Iran

We always thought that when we retired – if we were ever to retire from Current Archaeology! – we would visit the Near East, the magical cities of Mesopotamia in Iraq and Syria. Alas, these countries are difficult, if not impossible to visit, but there is one country that is becoming very much on the tourist route and that is Iran. Wendy and I therefore decided to explore Iran and to visit it with a young and upcoming travel company: Travel The Unknown, which specialises in running tours to the lesser known travel destinations – especially Iran.

It was a splendid tour: we stayed in 9 different hotels over 16 days, which meant that we were always on the move. But this was just what we wanted, for we explored the heart of the historic country and saw – if briefly – most of the best-known archaeological sites. We took over 3,800 photos: I took 3,000, Wendy took 800. But how can I sort them all out and present to you what Iran is all about? I think I will do it chronologically: a drama in three acts, or rather three and a half acts; though in fact I have so much to tell you that I am going to leave the third act – the Safavids and their glorious city of Esfahan until the next issue. But here I am going to tell you about the Achaemenids, the Persians who fought the Greeks and were eventually conquered by Alexander, and then the Sassanians, who fought the Romans, and even captured a Roman emperor whose conquest they celebrated with some magnificent bas-reliefs and some fascinating water engineering.

Up the ziggurat

I shall begin with a small overture and go back into prehistory to tell you about a fascinating ziggurat. Ziggurats are perhaps the principal monuments of the Mesopotamian civilisation, but they are little known. They are essentially great mounds built in steps, on top of which was a temple or palace, or shall we just say a ritual feature. They are reminiscent in some respects of the great pyramid-temples of the Maya in Central America, but whereas the Mayan pyramids were built of stone, the ziggurats were built of mud brick and thus survive simply as rather large mounds. There are dozens of these in Mesopotamia, but only half a dozen of them are well known. The best known is the ziggurat at Ur, in modern Iraq, but the most spectacular is that at Chogha Zanbil in Iran.