IRANIAN ARTS

the arts and architecture of ancient Iranian civilizations. Any reservation about attributing to Iran primary status among the countries contributing to the art of the ancient Middle East must be associated with the discontinuity of its early history and the comparatively incomplete state of its archaeological exploration. Nevertheless, it is clear that Iranian art maintained a distinctive identity from prehistoric times onward; thus, characteristics seen in designs on painted pottery of the 4th millennium BC can also be recognized, for instance, in the sculpture of the Achaemenian Persians. One of these characteristicsmanifest in bronze casting and stone carving as well as in painted ornamentis the predominance of decoration over representation. Such purely Iranian predilections seem, surprisingly, to have survived the historical hiatus in the 2nd and 3rd millennia BC, during which the more culturally advanced regions of the country were so profoundly influenced by the ideas and artistic formulas of neighbouring Mesopotamia. During the better-documented years of the 1st millennium, they again survived, side-by-side with the innovations imposed by Greek and other foreign craftsmen, and were later in fact reciprocally transmitted to Europe. Additional reading General works on ancient Middle Eastern arts include Henri Frankfort, The Art and Architecture of the Ancient Orient (1954, reissued 1995), a full critical study by an eminent scholar, now somewhat outdated; H.A. Groenewegen-Frankfort, Arrest and Movement: An Essay on Space and Time in the Representational Art of the Ancient Near East (1951, reprinted 1987), a detailed study of aesthetic values and symbolic abstractions; Seton Lloyd, The Art of the Ancient Near East (1961), a well-illustrated survey for the general reader; and R.W. Ferrier (ed.), The Arts of Persia (1989), with an extensive bibliography. Edith Porada and R.H. Dyson, The Art of Ancient Iran: Pre-Islamic Cultures (also published as Ancient Iran: The Art of Pre-Islamic Times, 1965; originally published in German, 1962), is also useful.Iranian art is treated in Roman Ghirshman, Persia: From the Origins to Alexander the Great (also published as The Arts of Ancient Iran from Its Origins to the Time of Alexander the Great, 1964; originally published in French, 1963); and Malcolm A.R. Colledge, Parthian Art (1977). Seton H.F. Lloyd The Editors of the Encyclopdia Britannica