Catalogue

The limestone fragment was collected by Ernst Herzfeld at Persepolis during his early explorations in Iran and was kept in his private collection until it was sold to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1945 (Herzfeld 1935: 73-74, pl. X [left];  idem 1941: 251, pl. LXXII; Richter 1946: 28, 29 fig. 26). It is certain that it comes from a shoe of the relief of Darius in the west jamb of the west entrance to the private area in the north of the palace of Darius (Schmidt 1953: pl. 140 B; Tilia 1978: 56; Nylander and Flemberg 1981/83: 58-59 [Nylander]).
On the polished surface of the stone one may discern two bearded human heads and the heads of a lion, a dog and a bull, all of them drawn in fine incision. Characterized initially by Herzfeld (1935: 74) as 'one of the finest specimens of Achaemenian art', the drawings largely display instead, as Gisela Richter first pointed out, the conventions and quality of late archaic Attic vase painting.  These drawings, then, offer testimony for the presence at Persepolis, at the time of the construction of Darius' palaces, of a craftsman who was acquainted with the developing Greek fashions in drawing and painting, and whom one may identify, therefore, as a Greek. (See esp. Richter 1946: 28, 29 figs. 26-28; Nylander and Flemberg 1981/83: 58 [Nylander], 61-64 [Flemberg]. See also Richter 1953: 63, 299 n. 78, pl. 45e; Boardman 2000: 132; Moore 2008: 14-15, fig. 9, 30 ns. 14-17.)
Herzfeld reported that the drawings on the fragment were made 'before the shoe was painted red' (Herzfeld 1941: 251). No traces of paint are visible with the naked eye on the fragment today (Dusinberre 2005: 145-146; cf. Nagel 2010: 107 n. 87). Taken as a whole, the composition does not belong to the repertory of the (clearly officially determined) decorative motifs attested on Persepolitan sculpture, and was evidently not meant to be seen. As Richter suggested, the drawings may have merely served to give vent to their artist's 'sudden desire to work in his own manner, untrammeled by the restrictions imposed on him' (Richter 1946: 28).
Achaemenid documents refer to the involvement of groups of workmen from different subject regions of the Persian empire in Achaemenid monumental construction. References in these documents to Yaunā ('Ionian') workmen presumably allude to Greeks, sometimes specifying the tasks to which they were assigned (e.g., Kent 1953: DSf; see also, e.g., Rollinger and Henkelman 2009). Certainty about the part that the unknown artist of the present graffiti played in the realization of Darius' monumental sculptural project at Persepolis is unattainable. The quality of his designs, however, and the occurrence of his graffiti on a representation of the Persian king have been taken to imply that he was entrusted with the painstaking task of rendering with incised and then painted motifs the elaborate surface decoration of this royal figure, if not also with the carving of the entire relief (Nylander and Flemberg 1981/83: 58-61 [Nylander]).