Colossal statue of Shapur I

The Colossal statue of Shapur I (Persian: پیکره شاپور یکم) is a monumental sculpture depicting Shapur I (AD 240–272), the second shah (king) of the Sassanid Empire, carved from a single stalagmite. It stands in the Shapur cave, a huge limestone cave located about 6 km from the ancient city of Bishapur in the south of Iran.

The statue had lain collapsed on the cave floor for several centuries until 1957 when Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last Shah of Iran, commissioned a team of Iranian military personnel to re-erect it and repair the broken feet with iron and cement. The restoration project, which included building roads from Bishapur to the cave, mountain paths, stairs and safety railings, took six months to complete between 1957 and 1958.

The statue is positioned approximately 35 m from the cave entrance on the fourth of five terraces, about 3.4 m below the entrance level. Standing 6.7 m tall with a breadth across the shoulders of more than 2 m, it represents one of the most impressive sculptures from the Sassanian period.

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.