One of the most popular subjects in the major arts of the Near East in the Sasanian period was the king. On immense rock reliefs, on silver vessels, and in a multitude of other media dating from the third to the seventh century A.D. there are representations of the royal person. For four hundred years the kings of the Sasanian dynasty controlled an empire that extended at times beyond Iran and Mesopotamia to present-day Afghanistan in the east, and to Armenia, Syria, Yemen, and even Egypt in the west.