ABSTRACT
Praise of the masterfully carved relief sculpture of the Apadana, the great audience hall atop the terrace platform (Takht-e-Jamshid, “Throne of Jamshid”) of the Achaemenid site of Persepolis in southwestern Iran, resounds in scholarship, from discussions of imperial might and propaganda, to dressed bodies and gestures, cultural groups and identity, skilled craftsmen and artistic forms. Much of this dialogue depends on the visual, on the image that meets the viewer’s eye—this very expression betrays the typical first level of interaction with the reliefs. Yet a multilevel tactile exploration of the Apadana’s relief sculpture brings to light less-discussed traces of sensory traditions of the past. This chapter considers the touch of the craftsmen in creating the reliefs; the ways in which they captured and produced representations of touch in the imagery itself; and the affect and agency of these traces of touch and touch-imagery on people moving through this space. These aspects of touch of the Apadana reliefs not only embody codes of the Achaemenid royal court, they also complicate conceptions and/or the reception of this form of architectural decoration in contemporary discourse, suggesting a re-evaluation of how interaction with these works of art has traditionally been discussed and reimagined, and the intents and strategies that guided their creation from the outset.
