This photo taken on May 18, 2024 shows an ancient clay tablet at National Museum of Iran in Tehran, Iran. Iran on Saturday unveiled a selection of ancient clay tablets brought back to the country last year from the United States. (Xinhua/Shadati)
TEHRAN, May 18 (Xinhua) -- Iran on Saturday unveiled a selection of ancient clay tablets brought back to the country last year from the United States.
The public display came at the end of a ceremony held at the National Museum of Iran in the capital Tehran to mark International Museum Day on May 18 and the beginning of the National Cultural Heritage Week.
The returned 3,506 clay tablets date back to the era of the Achaemenid Empire which ruled from the 6th to 4th centuries BC. Those tablets returned to Iran after Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi's visit to New York last September, where he had taken part in the 78th session of the United Nations General Assembly.
Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of the ceremony, Director of the National Museum of Iran Jebrael Nokandeh said the clay tablets, of which 162 pieces had been displayed at the museum, pertained to the reign of Darius I (522-486 BC), and provided "valuable, detailed and precise" information about a part of people's lives and their society during the Achaemenid era.
The tablets were found in excavations by German archaeologist and Iranologist Ernst Emil Herzfeld in Persepolis in the 1930s.
After their discovery, the tablets were transferred to the United States to be studied at the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures, West Asia and North Africa under the University of Chicago.
So far, five batches of the tablets have been returned to Iran and the Iranian Ministry of Cultural Heritage, Tourism, and Handicrafts is doing the follow-ups on the repatriation of more than 10,000 other tablets still kept at the University of Chicago. ■
This photo taken on May 18, 2024 shows an ancient clay tablet at National Museum of Iran in Tehran, Iran. Iran on Saturday unveiled a selection of ancient clay tablets brought back to the country last year from the United States. (Xinhua/Shadati)
People watch ancient clay tablets at National Museum of Iran in Tehran, Iran, May 18, 2024. Iran on Saturday unveiled a selection of ancient clay tablets brought back to the country last year from the United States. (Xinhua/Shadati)
