These pieces were fashioned in a central royal workshop up to c. 480. Divine essence and the legitimacy of royal power are symbolically represented by the “capture” of Khwarnah in the form of the most popular hypostasis, a mountain ram, the strength of this power by the struggle with the lion, and its triumph by the struggle with the wild boar. Silver plates bearing such compositions were essentially for propaganda purposes.

      By the end of the 4th century, however, scenes of royal hunts on silver plates were gradually giving way to depictions of the heroic or epic victory of the king of kings. Of course, one cannot say that the Zoroastrian symbolical composition in its pure sense was no longer recognised – it still occurs on 5th-century objects – but the range of buyers for metalwork had widened and this, it seemed, had somewhat altered the repertory of subjects. This development of iconography is characteristic of the evolution of all Sassanian art; it is a movement from orthodoxy to the everyday subject requiring no religious interpretation.

      The theme of the heroic hunt flourished especially in the 5th century. Later, this subject, too, was reduced to a simple genre scene, or even to the level of literary illustration of some particular hunting story. Royal horsemen were already being depicted wearing, as a rule, standard “impersonal” crowns.

      Three silver plates – two in The State Hermitage Museum, one in a private collection in the USA – provide examples of such a hunting story, representing one of the exploits of Prince Varahran.

      These depictions are the first and possibly the only clear examples of genuine illustrations of oral or written tales of the skill and valour of an Iranian knight. But in the sparse Sassanian literature of the 6th-7th centuries that has reached us we find tales of skill and prowess in chivalrous sports (hunting, polo, the mastery of various weapons and especially skill at archery) and also of proficiency in games (at chess, shatrang, and backgammon, nevartashir). One of those works, Khusrau, Son of Kavadh, and His Page, tells the story of the beautiful women who played the chang and who accompanied kings on their hunts; they are often depicted, for example in hunting scenes of the Shahanshah Khusrau II (reliefs at Taq-e Bostan). Judging by the story of Firdawsi, a woman playing chang also took part in the marvellous gazelle hunt of Bahram Gur, though on silver vessels showing this scene she has no instrument in her hands. A host of such beauties with harps, flutes and changs are depicted on silver vessels – ewers, flasks, deep hemispherical bowls and shallow dishes.

      These vessels also show various birds and beasts, including fabulous ones, genre scenes, depictions of architectural monuments (which have not survived), illustrations of myths that are not fully comprehensible, plant motifs, flowers, trees, etc.

      This group of Sassanian metalwork, unlike silver plates portraying Sassanid shahanshahs, can only be dated with difficulty (apparently most of these festive utensils relate to the 5th-7th centuries). It is even more difficult to interpret their subject-matter. The very fact that we are dealing with festive dishes may, in many respects, call into question any interpretation of them as religious and symbolical images. The Dionysian background of the main characters and most of their attributes are indisputable. The origin and prototypes of the iconographic details can, for the most part, be traced back to the West and in this sense the entire group is comparable to those few Sassanian dishes on which a western subject is reproduced in full by Iranian craftsmen – the dish with the Triumph of Dionysus from Badakhshan (now in The British Museum, London), later replicas in the History Museum in Moscow and the Freer Gallery in Washington, D.C., the Bellerophon dish in The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and several other vessels. In all probability such vessels were used at banquets during Zoroastrian festivities, the most sacred of which were Nawruz, the celebration of the New Year (meant to coincide with the vernal equinox), Mihragan, the autumn harvest festival dedicated to Mithras, and Sadeh, the winter festival dedicated to the divine fire.

      Judging from accounts in written sources, the climax of all these festivals was a ceremonial banquet, which took place after a special service in the fire temple, and various rites (the offering of water, wine, etc.) in which silver vessels were used. The Nawruz-nama (The Book of Nawruz), a work on ancient Iranian customs ascribed to Omar Khayyam, contains the following passage:

      “The king said: this [water] has been stolen from two who are blessed and highborn. [This refers to two amashaspands, Haurvatat and Ameretat.] And they adorned the neck of the jug with a necklace of olivines and chrysolites strung on a golden thread. [The necks of some silver flasks are decorated with convex “pearls” in imitation of such beads.] And girls alone stole water for the New Year ritual from beneath water-mills and out of canal cisterns”.

      The depictions on ceremonial vessels may be linked to rituals whose details remain unknown to us. It can, however, be gathered from written sources that various contests and exchanges of gifts took place during these festivities, and that musicians, dancers, and girls who served wine and water in special vessels took part in them. These festivities and the carnival processions did, of course, have a definite religious symbolism and ritual significance, but evidently they were taken over by ancient folk customs and their symbolism. The longer this continued the farther religion receded into the background. Thus, the Muslims of 9th-century Baghdad wholeheartedly celebrated several Zoroastrian festivities, and as late as the 10th century the Muslim rulers of Iran delighted in celebrating the Zoroastrian feast of Sadeh which, moreover, coincided with Christmas. On that night they would light bonfires and drive wild beasts into them, release birds into the flames and sing around the fires.

      We can clearly see how the themes of Sassanian metalwork gradually change. The theme of state propaganda is very short-lived and soon changes into the religious propaganda of Zoroastrian symbolism in its “pure” phase, but both themes have a comparatively brief existence and eventually heroic and narrative themes predominate. All this can be demonstrated from stage to stage in the development of the royal hunt motif, which may well be the only motif in metalwork that relates directly to the art of official propaganda.

      Of course there are vessels which employ only Zoroastrian