Reclining Buddha at Gal Vihara, Sri Lanka. The remains of the image house that originally enclosed it can be seen.Naram-Sin of Akkad, reigned from c. 2254 BC, Qaradagh Mountain, Sulaymaniyah, IraqTwo of the reliefs at the Abu Simbel temples, before relocation
A rock relief or rock-cut relief is a relief sculpture carved on solid or "living rock" such as a cliff, rather than a detached piece of stone. They are a category of rock art, and sometimes found as part of, or in conjunction with, rock-cut architecture.[1] However, they tend to be omitted in most works on rock art, which concentrate on engravings and paintings by prehistoric peoples. A few such works exploit the natural contours of the rock and use them to define an image, but they do not amount to man-made reliefs. Rock reliefs have been made in many cultures throughout human history, and were especially important in the art of the ancient Near East.[2] Rock reliefs are generally fairly large, as they need to be in order to have an impact in the open air. Most of those discussed here have figures that are over life-size, and in many the figures are multiples of life-size.
Stylistically they normally relate to other types of sculpture from the culture and period concerned, and except for Hittite and Persian examples they are generally discussed as part of that wider subject.[3] Reliefs on near-vertical surfaces are most common, but reliefs on essentially horizontal surfaces are also found. The term typically excludes relief carvings inside caves, whether natural or themselves man-made, which are especially found in Indian rock-cut architecture. Natural rock formations made into statues or other sculpture in the round, most famously at the Great Sphinx of Giza, are also usually excluded. Reliefs on large boulders left in their natural location, like the Hittite İmamkullu relief, are likely to be included, but smaller boulders may be called stelae or carved orthostats. Many or most ancient reliefs were probably originally painted, over a layer of plaster; in some traces of this remain.
The first requirement for a rock relief is a suitable face of stone; a near-vertical cliff minimizes the work required, otherwise a sloping rock face is often cut back to give a vertical area to carve. Most of the ancient Near East was well supplied with hills and mountains offering many cliff faces. An exception was the land of Sumer, where all stone had to be imported over considerable distances, and so the art of Mesopotamia only features rock relief around the edges of the region. The Hittites and ancient Persians were the most prolific makers of rock reliefs in the Near East.[4]
The form is adopted by some cultures and ignored by others. In the many commemorative stelae of Nahr el-Kalb, 12 kilometres north of Beirut, successive imperial rulers have carved memorials and inscriptions. The Ancient Egyptian, Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian rulers include relief imagery in their monuments, while the Roman and Islamic rulers do not, nor more modern ones (who erect slabs of stone carved elsewhere and fitted to the rock).[5]
^Harmanşah (2014), 5–6
^Harmanşah (2014), 5–6; Canepa, 53
^for example by Rawson and Sickman & Soper
^Canepa, 53
^Harmanşah (2014a), 95–96; Kreppner, 372–373; St. Chad Boscawen, Sir William, full map "The Monuments and Inscriptions on the Rocks at Nahr", Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archæology, vol 7, 1882, Longmans, Green, Reader and Dyer, pages 331–352
A rockrelief or rock-cut relief is a relief sculpture carved on solid or "living rock" such as a cliff, rather than a detached piece of stone. They are...
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He appears to be wearing a crown. Anubanini rockrelief Akkadian inscription. Sar-e Pol-e Zahab, relief I. Beardless warrior with axe, trampling a foe...
was done freehand. The rockreliefs of the mountain kingdom of Lullubi, especially the Anubanini rockrelief, are rockreliefs from circa 2300 BC or the...
narratives from the Mahabharata, Shaktism and Vaishnavism; rockreliefs particularly bas-reliefs of Shaivism, Shaktism and Vaishnavism; stone cut temples...
between Romania and Serbia. The Dacian king's sculpture is the tallest rockrelief in Europe, at 55 m (180 ft) in height and 25 m (82 ft) in width. It was...
Karabel Taşçı Rockreliefs form a large part of the extant artistic remains of the Anatolian Hittite Empire (c. 14th century BC). The reliefs that survive...
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or scratched into the rock surface, sculpted rockreliefs, and geoglyphs, which are formed on the ground. The oldest known rock art dates from the Upper...
written on the relief. According to the archaeologist Erich Schmidt, the relief is "artistically the most appealing example of Sasanian rock sculpture"....
Behistun in western Iran, there is a rockrelief which depicts four figures paying respect to a fifth figure. The relief, along with its Greek inscription...
types of art include many cylinder seals, a few rockreliefs, reliefs and statues from temples, bronze relief strips used on large doors, and small quantities...
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as the king of Adiabene. While ruling as king of Iran, Narseh had a rockrelief carved at Naqsh-e Rostam, between the burial site of the Achaemenid kings...
the 19th Dynasty reign of the Pharaoh Ramesses II. Their huge external rockrelief figures of Ramesses II have become iconic. His wife, Nefertari, and children...
Behistun in western Iran, there is a rockrelief which depicts four figures paying respect to a fifth figure. The relief, along with its Greek inscription...
memorialized on reliefs. However, instead of using the sites of Pars (present-day Fars Province) as a place for his relief, he instead had a relief carved in...
his coins is a portrait of him using the same tiara as his father. A rockrelief at Behistun portrays an Parthian monarch, most likely Vologases III....
have coins minted of his family. He also ordered the carving of several rockreliefs that unambiguously emphasize distinguished representations of his family...
Karabel relief is a rockrelief in the pass of the same name, between Torbalı and Kemalpaşa, about 20 km from Izmir in Turkey. Rockreliefs are a prominent...
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