Persepolis

It has been nearly 86 years since the Egyptian bronze ram-headed statuette, known as Harsaphes, was found outside the Treasury in the Garrison Street of Persepolis during the archaeological excavations by the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. The iconographic features of this little-known statuette is associated it with an Egyptian deity, which makes its genre unique in the heartland of the Persian Empire. It should be noted that the four ram-headed deities: Heryshef, Khnum, Amun, and Banebdjedet, sometimes bear a striking resemblance in the formal Egyptian art. This paper re-opens the discussion on the statuette’s identity, and offers a detailed comparison between this statuette and other Egyptian ram-headed deities. The results from a comparative analysis are critical to the supposed attribution of Harsaphes to the statuette, and examine the likelihood of being all four ram-headed gods.

The period of Darius I Achaemenid and his son Xerxes, owning to the construction of Persepolis, is one of the most important periods of cultural exchange in the ancient world. Achaemenid satrapies operated in a regular and coordinated network from the Nile to the Indus Valley and from Oxus to the Mediterranean. At the same time, this network became efficient through the construction of ancient roads, and the roads management system defined the function of this network in the direction of control and monitoring accompanied by the regular management system on each plain. It is very important to identify the route of the royal road in the Achaemenid period from Persepolis to Susa and Sardis in Asia Minor. The author has identified an ancient site in the archaeological survey in the southwest of Iran where there are signs of Carian stonemasons in a stone torus. The identification of newly discovered evidence for the first time from this site is important and effective in understanding the relations of Persepolis with the Anatolia region and the presence of Asia Minor masons in the construction of the royal road in ancient Persia.