On the plain of Pasargadae, Cyrus the Great founded a spectacular garden palace. Nothing like it had ever been seen in the region before, raising questions about where the idea came from, how the garden was maintained, and where the inhabitants lived. Recently, an Iranian-French team went searching for answers.
Iran
Excavating Iran: Stories from the Silk Road
When Ed Keall first visited Iran, at the age of 24, little did he realise that he was about to embark on an archaeological venture – involving a Persian castle and a fire temple – that has now been 50 years in the making. In 1962, I took an adventurous trip to Iran to […]
Iran: Persian Splendour
Three opulent palaces sit within a stone’s throw of each other, built when Persian kings ruled the greatest empire in the world, and destroyed when Alexander the Great swept through Persia. Who made them, and why? Hassan Karimian examines the evidence.
Persian Gulf: the first migration?
The shallow waters of the inland sea known as the Persian Gulf might well hold the evidence of the earliest human migrations out of Africa, says Jeffrey Rose, an archaeologist and researcher with the UK’s University of Birmingham. In a paper called ‘New Light on Human Prehistory in the Arabo-Persian Gulf Oasis’, published in Current […]
Iran’s Tehran Plain, Landlord Villages
Project aims to study development of mud-brick enclosures dating to the Early Islamic Period
Great Wall of Gorgan: Revealing one of the Worlds Greatest Frontier Walls
The story of the red-brick Gorgan Wall. Snaking at least 195km from the Caspian Sea to the Highlands, it is one of the worlds greatest frontier walls
Mughal Emperors and the Islamic Dynasties of India, Iran and Central Asia, The
Ever since the 17th century, Mughal emperors have had a stronger hold on the world’s imagination than any other eastern rulers – hence our modern word for a powerful, wealthy and probably dynastic person, ‘mogul’. Anyone who has seen the Taj Mahal or the Red Fort – not to speak of the tomb of Itimad-ud-Daula […]
Bisitun, Iran
Bisitun, site of a rock-cut relief that enabled the decipherment of cuneiform Babylonian has been made into a World Heritage monument
Siraf: Iran
Mark Horton writes from Iran where he explored the site of Siraf
Persia, The Forgotten Empire
The forgotten Achaumenid Empire is remembered in a new exhibition at the British Museum
Bam, Persia
Exclusive report on the effects of the devestating 26.12.2003 earthquake on the historical remains of Bam, Iran
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