a grammar and a syntax of the Median languagein the 70's of the same century ( 19 )

The first answers which the travellers of the last century tried to give tothe problems raised by the classical texts had not, in fact, always led to thetopographical and geographical, in a wider sense, recognition of the names ofthe cities mentioned. This was the case with Ray or Rages ( 1`°), identified bySir William Ousely (1818-19) only as the favourite residence and possibly thecapital of the Parthian kings, with no reference at all to the Median era. Onthe other hand, Mc Donald Kinneir correctly identified for the first time, andagainst the prevailing opinion of the time (Kinneir 1818), Hamadan as theplace where the ancient capital Ecbatana had been situated. In the same way,J. Morier pointed out the importance of the Keyâniân (1820: 7) and the sagaof Rostam for the ancient history of Iran without mentioning the Medes. Sir

(1e) Cf. the valuable essay on the genesis of antisemitic thought by Poliakov (1974).("ab's) The first publication of the Bisutum inscription is by Rawlinson (1847).(us) Cf. De Saulcy 1849: 93-213 and 1850: 397-528.(zo) Cf. Arrianus, De expeditione Alexandri, III 20; in the Bible book of Judith 1,

15; Strabo lib. Xi 18, Athenaeus, Xii.

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John Malcom (1829) was later to do just the same, concentrating all his atten-tion on the legendary tradition of the Iran of the Pyshdâdiân and the Keyâniândynasties. In his accounts of his travels, Buckingan shown his agreement withKinneir as to the real location of ancient Ecbatana, but puts it forward in afanciful and unreal manner, dating it from at least 2000 B.C., in the time ofthe mythical Semiramides (1829).

Also in Frazer (1840) there is a lack of references to ancient Median Ecba-tana-Hamadan. H.C. Rawlinson, a major in the British army stationed inBombay, tried to solve the vexata quaestio of Ecbatana, a name attributed bythe ancients both to the capital of Atropathenian Media and to the capital ofGreat Media. He started from a preliminary comparison of the ruins of Takht-i-Suleiman and the data of the later eastern geographers and, gradually, throughthe examination of Arab, Byzantine, Roman and Greek sources, came to identifyit with the Ecbatana of Atropathene Media. This he successively identified withthe Arabian Shiz, with Byzantine Canzaca, Biblical Gharran and the Gaza of theRoman epoch (Rawlinson 1840).

Roth (1849: 216-30) takes the saga of Feridum as the basis of the historyof India and Iran. His approach is still centred on the same literary traditionthat Rawlinson also accepted, albeit with critical caution. In fact, the latterdid not hide his scepticism about identifying `fabulous' personages with thosewho had actually lived, even if he did not rule out the possibility that many realevents may have been transferred to the romanticised plane of fable. This sameliterary tradition also supplies the foundations of the work of J. de Gobineau(1869). In his exaltation of the Aryan charaoter of the ancient society of`Ayrânâ Vàeja', he works out a long and complicated dynasty, where there is aplace for the Medes as well. Gobineau's scientific pessimism - he was also theauthor of an essay on human inequalities led him to find his inspiration inthe Biblical chronologies. His work, leaving aside the exaggerations and in-terpretative distortions that have grown up around him and his work, confirmshis position as a champion of the superiority of the Aryan race.

F. Speigel stands out a little in this panorama of the epoch for his highlyoriginal ethnical-nntropological contribution to the history of the Medes. Ontwo separate occasions, in fact, he carries out a thorough examination of the clas-sical texts in an attempt to understand the social nature of the villages inhabitedby the Medes before the time of Deioces, the relations within the village betweenassociations, clans and families and the role of the leader elected from amongthe males. The author's reflections are evidently stimulated by comparisonwith the cultural characteristics of such peoples as the Lurians, the Kurds, theAfghans and the Baluchs, who he considers similar to the Medes in terms ofgeneral conditions of life. He then deals at length with the so-called Deioces'unification, the economic and political change that marked the transition from

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a village sociale structure to that of a city, with the consequent transformationof the chief or leader into a king and the foundation of such a city as Ecbatanason the basis of Assyrian-Babylonian models are seen as the painful steps whichwere to give the new people the right to `step onto the stage of history' (Spiegel1858, 1880).

It was not until the great historical works of the second half of the cen-tury that the criteria of historiographical investigation began to be defined.Philological disputes on the interpretation to be given to crucial passages fromthis, that or the other classical author continued, however, to play a by no meanssecondary role for quite some time.

The attention of the scholars with regard to the events of the history ofthe Medes revolved around the concept of the nation and the cyclical dimensionof political power.

In spite of its brevity, these two elements also appear in embryo in thework of Rawlinson (1862), which may be considered the first history of theMedes. After giving an outline of the `nations ' of Asia Minor, the author offersa complete panorama, divided into paragraphs, of the history of the Medes. Thewhole of the first part is devoted to the principal characteristics of a people-nation:the ethnos, the language, ethno-linguistic family, the forms of the first settlementsand the military conflicts participated in, first as a subject and then as a freenation. In the second part, devoted to the `Magian Revolution ' , the author gives

a personal interpretation of those events, which he sees, in opposition to theprevailing opinion of the time, not from a political but from a purely religiouspoint of view. His version of the facts is largely faithful to that of Herodotus,even if there are, to tell the truth, certain rectifications. An example of thisis furnished by the treatment of the founding of the Median Empire (ibid.:

331), which he considers the work of Cyaxares and not of Deioces, an exces-sively Hellenised character.

Rawlinson carries the approach begun some years before to its extrememethodological consequences in a weighty volume, one of a series on the greatmonarohies of ancient times. This is the first articulated monograph on the`Median monarchy' to be based on a historiographical conception tending to cir-cumscribe the nation as an ethno-cultural territorial unit (Id. 1865). Over nofewer than 237 pages, divided into precise chapters, he talks of climate, produc-tive resources, customs, character, art, religion, language and writing; not tomention the definitive chronological scheme he offers of the principal events.The work is immediately distinguished by its style as a 'encyclopaedic summa ' ,

ranging freely from erudite curiosities to the most demanding historiographicalquestions according to systematic-informative criteria that concede little space toanalysis or moments of critical reflection.

The work of Lenormant is somewhat different. It tackles the whole question

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of Median history, bearing in mind not only the classical sources 'but also theJewish and Assyrian (Lenormant 1871). He dwells at length, as was the custom,on the different chronologies and onomatologies of Herodotus and Ctesias mak-ing clear his preference for the former. However, he spends most time over thenames of the Median tribes, of which he supplies precise etymologies. Accordingw these, the social and ethnic composition of the Median confederations is sup-posed to correspond exactly to the names of the individual ethnic groups andtheir social and economic roles. In this way, the farmers and shepherds aresupposed to have been the subjected groups, and the Aryans and Magians thepolitically dominant forces. The unified conception of the nation here undergoesa significant variation in the formulation of a bi-ethnic and bilinguistic compo-sition of the Median confederation. The Medes are seen as an aristocratic éliteof Arian origin dominating a majority of Turanic origin, and the term 'mada'used by the Assyrians to indicate the Medes is supposed to have been an Arianword used by the Medes themselves (Lenormant 1871).

J. Oppert concluded almost thirty years of study and research devoted tothe Medes wIth a bulky volume of nearly 300 pages. However, contrary towhat the title of the work (1879) would lead one to believe, only 17 pages arededicated to the culture of that people. The rest deal with the problem ofthe language, a subjeot in which the author had given proof of his interest onmore than one occasion. Apart from the history of the deciphering of the in-scriptions, with respect to his previous articles the author here amplifies his af-firmations regarding the Median grammar. He devotes a chapter each to thedeclensions of the nouns, to the pronouns, the nurnerals, the verbs and the ad-verbs. He then deals at length with the inscriptions that he considers Median:the second version of the Achaemenian inscriptions ("-')

In 1880 the subject of the end of the Median kingdom was tackled by MaxBiidinger in an essay crammed with philological notations. While bearing inmind the inscription of Bisutun, the author based his work on Eusebius andthe chronicle of Apollodorus. He interprets the events in the light of the Persianconception of the nation that had been in the process of formation at thebeginning of the 4th century B.C. (Büdinger 1880: 477-504).

According to that tradition, the Median people had not been defeated, butrather absorbed by the Persian people, who granted them equal rights - thesame rights that they were later to be stripped of during the political unrest atthe time of Cambises.

In the Delattre's big volume (1883) it is possible to find all the caracteristicsof the general historiographic works we have described unitil now. The author

(lzl) It should be noted that the author was of a different opinion some years earlier1876b: 33-45.

is completely at variance with Oppert's hypothesis on Turanian character of theMedian people (Delattre 1883: 6-45). He believes that the Medes were aryanand that after having been dominated by the assyrians they got the independenceagainst them. He divides the history of the Medes in three phases: the first isrepresented by Deioce's `national' organisation, the second one by the Phraorte'sand Cyaxares's conquests, the third one by the final victory over the assyrians.Althought the author follows the Herodotean tradition he doesn't agree com-pletely with him on more than one chronological question.

The work of J.V. Prâsek (1890) is on an larger scale. Much ofit found its way into a subsequent work that was w mark an even more decisiveturning-point in the historiographical approach to the problem of the Medes.In fact, the idea of a Median people autonomously and originally playing itsrole in political events on a level with the other peoples and nations is hereconsolidated. If one observes that `Medien und das Haus des Kyaxares waspublished between a history of the kings of Pont and another of the kings ofLidia, the weight and importance of the operation attempted by the author be-comes clear. This operation, which Rawlinson had already tried to effect sometime before (1862: 179), appears more modern when one considers just how farremoved the articulation of its content is from the vague and meagre understand-ing of a generic conception of nationality that distinguished Rawlinson's work.

In the subsequent work, Prâsek begins by dealing with the first inhabitantsof Iran and the arrival of the Aryans. He then concentrates his attention on theancient sources to distinguish a pro-Persian and a pro-Median tradition. Thesimultaneous presence in Herodotus of the former, which is clearly indicated inthe text (Herodotus I 95), and the latter, which goes back to the Harpagus'descendants tradition, reinforces, in the author's opinion, the historical value ofthe work of the great historian. The concept of Protoiranians (Prâs"elc 1906)and Protomedes, which is so close to ideas that have even been put forwardin the archaeological field (Ghirshman 1963), and the setting of the wholequestion in the wider context of the ancient history of the Near East and theimportant roles played by the Cimmerians, the Scythians and Urartu, appearto be the most significant contributions made by the author. In any case, heremains faithful to the chronology given by Herodotus rather than the one of-fered by Ctesias, who he does not consider a historical source.

At the end of the century, reflection had also begun on a wide scale as tothe contribution of the Deioces ' descendants w such important events as thefall of the Assyrian Empire (De Moor 1894, 1895, 1899). At the same time,however, a significant paradox became obvious: only a few pages of the greathistorical works dedicated to the Medes and the Achaemenians could be de-voted to the former (N'dIdeke 1877). Embedded as it was by then in the ac-cepted chronology of Herodotus, and firmly anchored to its place in the more

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general history of the nations, in the face of the scarcity of documentation onewas forced to admit that the history of the Medes was unique in ancient timesfor having left so few material and cultural traces (Ragozin 1891). The historyof the races (Sayce 1893) shed new light on the problem of the Medes, evenwithin the Biblical tradition ( 1"). Once freed from the rigid coupling oflanguage and race, nation and nationality, which was the concept still insistedon at the time (Müller 1876-88; Finck 1909) and, thereby, stripped of theethnic-linguistic identity and autonomy that had placed them on the same footingas the other ancient empires of the east, the Medes began to lose much of thefascination and mystery that had always surrounded them. For the first time,they came to be considered as merely the first step within a more general historyof Persia (Sykes 1906).

Historiographical investigation in this century is still based on the textualanalysis of the sources. At times it minimizes the importance of the Medianperiod against the vaster background of the history of Iran (Rogers 1929; Ross1931); at times the scheme of Herodotus is put forward again in its entirety;a final approach is that which re-interprets the period in the light of certainvariants (Cameron 1936). The historical-religious point of view deserves farmore space than it has received. A fundamental element here is the relationbetween Medes and Magians, which is put forward as the cultural conditionscapable of explaining the spreading of religious values and ideas of CentralAsian origin from one end to the other of the ancient world (Przyluski 1940).

The Soviet contributions made at the end of the 1950's ( 3 ") mark a turn-

(1z2) After a long series of misleading articles on the real historical contribution ofthe old testament for the Median history (among them cf. the most important of Watson1885, Halevy 1894, Horner 1901, Anchincloss 1909, Wilson 1922, Alfrink 1928, Rowley1935 and North 1958), the biblic tradition seems to have been reshaped as one destitutedof any historical basis. Torrey (1946) considers the biblic books founded on a metahis-storical perspective and for that usable only by the Jewish community.

(`» The monographies by D'jakonov (1956) and Aliev (1960) constitute two big his-toriographic works in the tradition of the last century general works. In the same timefor what concerns methodology the soviet authors in my opinion go much more ahead. Infact they were able to organize the whole set of the data in a completely different way.Summarizing would say that those volumes are the last general historic works on the Medes,but the first ones on the same subjects, based on a new system of making history. Alievstarts from the paleolithic time in Media and iranian territory. After a long discussionabout languages and ethnos of near eastern and iranian peoples, the author goes to thehearth of the question. The relationship between the Media (historically defined) and theMedians is always taken as a fundamental reference point for understanding the historic facts.The assyrian and greek ancient sources become the essential elements for establishing howthe Median social structure changed in to a Kingdom. The first ideological framework inwhich the D'jakonov's work is located consists on costructing a kind of history of Azer-baigian. The volume is much more than the first one a philologic study based on a direct

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ing-point in the historiographical approach to the problem based on the relationbetween economic history and territory. An effort is made here to relate thesources to the material culture found on Median territory, concentrating at-tention on the analysis of the development of political phenomena of a statetype in the Zagros. The birth of the Median confederation in the northwest ofIran is thus interpreted as the result of the international balance of power of theera and seen against the background of the conflict between the great politicalstate entities of the time: the Assyrian, the Urartian and the Mannaean. Thelatter, in particular, is seen as a type of model for the Medes, who are supposedto have inherited its social-tribal character and its social-economic productivebase: agriculture, stock-breeding and crafts. The awakening brought about instudies of the Medes by the works of D'jakonov and Aliev reveals itself also inthe field of the problems of a more strictly archaeological nature. Some of hisideas are still present in discussions of the Medes (Amiet 1976: 98-105), andit is, perhaps, in the stimuli provided by their work that we must look for theorigin of modern critical- reflection on the culture of the Medes and of renewedarchaeological activity in the territory of Media (ef, fn. 7).

author's knowledge of sumeric, accadic elamitic, persian ancient jewish, greek latin andhurritic. D'jakonov likes to remain a divulger leaving all the much more complex historicquestions in the foot-page notes and trying to preserve the text out of any specialisticfeature. Recently the same author has started working again on the same question enrichingit by a new large part related to the eastern median territory (1985: 126-34). Much atten-tion is devoted in his new work to the archaeological questions. Basically he dwells onhorsemen peoples movements as the Scythians and Cimmerians (91-100) singling out theconcept of `prescythians cultures' chronologically not corresponding with the ancient sourcesinformations. This concept, completely new for the iranian archaeology, has been already usedby the Hungarian archaeologists since the thirties (Gallus and Horvâth 1939).

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