Persia from the Earliest Period to the Arab

HISTORY OF PERSIA. 183
tassel 1 His tunic has tight long sleeves
and is bound by a belt which passes over the right
hip ; the folds of the tunic at the top of the belt are
well expressed in the stone. To the other side of this
girdle it is probable the sword is attached, the hilt
of which he is grasping with his left hand. On my
arrival afterwards at Shiniz, a Persian artist shewed me
a very old drawing of this bas-relief, where the present
mutilated space was filled by the upper part of the
figure of a boy, crowned with a diadem like the person-
age on the left, and like the figure of the king, clasping
the hilt of his sword with his left hand." Opposite
to the king stands a figure whose closely fitting dress
suggests a feminine form. A third figure with a short
bushy beard stands behind the king. The composition
of the piece seems to indicate a royal union, and may
refer to VarahrSn V and his queen, who, besides being
the partner of his domestic pleasures, was, as we may
see from the coins of the period, associated with him
and his son in the empire.
The next relief, a few paces from the former,
represents a combat between two horsemen, and
has been designed with much spirit. The chief
figure, in the act of charging his opponent with a
spear, exhibits considerable grace and harmony of ac-
tion. He wears a winged helmet and scaly armour,
not altogether unlike that of the Knights Tem-
plars. A second and prostrate figure lies under
1 Sir R. K. Porter had not, of course, seen the monuments dis-
covered at Nimnid and elsewhere by Mr. Layard and other ex-
cavators. The treatment of the beard would seem to have arrived
at its culminating point of care and completeness as early as the ninth
century B.C.