Colossal statue of Shapur I

About 1400 years ago, after the Arab invasion of Iran and collapse of the Sasanian Empire, the statue was pulled down and a part of one of its legs was broken.

The statue had been lying on the ground for about 14 centuries until 1957 when Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last Shah of Iran, had a group of Iranian military raise it again on its feet and repair the broken foot with iron and cement.

[1] The project of raising the statue, building the roads from Bishapur to the area and paths in the mountain, stairs and iron fences on the route to the cave took six months in 1957.

The monumental sculpture is chiseled from a huge stalagmite grown in situ, but it no longer stands exactly in its original position.

The clothing of the colossal statue consists of three pieces: an undervest, an upper garment and wide trousers.

The small remaining piece of the left thigh supports a conclusion that the ruler was wearing fluted trousers.

The long trousers would have functioned to enlarge contact area with the ground and to spread the stress of the colossal statue, which weighs several tonnes.

On the colossal statue of Shapur I, there are three pieces of jewellery: a necklace, earrings made of large pearls and an armlet on the right wrist.

Because of the shape of the crown (diadem, the crenellated part and korymbos) and on the basis of art historical considerations, the colossal statue can be clearly identified as Shapur I, the second Sassanian king.

After research and experimentation at the University of Basel, it was found that a korymbos of metal of a suitable size would have weighed more than a tonne even with a very low wall thickness.

The wave patterns of the individual strands are almost identical, but at their tips, the heavily stylized, nearly spherical curls differ.

Due to the details of the hairstyle, G. Reza Garosi succeeded to date the colossal statue exactly in the second half of the sixties of third century AD.

The metalsmith was responsible for making the korymbos of metal and had to fix it firmly onto the crown of the colossal statue.

Thus, the colossal statue of Shapur I must be considered as an absolute exception in the history of Sassanian sculptural art.