English: Sasanian king Bahram II’s family scene at Sarab-e Qandil, showing the queen offering a lotus flower to her king. The two characters look at each other, while a prince (probably his son, future king Bahram III) holds the ring of power (called farshiang or cidarys), surprisingly not ribboned. Such representation of either love and a queen is very rare in the Sasanian reliefs iconography, generally consisting into audience, victory, or crowning images.

Like almost Iranian rock reliefs, this one is located near the water. The relief is contained into a quadrangular frame, carved on a isolated rock beside the bed of a river, surprisingly, without having been eroded or damaged by the water. Its isolation from frequented roads might explain also its excellent state of conservation, as it didn’t suffer from vandalism.

Technically, the execution of the carving is of a very good quality, a special attention has been paid to the clothes showing beautiful and fine details, giving an impression of lightness, of aerial movement. The king wears his typical winged crown, and jewels. His left hand lay on the top of hiw sword, attached by a harness to the king’s belt. His right hand is open, waiting for the gift. The composition shows the royal figure at the center of the panel, the queen being on his right, the prince being on his left/back. Both attitudes of the king and the queen express love and respect.

Bahram II gave up all the traditional standards ruling the art of royal rock relief his predecessors set. He introduced new kind of sceneries: images of intimacy like this one, enthroned frontal representations (Sarab-e Bahram), or fights against lions (Sar Mashhad). He also used new sites, who were never carved before his era either by sasanian or by any previous dynasty. He left nonetheless but 10 rock reliefs for the posterity, some being unfinished.

The attribution of this relief is generally given to Bahram II, however, the lack of inscription can’t produce any certainty. The main arguments evoking Bahram II lay in the fact that he is the only sasanian king representing his queen on coins, that the female figure appears to be dressed more like a queen and not a goddess. If most of the scholars think of Bahram II and his queen (Vanden Berghe), some other evoked Ardashir Ist and Anahita (Lewitt-Tawil), the prince being then Shapur: their arguments lay in the parenty of the scene with Barm-e Dilak (Barm-e Dilak have a controversial inscription mentioning Ardashir although also generally being attributed to Bahram II), they then see the king’s hat more as a phrygian hat and not a korymbos with a winged crown. Moreover, Vanden Berghe objects the fact that the cult of Anahita was merely developped later than Ardashir’s era, and raised particularly during Narseh’s era. Taken at Sarab-e Qandil, vicinity of Kazerun, Fars province, Iran, May 2009.