Taq-e Bostan

At the foot of a sheer cliff in the Zagros Mountains, spring water gathers in a broad pool, and above its surface two arched grottoes open into the rock, their walls crowded with kings, gods, hunters and musicians. Taq-e Bostan — the name joins the Persian words for "arch" and "garden" — holds some of the finest and best-preserved sculpture of Sasanian Iran, begun in the late 4th century and crowned some two hundred years later. Traces of an ancient enclosure around the springs have led scholars to suggest that this was a royal hunting park, a paradeisos, which would explain why hunting fills so much of the rock.

The oldest work is a free-standing panel about four metres square showing the investiture of Ardashir II, who ruled from 379 to 383. He receives a diadem from his predecessor Shapur II, while Mithra stands on the other side holding a bundle of sacred twigs; beneath the two kings lies a fallen enemy wearing an emperor's crown, most likely the Roman emperor Julian, who invaded Iran in 363 and died there. The smaller grotto beside it bears two Middle Persian inscriptions naming Shapur II and his son Shapur III, carved as a pair facing each other. The large grotto is the masterpiece of the group, usually attributed to Khosrow II (590–628). Two winged female figures in a Graeco-Roman manner flank its entrance, holding out the ring of royal power. Inside, the king receives diadems from the goddess Anahita and a second deity, and beneath them, carved almost in the round, a fully armoured horseman — taken to be Khosrow on his black stallion Shabdiz — looks out of the rock, his face hidden by mail so that only the eyes show. The side walls carry two great hunting scenes. In the boar hunt, beaters on elephants drive the animals through a reed marsh towards a lake, where the king draws his bow from a boat, surrounded by other boats full of musicians and singers; opposite is a deer hunt. In 1822 the Qajar governor of Kermanshah added a relief of his own inside the great grotto, showing himself before Fath-Ali Shah, so that two dynasties more than a thousand years apart share the same cliff. Local tradition, drawing on the tale of Khosrow and Shirin, holds that the grottoes were carved by Farhad, Shirin's unhappy lover.

Kermanshah, the city that has grown up around the site, takes its name from a Sasanian title: Bahram IV, a son of Shapur III, was styled "King of Kerman" and is credited with founding the city around 390. Today it is a provincial capital of about a million people in western Iran, some 525 km from Tehran. The ground in front of the grottoes has been laid out as an archaeological park, where Sasanian and early Islamic column capitals gathered from the site, from nearby Bisotun and from the city stand in the open air.

Getting there

Taq-e Bostan lies on the northern edge of Kermanshah, about 5 km from the city centre. Kermanshah's Shahid Ashrafi Esfahani Airport (KSH) is about 5 km away.