Curious places in Iran
5 articles, each fact-checked and tied to a spot you can stand on.
A 3,300-year-old stepped pyramid originally rising 53 meters. The best-preserved ziggurat in existence. Built by the Elamites and never finished, it was abandoned when their civilization collapsed. Thousands of unused bricks still sit where workers left them 3,000 years ago.
Fifty-three tombs yielding gold vessels with winged bulls and mythical creatures. This 3,000-year-old cemetery belonged to rulers unknown to any historical record. A kingdom erased from memory.
A 5,200-year-old city yielding the world's earliest known prosthetic eye. A gilded half-sphere with gold wire simulating capillaries, worn by a woman for years. Also found: the oldest backgammon set and the oldest animated image.
A trilingual inscription carved 100 meters up a sheer cliff face by Darius I in 520 BCE. Like the Rosetta Stone, it allowed scholars to decipher cuneiform. The carving is so inaccessible that scholars risked their lives copying it.
A 3,000-year-old gold bowl found clutched by three skeletons fleeing a burning citadel. They died trying to save their treasure. The bowl depicts gods and rituals of a civilization destroyed in a single day.
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