Caspian Sea

The Caspian Sea near Ramsar

As a boy, I was already dreaming of visiting the Caspian Sea. The Mediterranean Sea was far away, the Black Sea sounded even more exotic, but the Caspian Sea – that was at the edges of the earth. Two weeks ago, I finally visited Mazandaran and saw what I had been longing to see for such a long time. The country between the sea and the Elburz Mountains offers a spectacular landscape, but not the almost tropical climate I expected. Yet, there were forests (our word jungle is a loan word from this area) and there were several splendid medieval tombs at a/o Lahijan and Sari.

Because I had no camera with me, I took a photo of the sea with my telephone. I also used the small toy to call a friend in Holland, who could hear the surf, and in return told me the results of the past elections and the soccer matches. In the evening, we had White Fish for dinner. There’s more here.

Persepolis and Priorities

Darius' palace used to be accessible

I just returned from Iran. In Tehran, I met a man who told me that he had recently visited Persepolis, and had been a bit disappointed. There were weeds everywhere, the site looked neglected, and there was no path to the rock tombs, he complained. I was surprised to hear this – and not because the third complaint was a bit unfair. (Persepolis is an archaeological site and the construction of a path, even on a rock, might damage what’s still in the ground.) Yet, before I left Holland, I had already read this news article, so the man’s complaint seemed corroborated. Wondering what to expect, I traveled south.

And indeed, the site appears to be a bit neglected. Many sites are fenced off: the palace of Darius, the palace of Xerxes, the Tripylon – all inaccessible. The small restaurant on the edge of the southern terrace (inaccessible since at least 2004) was closed, which is something of a disaster, considering the fact that Persepolis is a very large complex and even a superficial visit takes several hours. When I take a group around, we stay in a nearby hotel and return next day.

The bookshops and souvenir shops were also closed, but I can live with that, although I would have liked to buy a postcard or two. The site also looked a bit dirty, as if the cleaners were on strike. But as long as the site is not damaged, I can live with that too. It will no doubt be temporarily.

All this will of course be hailed with joy by those people who only like to read articles about sorrow & misery in the Islamic Republic. To be fair and balanced, I add that there are now finally fences at the rock tombs, that closing the palace of Darius is due to restoration works, and that the subsite at Istakhr has been made more accessible. As usual, it’s all about priorities.

Sarvestan Palace

The great dome

The small, fifth-century Sasanian building east of Sarvestan (satellite photo) is usually called a palace, but no one knows what the building really is. It may have been a hunting lodge or a religious site; but it may as well have been a palace, because it resembles the Qalah-e Dokhtar and the palace of Ardašir at Firuzabad. Whatever the function of the ruin near Sarvestan, it is well-preserved, and worth a visit. It will take an afternoon, if you rent a car in Shiraz. And if you don’t like to go to Iran, your photos are here.

Godin Tepe

Godin Tepe from the southeast

The excavation of Godin Tepe, close to Kangavar along the road from Hamadan to Behistun, in 1965-1973 was important, because until then, the chronology of Iran’s Bronze Age and Iron Age was poorly understood. Hasanlu, Tepe Nush-e Jan, and Godin Tepe changed all that.

Today, there is not much to see. The Median mansion that once stood at the top, was destroyed when the archaeologists excavated the lower strata of the hill. Still, it is worth to interrupt your trip along the main road at Godin Tepe and climb to the ruins on the summit: the view of the plain is really splendid. The Median prince who built his house over here, knew what he was doing. There is more here.

Bishapur

The statue in Shapur's cave

Today, I moved the pages of Bishapur, one of the places I like most in Iran. During my first visit, we were especially interested in locations that were Alexander-related, so we visited a lot of Achaemenid sites; yet, we all agreed that Sasanian Bishapur, for which we had not been prepared, was among the highlights of our trip. The six rock reliefs and the city are really spectacular. I already blogged about the recently reopened museum.

I’ve returned several times, and on each occasion, I discovered something new or met someone interesting. But the best memories belong to the climb to the cave with Shapur’s statue, one of the most splendid places in the world – not the cave with the statue, which is interesting but not very special, but the valley. It is the most beautiful place of Fars. You’ve just not been in Iran if you haven’t climbed that rock and enjoyed the scenery.

The Bishapur pages are something of a jubilee: Livius.org has now reached its 3500th page. I also added a very brief article on the Persepolis Treasury Tablets, and a third page of Amsterdam stone tablets, which brings the grand total to 3502.

And because there’s something to celebrate, here is the last version of my Google Earth markers (1437 sites).

Allard Piersonmuseum, Amsterdam

Athena, on a bottle from Athens, early fifth century BCE

The Allard Piersonmuseum, the home of the archaeological collection of the University of Amsterdam, is one of the nicest museums I know. I may be biased, though, because Amsterdam is my hometown. I cycle along the museum nearly every day and am a regular visitor.

One of its strengths is that it does not concentrate on Greek and Roman art, but also has a fine collection of objects from Egypt and smaller sets of objects from Cyprus and the ancient Near East. Yet, the visitor will notice that the main focus is on ancient Greek art, from the Mycenaean age to the Hellenistic period. This illustrates the history of archaeology as a discipline: initially, people collected art and admired Greece, but later, archaeology widened its scope and our sense of beauty changed.

Artaxerxes III

The museum, founded in 1934, seventy-five years ago, is named after the university’s first professor of art history, Allard Pierson (1831-1896), but he has nothing to do with it. The museum was founded when a foundation of Dutch philhellenists bought the collection of a banker named Constant Lunsingh Scheurleer, and merged it with the private collection of deceased professor, who had bequeathed it to the university. Lunsingh Scheurleer’s son Theodoor was to become director of the museum. His successor Hemelrijk added many new objects, mostly Greek. In 1976, the museum moved to its present location on the Oude Turfmarkt: the former Dutch National Bank.

Fibula from Nijmegen

What are the main delights? It is hard to say, because the museum has only one object that is truly unique: the portrait of Artaxerxes III. It is the only portrait of an Achaemenid ruler that represents the great king as he really looked like – unlike the stereotypical official portraits. Nowhere on earth will you find something similar. I also like the large model of ancient Olympia, the fibulae from Nijmegen, the Coptic phoenix (one and two), the Hellenistic war elephant, the early eighteenth-century (!) painting of Palmyra, and the small Oannes. Others may like the Etruscan art, the chariot from Cyprus, the statue of Aphrodite, or the bust of Tiberius Gemellus.

Relief of a Greek warrior from Tarente, first quarter of the third century

The museum is not very large. It takes just an afternoon to see most of it. Yet, the explanatory signs are good, the collection is representative of all Antiquity, and what the museum lacks in quantity, it compensates with quality. The exhibitions are usually very well-done. If I must mention a point of criticism, it is the bookshop. There are two types of writing for a larger audience: on the one hand, explaining scholarship and pulling the people up, and on the other hand, simplifying scholarship and bowing down. The bookshop has chosen the second option, and is, in my opinion, underestimating the capacity of the general audience.

In the museum’s attic is a nice collection of casts of ancient Greek sculpture, which is not open to the public, but can be visited on request.

Ancient Warfare III.5

Cover of Ancient Warfare

“The Imperial Nemesis” is a stock phrase and you’d be forgiven if you decided to ignore the latest issue of Ancient Warfare, but that would be a mistake. The articles on the conflict between Rome and Parthia are actually more interesting than the title suggests.

Pawel Grysztar’s historical introduction consists of three parts: a slightly predictable overview of the major campaigns, and extremely illuminating sections on the theaters of operation and the asymmetrical nature of the conflict. After all, the Parthians retained many nomadic traits, while the Romans were essentially sedentary agriculturalists. This aspect is also stressed by Glenn Barnett and Arnold Blumberg, in an article on asymmetrical warfare that I found excellent. Duncan Campbell focuses on the relation between warfare and diplomacy – a theme that Ancient Warfare ought to explore more often.

Joaquín Montero describes the historiographical tradition of Trajan’s campaigns: the notes by the emperor himself, Arrian’s Parthica, Cassius Dio’s rendering of these notes (all quoted), and the survival of this part of Dio’s Roman History. The Parthian bow is the subject of a contribution by Paul McDonnell-Staff, while legionary equipment is dealt with by Raffaele D’Amato. Ross Cowan, finally, describes the Battle of Nisibis in 217, and gives more credit to Macrinus than is common.

As always, Ancient Warfare has some articles that are not directly related to the main theme. In this case, Fred Eugene Ray deals with the Athenian general Myronides and the land empire that Athens created in the mid-fifth century; Murray Dahm continues his entertaining series of articles on ancient military handbooks with an article on Festus’ Breviarium.

My summary would be incomplete if I didn’t mention the fine cover by Johnny Shumate, the maps by Andrew Brozyna and Carlos de la Rocha, the reconstructions of two Iranian warriors by Giorgio Albertini and two Romans by Graham Sumner, and the drawing of Tiridates’ surrender of his diadem to a statue of Nero by Angel Garcia Pinto. The highlight is Igor Dzis’ painting of the battle of Nisibis, which is a work of art, not just an illustration in a journal.

All in all, I liked this issue, and bought five copies for friends in Iran. I you want your own copy, go here.

Mithra and Mithras

Mithras killing the celestial bull. Roman relief from Dormagen, now in Bonn's Rheinisches Landesmuseum.

Yesterday, I received an impressive present: a book on the cult of Mithra(s). Impressive: it measures 50×31 centimeters and was published more than a century-and-a-half ago, in 1847. To be honest, I do not think that Félix Lajard’s Introduction à l’étude du culte public et des mystères de Mithra en Orient et en Occident, is still useful today. Yet, it is a beautiful book, and it is charming to read that it was printed “par autorisation du roi à l’ imprimerie royale”. Such were the courtesies of the ancien régime.

The author has collected all kinds of drawings of Iranian and Roman reliefs, seals, and coins, and tries to trace the development of the cult of Mithras in Iran and the Roman Empire. In other words, we get lots of pictures of oriental and Roman art objects that Lajard believed to be relevant to the study of the mysteries of Mithras.

It is hard not to be impressed by his attempts to get the details straight. He had not traveled as widely as we expect scholars to do, and was therefore unable to decide which representation of a particular relief was the best, so we often get two pictures of the same monument. I was surprised to learn how large the differences between drawings can be.

This late Iranian Mithra shows no similarities to the contemporary western bull-slayer reliefs (Taq-e Bostan)

The problem was, of course, that he had no idea what he was looking for. The decipherment of Babylonian cuneiform, which revolutionized our knowledge of the Near East, took place in 1857, and Lajard still could adduce parallel illustrations that we now know to be irrelevant, or only marginally relevant, to the study of Mithraism.

The main problem, and a problem that Lajard could have avoided, was the assumption that there was a continuity from Iran to the Roman Empire. Of course it would be exaggerated to state there was no continuity at all: the name Mithras is clearly derived from Mithra and one of the grades of the Roman mysteries was called “Persian”. But the cult of Mithras is essentially a Roman phenomenon. With one possible exception, no Mithraic cave has ever been excavated in Iran, nor are there indications that Avestan hymns were chanted in the Roman mithraea.

It often happens that elements from one civilization cross over to another, and it would certainly have been possible for an Iranian god to join the Roman pantheon. But how much that was Iranian was he allowed to take with him? Compare it to Christianity, which is essentially a type of Judaism accepted by Greeks and Romans. Some converts believed that only a couple of ideas were really useful; men like Marcion of Sinope thought that the Old Testament books could be done away with, and that the Jewish context was best forgotten. Other Christian authors, like Irenaeus, stressed the need to keep in touch with the original foundations. The Roman cult of Mithras seems to have originated with a Marcion-like prophet, who took a couple of lose elements and abandoned the rest of Iranian Mithraism.

Bull and lion on an Iranian relief (Persepolis): no connection to the Roman mithraic reliefs.

This is now very obvious, but it has taken some time to get here. The study of the cult of Mithras has for a long time been dominated by Cumont and Vermaseren, great scholars who believed, just like Lajard, that there had been some kind of continuity.

As I said, Lajard could have avoided the mistake. Even the most unattentive reader thumbing through the pages of his beautiful book will immediately realize that not a single element of the Roman Mithras reliefs – all those bulls being killed – can be connected to ancient Iran. Almost all elements of the Roman monuments, like the bull, the snake, the raven, the cup, the raven, the scorpion, the ear of wheat, and finally the twins Cautes and Cautopates, are absent from the Iranian iconography. (The lion may be an exception, but in Iranian art, the animal is either killed by the king or attacking a bull. He is not watching how someone else kills a bull.)

Yet, Lajard put the eastern and western iconography together as if they had much in common. He was essentially assuming what needed to be proven.

And this, it seems, is what happens often to the study of Roman Mithraism, and not just by people studying its origins. People studying its influence make the same error: assuming a continuity from the Roman mysteries of Mithras to Christianity that needs to be proved. I will not digress on this last point; I just refer to Roger Pearse’s interesting blog articles on this subject. I found his most recent installment and this article especially worthwhile, but he has written more articles on Mithras (which I would love to use for my collection of common errors). Recommended.

Moving Livius.org (15)

Taq-e Bostan

If I say that Naqš-i Rajab has moved to this URL, and if I add that Zeugma is now here, and if I mention that the page on Taq-e Bostan can be visited here, you will understand that you have come across a new installment of the highly irregular and highly irrelevant series called Moving Livius.Org. (As always, I have used to occasion to improve the pages. So, you will now also find photos of many mosaics from Zeugma.)

Still 56 pages to go…

Naqš-i Rustam

Little noticed by the visitors, a couple of eagles guard Naqš-i Rustam.

Naqš-i Rustam, where the Achaemenid kings lie buried and the Sasanian kings proclaimed how they had defeated Roman emperors, is one of the main archaeological sites of Iran. The oldest monument dates to the Bronze Age. No one knows why the people started to make rock reliefs on this site, but I am tempted to think that it had something to do with acoustics: there are not many places with such a beautiful echo.

Four Achaemenid kings (Darius the Great, Xerxes, Artaxerxes I, and Darius II) were buried in the rocks of Naqš-i Rustam. These men were also responsible for several other monuments, like the mysterious structure that is called “Ka’bah-i Zardusht“.

Later, the Sasanian rulers added many reliefs: in chronological sequence, the Investiture relief of Ardašir I, which became the model for several other reliefs; the famous Triumph Relief of Shapur I; the Audience Relief of Bahram II; the Equestrian Relief of Bahram II and the Double Equestrian Relief of Bahram II; the remarkable Investiture Relief of Narseh; the Equestrian Relief of Hormizd II; and finally the badly damaged Audience relief of Shapur II.

I am grateful to the Iranian photographer Newsha Tavakolian, whose work normally graces the pages of the National Geographic; she allowed me to use a splendid picture of Naqš-i Rustam in the winter.

The Vanden Berghe List

Ardašir's Investiture, Firuzabad

Louis Vanden Berghe (1923-1993) was a Flemish Iranologist, the founder of Irania Antiqua, the excavator of a/o Pusht-i Kuh in Luristan, and a member of the prestigious Society of Antiquaries of London. He is also the author of a useful list of Iranian rock reliefs, published in Reliefs rupestres de l’Iran ancien (1983). Because I am now changing my pages on Naqš-i Rustam, a site with many Sasanian reliefs, the book is on my desk, and I decided to make it available online. So here it is, with links to photos of the sites.

Dishonest Archaeologists

Photo montage of a flooded Pasargadae

I already blogged about the recent claims that Cambyses‘ lost army had been found. When I finished my article, I briefly suspected that I had been too harsh in my criticism, and when I found a press release stating that the people who had made the claim were not involved in the project, I initially thought that this was mudslinging among colleagues fighting for a scoop. But it turns out I was too kind: read David Meadows’ article here.

The journalists who swallowed the initial press release, ought to have checked their facts, and the problem is that no one seems to do that any more. We have seen the now notorious Pasargadae Hoax: the Iranian authorities are building a dam in the Sivand (true) and the tomb of Cyrus will be flooded (not true, but you can always make a  photo montage to prove a point). We have seen the press releases by Dutch archaeologists. We have seen the outrageous claims made in Israel, where connecting a find to a Biblical person results in a miraculous multiplication of funds.

I know that there are sincere archaeologists, who really do their best to tell the truth. I also know that there are honest journalists. But archaeology is rapidly becoming a suspect discipline.

Cambyses’ Still Lost Army

Persian soldiers, on a glazed relief from Susa, now in the Louvre.

You can leave it to archaeologists to make exaggerated claims and you can leave it to journalists to swallow the nonsense. The readers of this little blog know that I have introduced the Ctesias Scale to measure poor archaeological journalism. A possible example of wilful disinformation was the announcement, earlier this week, that the remains of Cambyses‘ lost army had been found: go here or here for examples.

The story: in 525 BCE, the Persian king Cambyses conquered Egypt. After that, he sent an army to the west, to conquer the Oracle of Ammon. It never reached the place, and the Greek researcher Herodotus says that it was destroyed by a violent desert storm. Now, two Italian archaeologists, the twin brothers Alfredo and Angelo Castiglioni, claim to have found remains of the army, partly on a sheltered place where people might have tried to find cover against a sandstorm.

There are two reasons to be suspicious.

In the first place, Herodotus is not a very reliable author. Not because he is not interested in the truth: on the contrary, he is certainly one of the most truthloving writers of the ancient world. But it was hard to get correct information, and Herodotus was standing in a tradition that appreciated an artful presentation. So, in his Histories, Xerxes‘ failed expedition is mirrored by the failures of earlier Persian rulers. So, Herodotus says that Cyrus was defeated by the Massagetes (according to Xenophon, Cyrus died of natural causes); that Darius lost a navy in a storm at the Athos; that Darius also lost an army during a Scythian campaign; and that Cambyses lost an army in the desert. These stories are not necessarily untrue, but the repetition makes one suspicious. I would not be surprised if some of these stories were created by Herodotus because he believed they had to have happened.

But even if we assume that Cambyses sent out an expedition to the Oracle of Ammon, there is still a reason not to believe the claim by our two Italian archaeologists. What they have found, or claim to have found, is a set of Persian weapons (e.g., arrowheads), skulls, and bones. Even if we assume that they are indeed Persian, it is a serious logical fallacy to assume that they belong to soldiers of Cambyses’ campaign. The Persians controled Egypt for more than a century (from 525 to c.401) and there must have been dozens of occasions on which soldiers were sent to the west. All these expeditions may have found itself lost in the western desert. What archaeologists can find, is evidence that a Persian army got into trouble; but stating that the finds belonged to a particular expedition is introducing a secundum quid. I think we must be suspicious.

Postscript

Perhaps this message at Andie Byrnes’ Egyptology Blog may be relevant too; although it leaves the Cambyses story itself unchallenged, it suggests that the Castiglionis are not completely bona fide. That may be mudslinging, but I think that suspicion about the report is completely justifiable.

Postpostscript

It helps to check the facts; David Meadows investigated the case. The journalists who swallowed this nonsense, ought to be under orders to read his article.

Two Poorly Understood Sites

Rujm al-Malfouf

To be honest, I wanted to call this topic “two mysterious sites”, but as we all know, ancient historians must avoid clichés like “mystery”, “lost city”, and “treasure” – that would be the equivalent of “gathering war clouds”, “ghosts from the past”, or “child of nature”. Yet, today I have to introduce two sites that are, well, quite mysterious:

• Takht-e Rostam: a stone structure near Persepolis (Iran)
• Rujm al-Malfouf: an Ammonite Iron Age fort in Amman (Jordan)

Go there to learn more, and understand less. Two other items: LacusCurtius‘ Bill Thayer has added an article on Roman fire worship to his Antiquaries’ Shoebox, and on his blog, Bill Heroman refers to a common mistake about the Temple of Herod.

Sarvestan

Sarvestan Palace

The Sarvestan Palace (satellite photo), built in the fifth century by the Sasanian king Bahram V, is about an hour and a half east of Shiraz. The trip itself is half the fun, because the road passes along a salt lake and through some orchards (the pomegranates are now ripe). Finally, you reach an immense plain, where the only sounds you hear are the ones you produce yourself, and where your only company consists of an occasional twister. The palace is in the center of the plain, splendidly isolated.

The monument is made of bricks and used to have three domes, of which two survive. Just like the Qalah-e Dokhtar and the palace of Ardašir, both near Firuzabad, the Sarvestan Palace is being restored. There were large scaffolds in the great dome. On our way back, we bought some pomegranates, and enjoyed the chaotic traffic of Shiraz. All in all, the visit was extremely worthwhile.

If you want to go to the Sarvestan palace, too, it may be useful to know that it is not near the town called Sarvestan; it is in fact ten kilometers east of it, close to a small village. I read the sign while we were passing along it in the car and I could not read it well – it may have been Mohsenabad. Amusingly, I wrote in my notes “Mohinabad”, Nothingville.

Bishapur’s New Museum

Ardašir I

I was writing my book on Alexander the Great when I visited Iran for the first time. We had already visited Susa and our next stop was Shiraz, which we wanted to use as base to visit Persepolis, Pasargadae, and the Persian Gate (near modern Yasuj). We planned to visit Bishapur, but it was not our priority. The splendid reliefs and the remains of the city, therefore, were a complete surprise. Next years, I visited the place two times, better prepared.

The only thing that is unique at Bishapur is, of course, the cave with Shapur’s statue (which may have been the king’s tomb); Sasanian walls, rock reliefs, and palaces can be seen on other sites in Iran. Yet, the place is dear to me, and I was disappointed that the museum was closed for some time. It has a small collection, but it really adds something to the ruins – and I do not mean the shade that the visitor so desperately needs in Bishapur.

Today, however, we found it reopened. The small room has been replaced with a very big one, which still smelt of fresh paint. The explanatory signs are, for the time being, only in Farsi, and the displays are a bit too large. Some of them are still waiting to be filled with objects. The collection can still grow, and I expect that this will happen pretty soon, because excavation was resumed about three months ago. So far, there are no spectacular results and the Ramadan – or Ramezan, as the Iranians say – intervened, but the archaeologists will return, and the museum will no doubt benefit.

Iwan-e Karkheh

Walls of Iwan-e Karkheh

“Iwan-e Karkheh” is the name of a region west of modern Andimeshk (Khuzestan), and is also the name given to the ruins of an ancient city, largely unexplored by archaeologists. Yet, the first conclusions were intriguing. It is a Sasanian city, founded in the fourth century and surrounded by a large wall of about 4×1 km. The enceinte can be seen over large distances. The archaeologists also found a building, perhaps a palace, with a cross-vault of a type that was to become popular in churches but has not been attested earlier than Iwan-e Karkheh.

I was attracted to the site because I had read that it had been converted into a garbage dump, and wanted to see it before it would be destroyed. But the site turned out to be not threatened at all. In all countries of the Near East, people throw away their waste along the roads. Garbage can be seen everywhere, and I have heard in both Syria and Iran the joke that it’s not garbage at all – the farmers grow plastic on their fields. Iwan-e Karkheh is not exceptionally dirty; in fact, it seems to be well protected by the police post in the northeast.

The city must have looked something like Bishapur, but there is, apart from the wall, not much to be seen. Nevertheless, we enjoyed our visit and received an inevitable invitation from a nearby farmer. I do not know whether to recommend a visit, but if you decide to go, take the road from Andimeshk to Ahvaz, turn to the right to Deloran, and after about fifteen kilometer, when the road forks and the Deloran road leads to the right, turn to the left. By then, you will already have seen the walls. Your satellite photo is here.

Godin Tepe

One of the magazines of Godin Tepe

In the area immediately surrounding modern Hamadan are several sites that may be labeled “Median”. Earlier this year, I blogged about Tepe Nush-e Jan; this time, we visited Godin Tepe, which is just south of the road to Kangavar. The eighth-century Median settlement was built on a hill, consisted of several halls and storage rooms, and reminded me of both Tepe Nush-e Jan and Çavustepe, an Urartaean fort I visited a couple of years ago.

Today, little remains of Godin Tepe (satellite photo). Some of the storage rooms are still recognizable, but the halls were destroyed when the archaeologists made a deep sounding. They discovered that the hill contained at least nine earlier strata, going back to the Copper Age; very interesting of course, but there’s little left to be seen for the occasional visitor.

The most interesting aspect of our visit was the discovery that on the site of the ancient cemetery, which has been excavated and contained no archaeological remains any more, a new cemetery had been made. Apparently, today’s inhabitants want to be buried where their ancestors had rested. Remarkably enough, they all had “Godini” as their family name.

New Excavations at Ecbatana

The Parthian town

I like Hamadan. Once the main settlement of the Medians, it is now a large town that also happens to be the world’s French fries capital. I’ve been there five times now and I really came to love the museum. Consisting of two large rooms and a corridor, it is admittedly small, but Mrs Khoshmu’s team manage to have always something new to present.

The excavation near the museum is a classical example of contradictory evidence. Our written sources refer to a city with seven walls of increasing height, but archaeologists have, so far, found nothing. Maximalists will say that we will have to dig deeper or on other places, minimalists will argue that we need to read our sources differently – for example by taking the description of the seven walls as a story about a ziggurat or a fairy-tale motif. I do not know which is the more prudent way to proceed.

What I do know, on the other hand, is that so far, most excavated objects belong to the Parthian and Sasanian age. This led the late Mr Azarnoosh, one of the archaeologists, to conclude that he was excavating a town that was founded by the Parthians, but since this does not fit well with the sources, investigation has been renewed last summer. The aim is to test Azarnoosh’s interpretation: was this really a Parthian foundation? If this turns out to be the case, we will have to look elsewhere for the Achaemenid palace that is known from written sources and stray finds. The Median residence will be even harder to find, because the Medians appear essentially to have remained nomadic pastoralists.

Hamadan is also the town where the philosopher-physician Avicenna (or Ibn Sina, or Bu Ali) lies buried in a splendid mausoleum. (I have often wondered why the Dutch never built something similar for doctor Boerhave.) During my visit, I benefitted from Avicenna’s insights, because I was suffering from a nasty cough, and one of my companions bought the herbs which the Iranian physician had prescribed in this case. The mix, in which I recognized chamomile, worked well: drinking Avicenna’s elixir, I was cured in two days. So, I can claim without exaggeration to have been cured by the great physician.

Tehran, Archaeological Museum

Relief from the northern stairs of the Apadana at Persepolis

The Archaeological Museum of Tehran has all the advantages of an old-fashioned institution. As the regular reader of this blog may know, I think that one of the problems with modern museums is that they try to evoke some kind of mysterious atmosphere: in poorly-lit rooms, you can see only a couple of objects lying there, beautifully spotlighted, just looking mysterious. The illumination allows you to look at it from one point of view, but not from other angles. Photography is almost impossible. In other words, you cannot study the objects.

I get the impression that museums are now leaving this cul-de-sac, and return to decent displays. The Tehran museum has never succumbed to ill-directed aestheticism, and this makes it, easily, one of the better museums dedicated to ancient culture.

Stone fish from Susa

This does not mean that there are no beautiful objects. The first part, dedicated to the Neolithicum and Bronze Ages, culminates in the pottery from Susa, which is just splendid. Recently, this part has been redesigned; several objects from the important excavations at Jiroft have been inserted, to name but one change.

Statue of a cow from Choga Zanbil

Passing along a nice sculpture of a bovine from Choga Zanbil, you will reach the Iron Age, where you will find an Assyrian and an Urartaean inscription, and countless small objects. They are interesting, but your attention is drawn by the great relief next to it, from the northern stairs of the Apadana in Persepolis (photo above; more…). Next to it, about half-way through the exhibition, is the statue of Darius from Susa (more…). I visited the museum yesterday with an Egyptologist, who was fascinated by the hieroglyphs.

There are some other Achaemenid remains, including several inscriptions (like this one) and some fine art. Here, you will also see a Penelope in wet-drapery style, taken to Persepolis by either Xerxes or Mardonius.

Greek-style mosaic from Bishapur

Compared to the Achaemenid age, the Greek, Parthian, and Sasanian ages are a bit underrepresented. From the Greek age is a fine bust of a Muse, from the Parthian age is a splendid bronze statue of a prince (one of the few remaining bronze statues from Antiquity), and from the Sasanian age are the spooky salt men and some mosaics from Bishapur, made by Antiochene artists.

The museum has a treasury that contains precious objects, made of silver and gold, but it is often closed. Asking for permission to get there is futile. In this aspect, the Tehran Museum suffers from the same error as western museums: it creates obstacles for students. I think this is inexcusable. There is simply no reason why a museum should hide its entire collection from people who have made an effort to get there.

This being said, the Tehran museum is really something special. Next to it is the museum of Islamic Art, which has not been open for quite some time; I remember that I liked it very much. Around the corner you will find the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, situated in a building that is inspired by the Persepolis Apadana; and around another corner, you will find a charming museum dedicated to fine art made of glass. If you have only one day in Tehran, spend it in this part of the city.