Apadana audience relief

The audience relief from the Apadana at Persepolis.  Two identical (mirror-image) relief panels (6.27m x 3.15m) from the centre of the N and E staircases of the Apadana, depicting the King giving audience to a figure in Persian dress.  Both panels were subsequently moved from the Apadana to the Treasury, for reasons unknown.

Description and brief analysis in Kuhrt, The Persian Empire: A Corpus of Sources from the Achaemenid Period (2007), p.536; in more detail, L. Allen, ‘Le roi imaginaire: an audience with the Achaemenid king’, in O. Hekster & R. Fowler (eds), Imaginary Kings: Royal Images in the Ancient Near East, Greece and Rome (2005).  The scene was reproduced on royal seals: see D. Kaptan, Daskyleion Bullae (2002), 31-41, with images.