Religion

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The great Iranian divide: between aniconic West

and anthropomorphic East

Michael Shenkar

To cite this article: Michael Shenkar (2017) The great Iranian divide: between aniconic West and
anthropomorphic East, Religion, 47:3, 378-398, DOI: 10.1080/0048721X.2017.1330989

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RELIGION, 2017
VOL. 47, NO. 3, 378–398
https://doi.org/10.1080/0048721X.2017.1330989

The great Iranian divide: between aniconic West and

anthropomorphic East
Michael Shenkar
Department of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
The Avesta and the Rig Veda, our earliest sources for the Indo- Aniconism;
Iranian religious tradition, contain ideas and elements with both anthropomorphism; Iran;
aniconic and iconic potential. The cultic iconography in Western Zoroastrianism;
Achaemenian; Sasanian;
and Eastern Iran developed in a remarkably different manner.
Kushan; Sogdian
While the Achaemenian and Sasanian cults were aniconic, Eastern
Iranian people, like the Kushans and the Sogdians, not only made
use of portrayals of their gods in human form, but also venerated
their man-made representations in temples. This article suggests
that the reason for this sharp distinction in the nature of the cult
between Western and Eastern Iran is the impact of acculturated
Greek religious practices, which was much stronger in the East
than in the West.

The common ‘aniconic world’

When one reads the accounts of the Arab conquest of the Iranian world (7th–8th centu-
ries), one is struck by a dichotomy encountered by the Muslim conquerors in western (the
Iranian Plateau, roughly corresponding to the modern Islamic Republic of Iran) and
eastern Iran (Central Asia – Afghanistan, and the modern Republics of Tajikistan, Uzbe-
kistan and Turkmenistan): Medieval Muslim sources routinely describe the seizure and
destruction of numerous idols and idol-temples during their extensive campaigns in
Central Asia, while in western Iran statues captured by Muslims are rarely mentioned,
and all of them, without exception, belong to the secular domain (Shenkar 2014, 40–
44). The picture presented by these sources is unambiguous – the cult that the Arabs
encountered in eastern Iranian lands was centered on figural representations of deities,
while western Iranians apparently did not make use of divine images (Shenkar 2012a,
2014, 175–191). Moreover, this statement also finds full confirmation in the archaeological
data from the lands of the former Sasanian Empire and Central Asia. Written and material
sources point to a clear split in cultic practices along the lines of the geographical division
between the western and eastern parts of the Iranian world.
But how and why did this sharp divide come into being? Why did the eastern Iranians
feel the need to direct their worship to human-shaped images of the gods, while the
western Iranians were seemingly content with aniconic emblems of the divine, such as
the sacred, ever-burning fire? I have attempted to systematically discuss aniconism in

CONTACT Michael Shenkar michael.shenkar@gmail.com

© 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
 RELIGION 379

Iranian cults in an article published in 2012 (Shenkar 2012a; cf. further Shenkar 2014,
175–179), in which I adopted the categories of ‘material aniconism’ and ‘empty-space ani-
conism’ proposed by T. D. N. Mettinger in his seminal study on ancient Israelite anicon-
ism (Mettinger 1995).1 Examples of both types are abundant in the pre-Islamic Iranian
world, while there is sufficient evidence to show that – regardless of their iconic or anico-
nic practices – both western and eastern Iranians tended to conceive their deities as having
an anthropomorphic shape. The Avesta and the Rig Veda, which are our earliest sources
for the culture and the cult of the ancient Indo-Iranians (despite our lack of sufficient
understanding of their dating, transmission and historical context) contain ideas of
both anthropomorphic and aniconic potential. On the one hand, in both Avesta and
the Rig Veda there are no traces of any statues or divine images; but on the other, numer-
ous metaphors and detailed descriptions leave no room for doubt that the Avestan and the
Vedic gods were perceived by the authors of these hymns as anthropomorphic beings –
clad in elaborate clothing, equipped with various weapons and riding war chariots.
No anthropomorphic imagery has been found in the archeological sites of the Andro-
novo culture (c. 2000–1000 BCE), which is usually associated with the Indo-Iranians. The
pre-Indo-Iranian ‘Oxus Civilization’, which existed in Bactria, Margiana and in other
neighboring areas between 2400 and 1500 BCE, possessed quite developed anthropo-
morphic religious iconography (Francfort 2005). However, with the disappearance of
this remarkable civilization in the second half of the 2nd-millennium BCE, there is a
sharp discontinuity in almost every media of the material culture (Luneau 2014). We
have no evidence that the Central Asian population of the Iron Age, which was by that
time already at least partly Iranian speaking, made use of anthropomorphic iconography.
Furthermore, based on the current archaeological data, it seems safe to suggest that when
the Achaemenians conquered the eastern Iranian lands of Bactria, Chorasmia and Sogdi-
ana in the 6th-century BCE, they encountered various local cults that apparently were pre-
dominantly aniconic. In addition, the Iranian-speaking nomads – who inhabited the
steppes beyond the Syrdarya river and the vast plains between the Pontus area and Mon-
golia, and who were known to the Greeks as Scythians and to the Persians as Saka – also
made no use of anthropomorphic images in their cult. The Greco-Roman sources (notably
Herodotus 4.62) even explicitly mention that the Scythians do not make statues of their
gods, except for the god of war whom they venerate in the form of a sword stuck into
the ground (Shenkar 2014, 175–176). Most anthropomorphic representations of Scythian
deities are not dated earlier than the second half of the 4th-century BCE, and none can be
definitively identified as representing a cultic image (Shenkar 2014, 187–188).
The Iranians found the Oxus civilization already in decline, but in the West, they
encountered and subsequently came to dominate the ancient and highly sophisticated cul-
tures of Elam and Mesopotamia that were still flourishing. Despite some aniconic trends
that appear in Mesopotamian religious art in the first millennium BCE, these cultures pos-
sessed ancient and deeply rooted traditions of divine anthropomorphism (Ornan 2005,
2009). The ritual practice of western Iranians was most probably aniconic when they
first came into contact with Mesopotamian civilization. Our evidence is limited, but the

1
He defines them as ‘cults where there is no iconic representations of the deity (anthropomorphic or theriomorphic) serving
as the dominant or cultic symbol, that is, where we are concerned with either (a) an aniconic symbol or (b) sacred empti-
ness. I shall call the first of these two types “material aniconism” and the second “empty space aniconism”‘. See Mettinger
(1995, 19).
380 M. SHENKAR

sacred buildings that are usually associated with Medes, such as the temple at Tepe Nush-i
Jan (the earliest temple that can be identified belonging to the Iranians), were free from
images (Stronach and Roaf 2007). One would expect the Persians (themselves a product
of a long acculturation process between Iranian and Elamite populations) to have
adopted iconic cultic practices once they came to rule the Ancient Near East, and
perhaps even earlier during the formative phase of their ethnogenesis. However, this
was not the case, at least for the Achaemenian dynasty (see below).
As far as we can deduce from the available archaeological and historical sources, the
Achaemenian royal cult was characterized by aniconism (Shenkar 2012a). This was
perhaps also true for other Persian noble clans with whom the Achaemenians belonged.
It does not mean, however, that the Achaemenian kings and the Persians, in general,
did not participate in any of the iconic cults of their multi-ethnic and multi-religious sub-
jects. They undoubtedly attended Elamite and Babylonian temples, where they took part in
a variety of traditional rites that included worship of divine representations of deities both
in their aniconic and anthropomorphic forms. Although the Persepolis administrative
archives do not contain explicit references to divine statues, they attest to a diverse
palette of deities, rituals, priests and sacred places called ziyan in Elamite, which probably
refers to the covered temples (Henkelman 2008, 469–473, 547f, forthcoming). They were
important administrative and economic centers. It is reasonable to assume that some of
these temples contained human-like representations of the local gods and that this was
part of the religious landscape even in Pars – the heartland of the Empire, where most
of the Persian population was probably concentrated. The situation in the more peripheral
areas and provinces was undoubtedly even more varied. However, when the Achaeme-
nians paid homage to their royal god – Ahura Mazdā (and probably also to other
deities such as Mithra and Anāhitā who are mentioned for the first time under Artaxerxes
II) – it seems that they did so in the open air and facing a fire-altar as the only focus of
ritual attention. According to Mettinger’s typology, altars would fall into the category of
‘material aniconism’, but it has been argued recently (focusing on Greek religion) that
in some cases, they can also be considered as an example of empty-space aniconism
(Blume 2016). In the Iranian case, the altar is a seat or throne of the god of fire Ātar
who is perfectly visible in his worldly manifestation and thus, Iranian fire-altars would
decisively belong to the category of ‘material aniconism’.

The appearance of anthropomorphic imagery in Iranian cults

Along with the aniconic cult of the royal dynasty, the Achaemenian period also saw the
introduction of the semi-anthropomorphic and semi-zoomorphic symbol of Ahura
Mazdā (based on Assyrian and Urartan prototypes). This is the so-called ‘figure in the
winged disk’, which appears for the first time in the Behistūn relief of Darius the Great
and is later reproduced in almost every any media of Achaemenian artistic expression,
becoming the most dominant and recognizable Achaemenian visual symbol (Shenkar
2014, 47–50) (Figure 1). At the same time, as we have just seen, the royal Achaemenian
cult was centered on the veneration of sacred fire under the open sky on elevated
(natural or artificial) areas; no covered temples have been uncovered in Achaemenian
royal cities in western Iran (Shenkar 2007). We must therefore ask why Darius felt the
need to create this semi-anthropomorphic image of Ahura Mazdā, given the fact that
 RELIGION 381

Figure 1. The figure in the winged ring, Behistūn relief (© iconography of deities and demons/drawing
U. Zurkinden-Kolberg).

his own cult as well as that of his successors was most probably aniconic? A likely expla-
nation is that while the Achaemenians themselves saw no need to change their established
aniconic cultic practices – and perhaps even took pride in it as something that distin-
guished them from their Mesopotamian and Greek subjects (this is at least the impression
one gets from Herodotus’ comment (Hdt. 1.131) that the Persians make fun of those who
make statues, altars and temples) – they felt the need to visualize their dynastic god as part
of their imperial message and ideology directed toward other peoples of the Empire. The
use of this imagery should therefore probably be viewed in the context of the fundamental
administrative reforms introduced by Darius and the formation of the new imperial ideol-
ogy of his reign. In this, Darius seems to follow in the footsteps of the Assyrians who had
created this iconographical model for their ‘national’ god Aššur, who, after the establish-
ment of Assyrian rule over vast territories of Western Asia, underwent a rapid transform-
ation from a minor local deity to the patron god of the dynasty ruling over a great empire.2
Any discussion of the nature of the Achaemenian cult is inevitably based on two much-
quoted passages; one is the already mentioned account of Herodotus that the Persians do
not erect statues (Hdt. 1.131), and the second is that of the Babylonian priest Berossos,

2
References to most significant and recent studies of the iconography of Aššur are assembled in Shenkar (2014, 48, no. 9).
382 M. SHENKAR

active in the Hellenistic period, who tells us about the installation of the statues of the
goddess Anāhitā by the decree of Artaxerxes II in several cities through the Empire
(Clem. Al. Protr. 5.65.3). These statements have always served as a starting point for dis-
cussions about the presumed general evolution of Persian cultic practices from aniconic to
iconic, culminating in the construction of the extremely erudite but equally flawed theory
of Persian ‘iconoclasm’ as a reversal in the Sasanian period.3 Unlike Bruno Jacobs (Jacobs
2013), I see no reason to doubt Herodotus’ statement and to trust Berossos, since there is
no material evidence for the use of anthropomorphic icons in the Iranian cults both in
western and in eastern Iran until the end of the Achaemenian period, and there are no
visible traces of any kind of evolution or dynamism in cultic practices. It is only under
the Seleucids that we have archaeological confirmation of the existence of statues of
gods placed in temples in the Iranian world, and this is where the partition between the
East and West starts.4 The earliest evidence for divine imagery in an Iranian context
comes from the temples of Ai Khanoum and Takht-i Sangin in Bactria (Litvinskiy and
Pichikyan 2000; Martinez-Sève 2010; Shenkar 2011). These sanctuaries combined
Iranian and Mesopotamian architectural traditions with Greek decorative elements;
they housed anthropomorphic (Figure 2) and perhaps also zoomorphic (Takht-i
Sangin) cultic statues. There is no doubt that both Greek and local Iranian populations
participated in different cultic activities that took place in these temples.
The only evidence for the existence of cultic statues in western Iran during this period
comes from the so-called fratarakā temple in Persepolis, where a pedestal was excavated in
the cella, and fragments of a statue that were probably associated with it are reported to
have been found (Callieri 2007, 61–62). However, it is important to stress that this
example is isolated and we have to assume that the aniconic cult centered on the
worship of fire and other natural elements also continued to dominate in Pars and
other regions of western Iran under the Seleucids.
Unfortunately, we know almost nothing about the nature of the cult of the Arsacids, who
replaced the Seleucids as the rulers of western Iran and Mesopotamia in the middle of the
2nd-century BCE (De Jong 2013). They were of Iranian (but not Persian) origin, and their
cultic tradition was probably also aniconic. Once established in Parthia, as the religious
material from the Nisa ostraca indicates (Diakonoff and Livshits 1976–2002), it seems
that they quickly adopted the Parthian language and the local Iranian religion and cults.
However, the practices of the early Parthian cult remain elusive. Despite decades of exca-
vations at the site of Old Nisa, the exact nature of this royal ceremonial complex is still
poorly understood and no edifice of unquestionably cultic function has been found there
(Pilipko 2001). Several ostraca – among some 2500 discovered in Nisa – mention the
receipt of wine from something called āyazan, which can be translated literally as a
‘place of worship’. The same term, āyadana, is also found once in the Old Persian
version of the Behistūn inscription of Darius I (DB 14). Unfortunately, we do not know
exactly what kind of sacred places this word describes, and whether it refers to closed-in
temples or open-air cultic precincts. Pierre Lecoq has even suggested that āyadana in
fact refers not to temples or any other cultic place, but to some ‘religious rites’ suppressed
by the ‘usurper Gaumata’ (Lecoq 1995). However, since in the Nisean ostraca the wine is

3
I have recently argued in some detail elsewhere that iconoclasm never existed in Sasanian Iran. See Shenkar (2015).
4
For a discussion of Iranian temples in the Hellenistic period, see Shenkar (2011) and Martinez-Sève (2014).
 RELIGION 383

Figure 2. Fragment of a foot of a monumental statue, Ai Khanoum (Frantz Grenet).

never delivered to/for āyazan, but is always from āyazan, it is clear that the term describes
religious establishments that possessed their own vineyards. Therefore, the Achaemenian
āyadana were also most probably actual cult sites. After the Arsacids conquered Mesopo-
tamia with its significant Greek- and Aramaic-speaking population and the metropolis of
Seleucia on the Tigris from the Seleucids, Greek deities such as Heracles, Tyche and Nike
started to make regular appearances on their coins, often shown in interaction with the
image of the king (Sinisi 2012). It is possible that some of these scenes may represent alle-
gorical or even quite tangible allusions to real cultic statues, which no doubt existed in the
temples of Seleucia and other Mesopotamian cities. These images are often interpreted as
representations of Iranian gods in Greek guise (Curtis 2007; Sinisi 2008). This approach,
however, is based on an unproven assumption that the Parthians (and Iranians in
general) could and would worship only ‘their own’ gods, that is deities stemming from
the Iranian (i.e., Avestan) tradition, as opposed to the ‘foreign’ gods of, for instance, Meso-
potamian and Greek origin. This distinction is purely artificial, as we can see for example
with the goddess Nana. Originally a Mesopotamian goddess, she was adopted by the
Iranians – western and eastern alike – becoming the most prominent and popular deity
in Central Asia (Shenkar 2014, 116–128). It is beyond doubt that by the time of the Nisa
384 M. SHENKAR

ostraca (at the latest), she was not perceived as a foreign goddess by the Iranian population.
Repeated claims that Nana was identified with Anāhitā stem from the necessity felt by some
scholars to identify ‘non-Zoroastrian’ deities with their ‘Zoroastrian’ counterparts rather
than from any solid evidence. There is no doubt that Greek gods were indeed sometimes
(and perhaps often) assimilated with Iranian deities; the most eloquent example of such
identification being the statue of Heracles from Mesene, which carries a bilingual Greek–
Parthian inscription informing us that this image of Heracles has been placed in the
temple of Apollo (Bernard 1990) (Figure 3). In Parthian, the statue is identified as that of
the god Warhagn (Vərəθraγna) installed in the temple of Tīr. However, we should be
careful not to draw far-reaching conclusions from such singular evidence – which further-
more comes from Babylonia – since we know next to nothing about the cult on the Iranian
plateau in the Parthian period. There is no reason to think that the Olympian gods could not
have been worshiped by the Arsacids without interpretatio iranica in each and every case.
The paucity of evidence for the royal cult of the Arsacids themselves does not allow us to
make any firm conclusions about the iconic and aniconic in the religious practices of the
ruling dynasty. We know that the Arsacids had a custom of keeping ‘dynastic fires’, but
it is not clear where they were kept, or what kinds of ritual activities were associated with
them (Isidor of Charax, Parthian Stations 11). With the ascent of the second Persian
dynasty – the Sasanians in 224 CE – we encounter a situation remarkably similar to the
Achaemenian period. The Sasanians created anthropomorphic images of deities and
depicted them on rock-reliefs, seals and coins (Figure 4), but their sanctuaries were appar-
ently free of man-made images with fire being their only visualization of the divine (Shenkar
2015). The creation of fully anthropomorphic images of major Sasanian gods – Ahura
Mazdā, Anāhitā and Mithra – were an imperial initiative intended to augment the
unique status of the Sasanian king as the representative of the gods through striking
visual parallelism between the figure of the king and that of a god.
The main reason for the ‘great Iranian divide’ between the ‘aniconic West’ and the
‘iconic East’ seems to be the different impact of the Hellenic culture, or more precisely,
the strength of this impact. For the first time, Iranians were subjected to non-Iranian
rule and Greek culture became the culture of the elites. Unlike in ancient Mesopotamia
where divine images were kept in temples and were not accessible to the public except
during certain festive days (Ornan 2005, 14), in the Greek cult the worshippers were
usually given access to cultic statues; the three-dimensional representations of the gods
were also a visible and important part of the public space.
There is abundant evidence that ancient Iranians conceived their deities as anthropo-
morphic beings (Shenkar 2012a, 247–249, 2014, 188–191) and experimented with semi-
anthropomorphic images of deities (as did the Achaemenians), before the Hellenistic
period. But it seems that only when royally sponsored sanctuaries dedicated to the
Iranian gods, but containing a wealth of anthropomorphic divine imagery à la grecque
like the Oxus Temple at Takht-i Sangin appeared in the Iranian world, would human-
shaped representations of deities make their way into Iranian cultic practices. It is certainly
not accidental that the unambiguous and substantial evidence for such temples and their
dominance in the religious landscape is confined to Eastern Iran. Temples with anthropo-
morphic statues also existed in Western Iran (such as the ‘fratarakā temple’ in Persepolis
mentioned above), but these singular examples did not make a lasting impact. Much has
been written about the extent of Greek settlement in Bactria and the significant influence
 RELIGION 385

Figure 3. Statue of Heracles from Seleucia on Tigris (Frantz Grenet).

of Greek culture in this region of the eastern Iranian world (Bernard 1994; Mairs 2014).
This forms a sharp contrast with the situation in western Iran in general and in Pars in
particular, where Greek influence was quite limited and many Achaemenian traditions
were sustained by the fratarakā rulers (Wiesehöfer 2013). Interestingly, the same
pattern can be observed almost 1000 years later with another conqueror of Iran who
386 M. SHENKAR

Figure 4. The Sasanian king Ardašīr I receiving a diadem of kingship from Ahura Mazdā, Naqš-e Raǰab
(drawing E. Smekens © BAMI).

came from the West – the Muslim Arabs. Khurāsān – the easternmost province of the
Sasanian Empire – quickly became the center of the new Islamic culture, the cradle of
the Abbasid revolution and later saw the emergence of the New Persian literary language.
At the same time, the Achaemenian and Sasanian heartland of Pars remained for centuries
the stronghold of Zoroastrianism and the Islamization of this area progressed at a much
slower pace.5 There is every reason to think that the fratarakā and the later kings of Pars
during the Parthian period also kept alive the aniconic tradition of the Achaemenian cult
centered on the constantly sustained fire. This aniconic legacy was apparently passed on to
the Sasanians, who started as the local rulers of Pars. On the coins of Ardašīr, the founder
of the Sasanian dynasty, we find an innovative reverse design of a fire-altar combined with
lion legs symbolizing a royal throne (Harper 1979; Alram and Gyselen 2003, Type I(1)/2
(1)-VIII) (Figure 5). This combination emphasizes that the fire-altar is actually the divine
seat of the god of fire Ātar (represented here as the sacred flame on top of the altar)
(Shenkar 2014, 90–92).

The iconic East

The Greek influence and changes in the Persian cult between the fall of the Achaemenids
and the rise of the Sasanians are difficult to trace. In contrast, it seems that Hellenic influ-
ence transformed the Bactrian religious landscape, at least, in cities, while native Iranian
cults also undoubtedly continued to be practiced in their ‘pre-Greek form’. Unfortunately,
we know very little about them besides the fact that they were connected with open
5
For example, still at the end of the 10th century, Shiraz probably had a large Zoroastrian population (Daniel 1993).
 RELIGION 387

Figure 5. Fire-altar on a coin of Ardašīr I (© Trustees of the British Museum).

platforms constructed on natural elevations and were not associated with any anthropo-
morphic divine imagery (Rapin and Khasanov 2013; Martinez-Sève 2014, 241–242). The
aniconic and iconic cults undoubtedly could coexist in the same urban environment, as we
can see for example in Ai Khanoum, where the partly excavated podium on the Acropolis
functioned simultaneously with the two closed temples (which housed cultic images)
located in the Lower City and outside the walls. There is every reason to think that this
podium was used to venerate fire under the open skies. Furthermore, the cultic activities
in the Oxus Temple at Takht-i Sangin included both the worship of fire, which was kept
ever-burning in the side-rooms, and the veneration of statues whose pedestals were found
in the main tetrastyle hall and in the portico – thus combining both iconic and aniconic
practices in the same edifice (although the chronology is debated and we cannot be sure
that the fire-altars functioned simultaneously with the statues) (Shenkar 2012b). The com-
bination of fire-worship and anthropomorphic divine imagery was later to become charac-
teristic of the Kushan and post-Kushan Bactrian and Sogdian cult,6 while the Oxus Temple
established in the Hellenistic period continued to function as the major regional sanctuary
until the 4th century, more than 400 years after the end of the Greco-Bactrian kingdom.
We may, therefore, summarize that the Eastern Iranian religious landscape in the Helle-
nistic period presents a complex picture of coexistence of different aniconic and iconic
practices with the latter perhaps being predominant in the cities where the Greek popu-
lation was concentrated.

6
For a recent survey of religious situation in pre-Islamic Central Asia, see Grenet (2015).
388 M. SHENKAR

When the Saka and the Yuezhi nomads crossed the Oxus river in the middle of the 2nd-
century BCE to put an end to the Greco-Bactrian kingdom, they encountered a local popu-
lation that had already been exposed to the idea of anthropomorphic representation of the
divine for a long period and had become accustomed to it. Interestingly, the designs of the
coinage of the nomadic principalities which arose on the ruins of the Greco-Bactrian
kingdom (Senior 2001) combine anthropomorphic images of gods (for the most part bor-
rowed from their predecessors) with aniconic symbols such as the lion of the goddess
Nanaia/Nana on the coins of the Sapadbizes (or Sapalbides) dynasty (Figure 6). When
the rulers of one of these former nomadic clans – the Kushans – established an empire
in Bactria in the 1st-century CE, the focus of worship in their sanctuaries were human-
shaped statues of deities. The inscriptions installed in the Kushan temples at Surkh-
Kotal and Rabatak (Sims-Williams 2012), mention statues of various gods whose
images – drawn from Iranian, Greek and Indian traditions – were put on the reverses
of Kushan coins under the kings Kanishka and Huvishka (Figure 7). A composition
that becomes canonic from the reign of Wima Kadphises shows a king making a libation
on a small altar (Figure 8). This should probably be understood as a sacrifice to the deities
who are depicted on the reverse of the same coins, although such close relationship
between obverse and reverse is uncommon in most coinage. Most of these gods were prob-
ably not reproduced in actual statues, but are rather standardized and uniform represen-
tations designed especially for coinage (Zeymal 1997). These ‘mannequins’ were dressed
and given attributes drawn from a common ‘toolkit’ that often reflected the identity

Figure 6. A lion of Nanaia on a coin of Sapadbizes/Sapalbizes. After Tanabe (1995, fig. 2).
 RELIGION 389

Figure 7. PHARO on a Kushan coin (© Trustees of the British Museum).

and functions of a particular deity, but most attributes were not individual and were
shared by several gods.
Aniconic symbols are also attested on Kushan coins. Kanishka’s father, Wima Kad-
phises, is shown on his copper coins sacrificing before a trisula – an attribute of the
god Oešo depicted on the reverse of the same coins (Jongeward and Cribb 2015, nos.

Figure 8. A copper coin of Wima Kadphises (© Trustees of the British Museum).

390 M. SHENKAR

273–326) (Figure 8). On the reverse of his gold quarter dinara the trident (combined with
an erected lingam) completely replaces the anthropomorphic image of Oešo (Jongeward
and Cribb 2015, nos. 271–272) (Figure 9). Interestingly, after the Sasanian conquest of
Bactria and the establishment of the Kushano-Sasanian vassal state, the Bactrian coins
often show the new Kushano-Sasanian overlords making a sacrifice before an image of
anthropomorphic deities, which exhibit individual features and attributes and are no
longer standardized Kushan ‘mannequins’ (Figure 10). An additional important difference
is that while the Kushans as a rule represented the royal sacrifice and the deity separately,
on the obverse and reverse, their Kushano-Sasanian successors combined both into a
single composition depicted on the reverse. Therefore, there is every reason to think
that these scenes on the Kushano-Sasanian deities were probably inspired by actual
statues that stood in Bactrian temples.
With the emergence of the distinctive Sogdian culture in the valleys of Zeravshan and
Kashkadarya (modern Uzbekistan and Tajikistan) in the 5th-century CE, the anthropo-
morphization of the divine in eastern Iran reached its zenith (although clear evidence
for the existence of cultic statues in Sogdiana dates only from the 6th-century CE;
Marshak 1999). More than 20 images of different deities are known from all forms of
Sogdian art, but only four have been identified with a degree of certainty (Shenkar
2014) (Figure 11). Sogdian divine iconography draws primarily on the artistic legacy of
the neighboring Tokharestan combined with important Indian influences, such as multi-
plicity of bodily parts. Several Sogdian gods, including major deities like Nana and
Wēšparkar were depicted with multiple arms and heads (Compareti 2009; Grenet
2010). As far as we can tell, based on the Panjikent material, the central ritual in
Sogdian temples was the kindling of the sacred fire before the images of the gods
(Shkoda 2009). These images stood in the niches in the courtyard and in the main hall
of the temples, indicating that the latter were probably perceived as ‘houses of gods’
and that the worship of the anthropomorphic representations of deities played a principal
role in the temple cult. The ritual involved making libations to the fire on a portable altar
placed before the sculptured (and perhaps also painted) image of the deity. However, the
Sogdian cult undoubtedly also had aniconic features. It is almost certain that in Sogdiana,
as in Sasanian Iran, fire could act as a living representation of the divine. For instance, in

Figure 9. A reverse of a gold quarter dinara of Wima Kadphises (© Trustees of the British Museum).
 RELIGION 391

Figure 10. A king making a libation before a statue (?) of Anāhitā on a Kushano-Sasanian coin (© Trus-
tees of the British Museum).

one painting from Panjikent a group of people (with the great hero Rostam among them)
can be seen venerating three large portable altars placed on a podium (Belenitskii and
Marshak 1981, 30–31, Figure 6) (Figure 12). Two altars are topped with a crenellated
crown and with a moon crescent, while the body of the third altar is decorated with an
image of the Sogdian god Wēšparkar (unfortunately the decoration of the other two
altars was not preserved). These altars are adorned with images and symbols of the
Sogdian gods and act here as their aniconic emblems. The tympanum of the entrance
door of the Sino-Sogdian tomb of An Jia (579 CE) is carved with a large fire-altar sup-
ported by three camels (Marshak 2001, 244–245) (Figure 13). The fire-altar here is
given a zoomorphic throne – a common attribute of gods in the Sogdian art, who are
always shown in full human form. Marshak links this unique fire-altar with one of the
most popular deities in Sogdian iconography who sits on a throne supported by camels
(whom the Russian scholar identified as Wašagn, the Avestan god of Victory,
Vərəθraγna).7 Regardless of whether this identification is correct, it seems clear that
this altar should be considered an aniconic representation of a certain Sogdian god. The
principal wall (located in front of the entrance) of the Reception Halls in the houses of
affluent residents of Panjikent always carried an imposing anthropomorphic image(s)
of a deity or deities – most probably the divine patron(s) of the house lord. However,
the paintings on the exterior of the ayvāns in the same houses usually feature an array

7
For a discussion of Vərəθraγna, see Shenkar 2014, 159–163.
392 M. SHENKAR

Figure 11. Enthroned divine couple, Panjikent XXIV/13 (Frantz Grenet).

of symbolic representations that probably had protective and benevolent functions

(Marshak 2002, 17). While the exact meaning of some of these symbols, such as an
amphora with pomegranates and flowers, birds with human heads and a male figure
holding a plate is not clear, other symbols undoubtedly serve as aniconic or semi-aniconic
representations of Sogdian gods. These include a trident of Wēšparkar and a moon deity
shown as a human bust emerging from a crescent, representing the goddess xšwm (this
identification was suggested by Pavel Lurje, see Shenkar 2014, 100), or perhaps referring
to Nana who always holds in her upper hands two spheres containing anthropomorphic
personifications of the sun and the moon. In one case, the two most important Sogdian
gods, Wēšparkar and Nana, were depicted on the ayvān of one house in Panjikent in
full anthropomorphic shape (Marshak 2002, 17).
Another interesting and important case of Sogdian aniconism are the paintings of the
‘Red Hall’ in the palace of the Bukharan kings in Varakhsha dated to the 8th-century CE
(Shishkin 1963, 152–158). The upper register of the paintings, of which only the lower part
is preserved, shows a row of riderless animals and fantastic beasts such as a lion, a tiger, a
 RELIGION 393

Figure 12. A drawing of a painting from Panjikent III/6. After Belenitskii and Marshak (1981, fig. 6).

Figure 13. The tympanum of the entrance door of the tomb of An Jia. After Riboud (2012, fig. 2).

leopard, a deer, a camel, a mountain goat and a griffon (Figure 14). Processions of animals
are well known from Panjikent paintings, but what is remarkable in the ‘Red Hall’ is that
the animals are saddled and/or have stirrups. Various animals are equally well attested as
throne-supports and vehicles of the Sogdians deities in Panjikent (i.e., Panjikent XXVI/2),
but unlike in Panjikent, in Varakhsha they are certainly riderless. It therefore seems that
they act here as symbolic renderings of the Sogdians gods (Belenitskii and Marshak 1981,
32–33).8 This phenomenon is neither exceptional nor isolated. There is also evidence that

8
Aleksandr Naymark has argued that the choice of zoomorphic rather than fully anthropomorphic divine representations
was deliberate. He has suggested that it could be used to date the paintings to the period between 722 and 738 when
394 M. SHENKAR

Figure 14. A fragment of the wall-paintings from the ‘Red Hall’, Varakhsha (Pavel Lurje).

the god Oxus could have been perceived, depicted and venerated in the shape of a riderless
horse (Riboud 2003; Shenkar 2014, 129–130). Certainly, the earliest Iranian religious tra-
ditions as reflected in the Avesta contain numerous allusions to various deities assuming
zoomorphic form, and replacement of an anthropomorphic image of a deity with his zoo-
morphic attribute was already a well-attested phenomenon in Mesopotamia (Shenkar
2012a, 240–242). Therefore, the perception that the deities could manifest themselves as
various animals was present within the worldview of ancient Iranians from a very early
period, but the earliest certain manifestations of this practice of representing the divine
only by his animal symbol in Iranian iconography can be found only on the abovemen-
tioned coins of Sapadbizes/Sapalbizes in the 1st-century CE in Bactria.

Conclusions
In conclusion, Greek religious practice – with its accessibility of anthropomorphic divine
images in sanctuaries and abundance in public spaces –seems to have made a decisive con-
tribution to the development of iconic cults in eastern Iran. It offered something new to
the Iranian world and it apparently took root in the regions of eastern Iran where
Greek presence and cultural impact were the strongest. This does not mean that the
‘pre-Greek’ aniconic tradition in Bactria and Sogdiana had disappeared and was totally
replaced by the Greek-influenced iconic cults, such as those practiced in the monumental
sanctuaries of Ai Khanoum and Takht-i Sangin. Aniconic elements undoubtedly survived
in Bactrian and Sogdian cultic practices. Notions of a simple replacement of the ‘primitive’
aniconic cults with more ‘advanced’ anthropomorphic images are highly problematic and

the Muslims restored their sovereignty over the region, with the implication that the Sogdians preferred to abstain from
human-shaped representations so as not to enrage their ‘iconophobic’ overlords (Naymark 2003). However, it is far from
certain that the Arabs would have been significantly bothered by human-shaped representations in the palace of their
vassal ruler (the Umayyad residences themselves exhibit a wealth of anthropomorphic imagery). We also should not
assume that the religious iconography and cultic practices in Bukhara bore an exact semblance to those of Panjikent.
Moreover, the decoration principle of the ‘Red Hall’ does not correspond to the usual pattern in the Panjikent reception
halls where the narrative paintings were limited to three walls only, with the main wall in front of the entrance being
reserved for the representations of deity(s) who also clearly stood out by their superior size. In Varakhsha, we have three
registers with the same repetitive compositions continuing on all three walls, including the ‘main’ southern wall. There-
fore, one should not necessarily see any deliberate deviation from the common Sogdian tradition by replacing the
anthropomorphic images of gods with their zoomorphic symbols to please the new Arab masters. In my opinion, it
should be used with extreme caution as a chronological argument.
 RELIGION 395

should be abandoned altogether (Mylonopoulos 2010). On the contrary, evidence from

eastern Iran presents a complex religious environment in which different cultic practices
coexisted.
In western Iran, the presence of Greeks and Hellenic culture was limited, and Achae-
menian religious traditions were also sustained by the Persian rulers under the Seleucids
and the Arsacids. Aniconism, with the fire serving as the principal icon of the divine, con-
tinued to be the main characteristic of the western Iranian cult in the Sasanian period
when religious practice would undergo a (poorly understood) process of centralization
and institutionalization. Since both modern Zoroastrian communities in Iran and India
are descendants of the Zoroastrians who lived within the Sasanian Empire, it is the anico-
nic western Iranian variant that today characterizes Zoroastrian worship and which has
become almost synonymous with it.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor
Michael Shenkar is a Senior Lecturer in Pre-Islamic Iranian Studies at the Hebrew University of
Jerusalem. His research interests include the archaeology, art, religions, and iconography of the
pre-Islamic Iranian world and the history of Jews in the pre-Islamic Iran and Central Asia. He is
a co-director of the excavations of the Sogdian town of Sanjar-Shah in northern Tajikistan.

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