The Evidence for the Banner

The Kavian banner is real in the sense that Sasanian sources describe it — carried out of its storehouse by five priests when the army mustered, panther skin by one account, jewelled, enormous — and hard to find in any other sense. It appears in no ancient Iranian scripture and in no Achaemenid or Parthian record; a Greek writer who saw the Persian court says the royal standard of his day was a golden eagle on a shield. The accounts of its capture during the Arab conquest give incompatible prices, incompatible dimensions and at least two different battles, and it is still being flown by the Persian army five years after it was supposedly burned.