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Vandals pour paint on Elamite bas-reliefs in southern Iran Tehran Times Culture Desk TEHRAN -- Unidentified men have poured paint on the bas-reliefs of the Elamite Tarisha Temple in the Izeh region of Khuzestan Province, the Persian service of CHN reported on Sunday. In response, the Izeh Cultural Heritage Lovers Society has asked Iranian cultural officials to mobilize security guard teams for the Tarisha Temple, which is also known as Eshkaft-e Salman, and for the nearby Kul-Farah site. The security detail for Izeh’s ancient sites has no means to defend themselves or the ancient sites, society chairman Faramarz Khoshab told...

88 cuneiform inscriptions discovered at Chogha Zanbil Ziggurat Tehran Times Culture Desk TEHRAN -- Eighty-eight brick inscriptions were recently discovered at the 3250-year-old Chogha Zanbil Ziggurat in southwestern Iran’s Khuzestan Province, the Persian service of CHN reported on Wednesday. A team of experts restoring the middle section of the ziggurat discovered the cuneiform inscriptions on the northeastern and southeastern walls. “Only a few of the inscriptions are intact. The inscriptions were discovered when the workers were removing rubble from the bases of the walls,” team director Bijan Heidarizadeh said. French archaeologist Roman Ghirshman had said nothing about the inscriptions in...

“The clay tablet bears some signs some of which depict the types and quantity of shipped goods… it also has signs that are still unfamiliar for us.” ...The figurines include various animal designs, especially cows, as well as human statues, which are in the form of sitting women and standing men... a kiln has been unearthed... not yet determined to be a pottery oven or a metal smelting furnace......archaeologists have already discovered the remains of a prehistoric monkey... Based on surveys and scientific studies on the monkey’s skeleton, the animal was dead in captivity in a cage and it was...

"Five Elamit professional linguists from different countries have studied the brick inscription discovered in Jiroft. According to the studies, they have concluded that this discovered inscription is 300 years older than that found in Susa; and most probably the written language went to Susa from this region. However, more studies are still needed to give a final approval to this thesis," said Yousof Majid Zadeh, head of archeological excavation team in Jiroft... Elamit language is only partly understood by scholars. It had no relationship to Sumerian, Semitic or Indo-European languages, and there are no modern descendants of it. After 3000...

New studies show Jiroft was an international trade center 5000 years ago Tehran Times Culture Desk TEHRAN (MNA) –- Studies by foreign archaeologists and experts on seals recently discovered in the Jiroft area prove that Jiroft was an international trade center 5000 years ago. The head of the excavation team in the region, Yusef Majidzadeh, said on Wednesday that several ancient seals in various shapes were discovered during the most recent excavation at the site. “The twenty-five discovered seals show that the regional people made use of seals in their business. They used to put products inside jars, covered the...

Ancient Iranian site shows Mesopotamia-like civilisation [World News]: Tehran, Nov 16 : Shellfish is not seen on most Iranians dining tables but it was part of the daily diet of the inhabitants of ancient Jiroft in southern Iran 5,000 years ago that showed the existence of an ancient civilisation. Jiroft, located in Kerman province, is one of the richest historical areas in the world, with ruins and artefacts dating back to the third millennium BC and with over 100 historical sites located along the approximately 400 km of the Halil Rood riverbank, according to Mehr news agency. Many Iranian and...

A team of Iranian and Italian archaeologists has unearthed ruins of an ancient temple in an Elymais site in the Kaleh Chendar region in southwestern Iran, the Iranian director of the team announced on Saturday. Most parts of the structure have been built with large stones without mortar in form of a broad platform like those built at Persepolis, Jafar Mehrkian told the Persian service of CHN. The structure also includes platforms made of brick, which were usually built in the ancient temples, he added. Vito Messina of the University of Turin and a number of his colleagues accompanied the...

...several seal impressions and clay inscriptions found at Haft-Tappeh contain the name Kabnak, and it is possible that this was the original name of the city. The team has also been tasked with discovering the exact location of Kabnak, where the Elamite king Tepti-ahar built a temple complex in the fifteenth century BC and was buried at the site. Tepti-ahar, the last ruler of the Kidinuid period (1460-1400 BC), known from inscribed bricks and a sale contract from Susa and a text said to be from Malamir (in Lorestan Province), is mentioned on approximately 55 tablets of Haft-Tappeh, bearing the...

Excavations at an archaeological site in Bahrain are shedding light on one of the oldest trading civilisations. The site in Bahrain, thought to be the location of the enigmatic Dilmun civilisation Dilmun, one of most important ancient civilisations of the region and said to date to the third millennium BC, was a hub on a major trading route between Mesopotamia - the world's oldest civilisation - and the Indus Valley in South Asia. It is also believed that Dilmun had commercial ties with ancient sites at Elam in Iran, Alba in Syria and Haittan in Turkey. "For 4,000 years this...

Archeologists Seek Elamite Treasures in Iran ART & CULTURE DESK TEHRAN - The University of Sydney has initiated Australia's largest-ever act of cultural cooperation with Iran in the hope of unearthing archaeological treasures of the ancient Elamite civilization in the Near East. "Unlimited possibilities" lie ahead, according to professor Dan Potts, chair of Sydney's Department of Archaeology, who is posed to sign an agreement which would see the excavation of rich new archaeological sites in what is now Western Iran. The area and Elamite people are referred to in Mesopotamian texts but are yet to be researched in depth. Under...

Ramhormoz graves may be Elamite royal burials: experts TEHRAN, May 20 (MNA) -- A team of archaeologists studying two graves discovered in the city of Ramhormoz in southern Iran said that they bear their remains of a girl and a woman who were most likely members of an Elamite royal family. The team led by Arman Shishegar was assigned to carry out a series of rescue excavations in the Jubji region of the city in Khuzestan Province in May 2007 after the Khuzestan Water and Waste Water Company stumbled on two U-shaped coffins containing skeletons of a girl and a...

Jiroft is the ancient city of Marhashi: U.S. scholarWednesday, May 7, 2008 Tehran Times Culture Desk Jiroft is the ancient city of Marhashi: U.S. scholar TEHRAN -- Piotr Steinkeller, professor of Assyriology in Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations of Harvard University, believes that the prehistoric site of Jiroft is the lost ancient city of Marhashi. He developed the theory in his paper during the first round of the International Conference on Jiroft Civilization, which was held in Tehran on May 5 and 6. Marhashi, (in earlier sources Warahshe) was a 3rd millennium BC polity situated east of Elam,...

Date Added:Nov 24 2004Inscribed Bricks Unearthed South of Iran Iran-11/23/2004 In the latest round of archeological excavations at the historical site of Enshan, Fars province, Iranian and American archeologists have unearthed several inscribed bricks and a seal dating back to the mid-Elamite era (1100 BC).Enshan is regarded as one of the capitals of the Elamites and is rich in cultural heritage artifacts ranging from the Elamite to the Achamenid era (3500 BC to 500 AD). Dr. Kamyar Abdi, an instructor of Dartmouth College in the United States told Cultural Heritage News (CHN) agency that in the course of excavations in...

TEHRAN (AFP) -- One of Iran's main historical sites, the ancient Elamite capital of Susa, has been used for the secret nightly dumping of rubbish by the local municipality, a culture official in the area told AFP Tuesday. "We have filed several complaints against the municipality, but it firmly denies its workers have ever done such a thing -- even though they have been frequently spotted by our guards," said the head of the Cultural Heritage Organization in Shush, the modern name for Susa. But the official, Mahdi Qanbari, also complained that the municipality was also planning to build a...

Archeologists: Sodom and Gomorrah literally destroyed by fire and brimstone falling from the sky December 11, 2018 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A group of archeologists and other scientists say they have discovered strong evidence that the region of the “Middle Ghor,” where the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah are believed to have existed, were in fact destroyed by a meteor that exploded in the sky above, raining down superheated matter and raising temperatures to thousands of degrees, a theory that matches the account of the cities’ destruction contained in the Old Testament Book of Genesis. According to the theory, the meteor...

British scientists have deciphered a mysterious ancient clay tablet and believe they have solved a riddle over a giant asteroid impact more than 5,000 years ago. Geologists have long puzzled over the shape of the land close to the town of Köfels in the Austrian Alps, but were unable to prove it had been caused by an asteroid. Now researchers say their translation of symbols on a star map from an ancient civilisation includes notes on a mile-wide asteroid that later hit Earth - which could have caused tens of thousands of deaths. The circular clay tablet was discovered 150...

Artist’s evidence-based depiction of the blast, which had the power of 1,000 Hiroshimas. Credit: Allen West and Jennifer Rice A giant space rock demolished an ancient Middle Eastern city and everyone in it – possibly inspiring the Biblical story of Sodom. As the inhabitants of an ancient Middle Eastern city now called Tall el-Hammam went about their daily business one day about 3,600 years ago, they had no idea an unseen icy space rock was speeding toward them at about 38,000 mph (61,000 kph). Flashing through the atmosphere, the rock exploded in a massive fireball about 2.5 miles (4 kilometers)...

An Ancient DisasterIn the Middle Bronze Age (about 3,600 years ago or roughly 1650 BCE), the city of Tall el-Hammam was ascendant. Located on high ground in the southern Jordan Valley, northeast of the Dead Sea, the settlement in its time had become the largest continuously occupied Bronze Age city in the southern Levant, having hosted early civilization for a few thousand years. At that time, it was 10 times larger than Jerusalem and 5 times larger than Jericho. “It’s an incredibly culturally important area,” said James Kennett, emeritus professor of earth science at UC Santa Barbara. “Much of where...

It seems that Sodom and Gomorrah were not as “destroyed” as previously thought. The ruins of the biblical city of Sodom reportedly have been discovered by U.S. archeologists in southern Jordan. God punished the wickedness of the citizens by destroying the city with brimstone and fire, the biblical story explains. Only the righteous inhabitants were allowed to escape the destruction and were spared by God. The archeological team, directed by Steve Collins of New Mexico’s Trinity Southwest University, has been working for 10 years in the Jordan Valley. It now believes it has uncovered this magnificent historical site. If confirmed,...

This is a non-political story (but a very cool one nonetheless) which I was first alerted to by John Hawkins at Right Wing News. Archaeologists who have been busily digging into a massive mound in southern Jordan for the last ten years are growing increasingly convinced that they have located the city of Sodom, famously known in the Bible for having been struck down by God due to the sinful ways of its residents. While there aren’t any postcards with “Welcome to Sodom” emblazoned in neon, the ruins are definitely the remains of a massive city-state which thrived from...