Records From a Disappearing Temple: A Note on the “King and Queen” in the Painted Gallery at Kuh-i Khwaja

This article reexamines a wall painting discovered in 1925 and 1929 by Ernst Herzfeld in the Painted Gallery of the great Parthian-Sasanian temple complex at Kuh-i Khwaja in Iran (Sistan-Baluchestan province). The painting subsequently disappeared and today it can be studied only from Herzfeld’s photographs (hardly usable), sketch, and watercolors, kept at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art. It shows a royal or aristocratic couple standing in a schematic architectural setting. No interpretation has so far been attempted. It is proposed that the couple is standing at the entrance of a fire chamber (such as the real one that exists at the back of the temple) and that the man holds a written scroll (already identified as such by Herzfeld according to a scribbled note), which probably contains a deed of endowment. The costumes are Sasanian but not royal Sasanian, while the type of the woman’s crown is documented in Kidarite-Hephtalite Bactria. A date is proposed in the fourth or fifth century. The man could belong to the vassal dynasty of the Sagānshāhs or be a later Sasanian governor.