9730 Ira.Ant. 12 Goldman
Iranica Antiqua, vol. XXXII, 1997 WOMEN’S ROBING IN THE SASANIAN ERA BY Bernard GOLDMAN This brief description is intended as an introduction to women’s dress in Sasanian times with comparanda that helps to place the Iranian styles within the general history of late antique dress in Western Asia. Unfortu- nately, the task is self-limiting, bringing to mind the platonic metaphor of dancing shadows on the cave wall. The habiliment of early Iranian women, like all other early Asian dress, has not survived except as a few bits and pieces of woven stuff1. Our knowledge, then, must derive from those shadowy costumes cast on a few rock reliefs, on some luxury table- ware, glyptics and coin types, and on less than a handful of painting and mosaic fragments. The fragility of this type of evidence accounts no doubt for the scant attention Sasanian costuming has received and, when it is remarked, too often the tendency is to accept these shadows as if they were the substance2. A further complication in any discussion results from the relatively small numbers of pictured women in the several art media, and most of these examples are not easily controlled as to date or place of origin. 1 For preserved Sasanian textiles, figural designs, patterns, Goldman 1993, n. 2; for textile patterns related to or derived from the Sasanian, von Falke 1951; Ierusalimskaia 1972, 11, 14. 2 Several factors pertain in discussing pictured dress and its usefulness in dating: a particular type of dress may assume a traditional role and be worn, copied, or portrayed long after it had dropped out of fashion; an outmoded style may enjoy a revival; official and religious portraits may be clothed in traditional forms that are not limited to any one period; a style may come into fashion later and persist longer in one region than in another; distinctive style details of different periods may overlap and equitably coexist for extended periods.
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