The empire that carved itself as a host, not a conqueror

Here is the Persepolis detail that it is hiding in plain sight on the staircase everyone walks straight past. You come for the fallen columns and the great winged bulls, and they really are worth the trip. But cut into the stone of the Apadana is a long procession of twenty three nations of the empire, each in their own dress, each bringing a gift from home, a horse, an elephant tusk, a camel, bowls of gold.

And the thing that gets me is what is not there. Not a single scene of violence in the whole of it. No prisoners in chains, no bodies underfoot, no king trampling a smaller enemy, which is exactly what you find carved all over the Egyptian and Assyrian monuments of the same age. Persepolis shows none of that. Instead a Persian usher takes each foreign visitor gently by the hand and leads him up towards the king, the way you would walk a guest to the table.

I painted the warm sandstone glowing against a high pale sky, and the whole time I kept thinking about that handhold in the rock, an empire that ruled half the world choosing to show itself as a host rather than a conqueror. There's a poster with a letter home and a postcard if you'd like one.

Shop the poster here: Persepolis, Iran · Travel Poster