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Kaboudar-Ahang visitors
Dec. 16, 2013
More than 2,000 tourists visited the attractions of Kaboudar-Ahang city,
Hamedan province, in the past nine months.
Iranica
A message on the go
Sialk ziggurats
By Sohrab Sepehri
One day,
I will come and bring you a message.
I will come back and pour light in the
veins.
I will call:
“Oh you, you!
Carrying empty bags,
On your shoulders, in your hands!
I brought you apple, apple!
The golden apple of sun”!
One day,
I will come and I give a daffodil to the
errant.
I will explain to the blind, the white verse
of light
And the colorful lightness of the sight.
Like a nomad,
I will wander around.
I will sing, dance, sing!
I will swing, sway, swing
With the strings
Of the breeze!
I will!
I will let my soul sing,
An ode for the rainbows
An anthem of the lost dews
On the cheeks of the moon.
I know a beggar
Hanging around the square,
Telling me again and again:
“It is the dark night of the truth.”
I’ll come back
And I’ll give him his share
Of the world’s fair.
I know a girl in the town
Almost all days, standing alone
Under the arch-bridge; on her own!
I’ll be back and I will give
Her share of the sky.
I will erase all the walls.
I will let all the thieves know:
“Nothing is left to steal. You mind?
Well, maybe just the smiles!
S
ialk ziggurats are part of a large ancient
site near Kashan in Isfahan province,
tucked away in the suburbs, close to Fin
Garden.
The culture dominating this area has been
linked to Zayandehroud Civilization. The ziggurats have 3 platforms and were built around
2900 BCE, HistoricalIran reported.
However, the earliest archeological remains of
the north mound date back to the middle of the 6th
millennium BCE; i.e. about 7,500 years ago.
A joint study by Iran’s Cultural Heritage Organization, Louvre Museum and Institute Francais
de Recherche en Iran also verifies the oldest settlements in Sialk to date back to 5,500-6,000 BCE.
The cultural strata in the northern mound of
Sialk are about 14 meters thick. A number of
stone, pottery and copper artifacts as well as
seashells have been found there during previous
residents of Sialk had red and white meat as the
main source of protein.
According to archeological studies, animal
bones discovered in the area are of farm and
wild animals such as cow, sheep, goat, gazelle
and ram.
The abundance of the bones of farm animals
compared to those of gazelle and ram shows
that the residents consumed meat of farm ani-
research
digs.
h di
A 170-centimeter wall comprising 13 courses
of mud-bricks was discovered during the first
phase of the new excavations, carried out by a
joint Iranian and British archeological team in
2008. It is one of the earliest examples of ancient Iranian architecture.
Archeologists have already concluded that
mals
l as the
h main
i source off protein,
i and
d hhunted
d
occasionally.
Experts believe Sialk dwellers made all of
their tools with stone, but little by little they began to use metal for making their implements.
The artistry of these people is evident from
the engravings on bones and designs on their
pottery. As recent as 2007, a large pot was dis-
The area is also surrounded by houses constructed illegally over the few past years.
Excavations
Sialk antiquity
I will tie all the eyes to the sun,
And all the hearts to the sunlight!
I will come and I wash the shadows
In the rushing rivers of the dawn;
And all the twigs and the tears
To the rhyming air of the winds.
I’ll be back,
And with my colorful chalks,
I will draw a line, from the children’s
dreams
To the nightly travels of the crickets.
One day,
I will come and plant a rose in front of
every door.
I will sing in front of every window.
I will make peace.
I will make friends.
I will sway, swing, sway.
I will swim in the torrent of lights.
Then, I will take on a flight
And I will love,
Love.
Sialk’s ziggurats were built by the Elamite
civilization. The other three are Choghazanbil (1250 BCE), Susa Ziggurat (1800 BCE)
and Haft Tappeh (1375 BCE), all in Khuzestan
province.
It is the 32nd and the most recent ziggurats
discovered. Sialk and the surrounding areas are
believed to have been the large water source that
still runs today.
Cheshme-ye Soleiman Spring has been bringing water to this area from nearby mountains
for thousands of years. What remains of these
5,000-year-old ziggurats is not in a favorable
condition like many other ancient ruins of Iran.
The two structures at Sialk are situated several hundred feet from each other.
While the three platforms of the larger ziggurat remain intact, not much remains of the
smaller structure.
The Louvre has also excavated a cemetery
near these structures.
What little is left of the two crumbling Sialk
ziggurats is now threatened by the encroaching
suburbs of the expanding Kashan city.
It is not uncommon to see kids playing soccer
amid the ruins, while only several meters away
lie the supposedly “off-limit” 5,500-year-old
skeletons unearthed at the base of the ziggurat.
Plan to convert historical
schools into museums
Improving road safety
in winter
covered inside the second perimeter of Sialk
Tappeh with the mouth of the pot measuring 120
centimeters in diameter.
Mysterious burial ritual
Further investigations at the site revealed a
mysterious burial ritual performed 9,000 years
ago. Based on this ritual, four bodies were
burned at a temperature of 400 to 700 degrees
Celsius.
C
The ash and remains of the bodies were
then
buried in a jar. Traces of red petals
th
were
found in a jar. Archeologists believe
w
red
re flowers signified life and eternity in ancient
Persia.
ci
“A burial ritual encompassing burning has
never
been observed in Iran,” said Hassan Fane
zeli,
ze the director of Iran’s Archeology Research
Center.
“It shows the rare discovery’s great imC
portance.”
po
Sialk Tappeh was first excavated by a team of
European
archeologists headed by Roman GhirE
shman
in the 1930s.
sh
Grishman observed, “People of Sialk, near
Kashan,
were the most ancient plainsmen of the
K
world,
evidence from whose lives has been found
w
over
ov there. People of the time (5th millennium
BCE)
were familiar with the textile industry, and
B
all
al of them, both men and women, were interested
in making and using ornamentations.”
He considered the discovered hills in Sialk
Tappeh
belonging to the third millennium BCE
Ta
as evidence of financial and accounting management.
ag
His extensive studies were followed by D.E.
McCown,
Y. Majidzadeh and P. Amieh, up until
M
the
th 1970s, and recently reviewed by Iran’s Cultural Heritage, Handicrafts and Tourism Organization in 2002.
But like the thousands of other Iranian historical ruins, the treasures excavated here eventually found their way to museums such as The
Louvre, The British Museum, The Metropolitan
Museum of Art in New York and private collectors.
Oil museum for
Masjed Soleyman
Iranica Desk
Iranica Desk
Translated by Katayoon Dashti
Iran’s Cultural Heritage, Handicrafts and Tourism Organization, and the Education Ministry will join hands to convert
historical schools into school museums.
Mohammad Reza Kargar, director of Iran’s National Museum, said children would become acquainted with cultural
heritage in these museums, CHTN reported.
Kargar noted that 16 school museums would be launched in
the near future.
“The provincial education department will run the school
museums,” he added.
Some of the buildings designated for the school museum
project include Ibn Sina School (which dates back to Qajar
Era) in Hamedan, Ferdowsi School in Tabriz and Sa’adat Mozaffari School in Bushehr.
The Roadside Assistance Department of Touring and Automobile Club of Iran (TACI) has launched its winter plan.
According to Mehr News Agency, in an effort to improve
safety of roads, the department has dispatched a number of
roadside assistance vehicles and 920 aid workers to accidentprone roads of 31 provinces of the country, Mehr News Agency reported.
The department noted that TACI, as the member of the International Automobile Federation, supports road safety plans devised by the United Nations and helps reduce road accidents in
cooperation with related organizations, media and people.
It added that those who wish to use the services or receive a comprehensive tourism information package can call
0216423 or 09669.
Khuzestan’s Cultural Heritage, Handicrafts and Tourism Department plans to establish an oil museum, said director general of
the department. Afshin Heydari explained that preliminary measures have been taken for establishing the museum in Masjed Soleyman in southwest Iran, Donya-ye Eqtesad wrote.
Heydari explained that Masjed Soleyman is the first city
where crude oil was discovered, hence the museum should be
launched there. “The museum can spotlight the identity and
cultural assets of a place,” he said.
“Therefore, we intend to take steps for launching participatory museums.”
Participatory museums include Agriculture Museum in Agricultural Jihad Department and Sugarcane Museum in Sugarcane Development & Byproducts Commercial Company in Khuzestan.