فاطمه شمس

Persepolis, one of the most prominent symbols of ancient civilization, is not only a reflection of the magnificence of Iranian art and architecture in the fifth century BCE, but also a treasury of visual and textual codes that reveal the political and cultural worldview of the Achaemenid era. The present study aims to conduct a semiotic analysis of the reliefs and inscriptions of Persepolis in order to uncover how the concepts of power, legitimacy, and royal order are represented in the visual and written discourse of the Achaemenid Empire. This qualitative and descriptive–analytical research, grounded in the theories of John Fiske and Roland Barthes, examines the underlying systems of signification embedded in the monuments of Persepolis. The research corpus consists of two main parts: (۱) the reliefs of the Lamassu and Sphinx at the Gate of All Nations, the delegations of gift-bearers, and the lion-and-bull combat scene on the stairways of the Apadana Palace; and (۲) the golden and silver foundation tablets of the Apadana Palace, the trilingual inscription of Xerxes at the Gate of All Nations, the first and second Old Persian foundation inscriptions of Persepolis, and the Persepolis Fortification Tablets. Data were collected through library research, analysis of ancient texts, consultation of recent scholarly publications, and direct observation. The data were then analyzed through semiotic methods and the interpretation of primary and secondary signification levels based on Fiske’s model. Findings indicate that, at the level of primary signification, the reliefs and clay inscriptions represent royal order, ceremonial structure, the position of the king, and the human–power relationship through a visual system based on symmetry, repetition, and rhythm; whereas at the level of secondary signification, they convey the myth of divine authority, god-centeredness, and cosmic legitimacy of kingship. Within Fiske’s conceptual framework, these works function as cultural texts which, in the process of encoding, transmitted messages of power, unity, and social order to the intra-cultural audience, and in the stage of decoding, acted as media for the perpetuation of royal ideology within the collective consciousness of Achaemenid society. The results demonstrate that Persepolis was not only a center of architecture and art, but also a communicative and semiotic system that reproduced the royal discourse through the integration of text and image.