- Title
- Ahriman-Goebbels, disguised as Zahhak-Hitler’s cook, causes serpents with the faces of Mussolini and Tojo to grow out of his shoulders
- Date Made
- 1942
- Medium
- Offset lithograph on paper
- Dimensions
- Image: 11 15/16 × 8 in. (30.32 × 20.32 cm)
Primary support: 13 1/2 × 9 in. (34.29 × 22.86 cm)
- Accession Number
- M.2016.180.1
- Collecting Area
- Art of the Middle East: Contemporary
- Curatorial Notes
During World War II, as part of an effort to promote popular support for the Allies in Iran, the British government commissioned propaganda posters that utilized a key episode from the Iranian national epic, the Shahnama: the story of the wicked King Zahhak. Here and throughout the series, Hitler is portrayed as the evil Zahhak, who has a pair of snakes growing from his shoulders with the heads of Mussolini and Tojo; the chief minister of Nazi propaganda, Goebbels, is represented as Satan, in the guise of Zahhak-Hitler’s cook.
- Selected Bibliography
- Komaroff, Linda. In the Fields of Empty Days: The Intersection of Past and Present in Iranian Art. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Munich; New York: DelMonico Books-Prestel, 2018.
- Gonnella, Julia, and Christoph Rauch, editors. Heroic Times: a Thousand Years of the Persian Book of Kings. Munich: Edition Minerva, 2012.
