Architectural panel

Architectural panel

This panel—once painted in lapis lazuli blue, red, and gold—was one of more than five hundred such panels decorating a palace courtyard. Together they must have created a splendid effect, like “a brocaded surface,” as described in contemporary sources. The marble surface is not smoothly polished because it was originally not meant to be seen under the paint.

A portion of an inscription in Persian, praising the patron Sultan Mas’ud III and his ancestors, appears here and on the other surviving panels. Marble was an uncommon building material during the Ghaznavid period (977–1041), except for royal architecture at Ghazni, where a marble quarry was found. A close study of tool marks on similar panels has revealed that the carving techniques are connected to ancient local stone-carving methods, like those on Gandharan sculpture (see artworks in Gallery 1).