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City &
Highlight Sightseeing ::
Silak Hills ::
Highlights |
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SILAK
HILLS
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ALL HOTELS &
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It is
claimed to be the world's oldest
ziggurat[1],
dating to the
3rd millennium BC, tucked away in the suburbs of
the city of
Kashan, in central
Iran, close to
Fin Garden.
Tappeh
Sialk Betwen the Bagh-e Shah (Fin) and Kashan is
the mound of Tappeh Sialk the site of a prehistoric
culture which was dated by Ghirshman who excavated
the Tappeh in the 30s and later, to the second half
of the 15th millennium BC. Later discoveries showed
that the Site is more than 7,000 years old. It is
probably the richest archaeological site so far
uncovered in central Iran, although the most
interesting finds have been moved to various
institutes and museums, including National Museum of
Iran in Tehran and Louvre in Paris. There are two
mounds here, the largest of which is to the south.
Excavated by the French Archaelogical Service in
1933-34 and 1937-38, the site has revealed a large
number and variety of pottery and domestic
implements of clay, stone and bone from as early as
the 4th millennium BC, and is believed to have been
first settled in the 5th millennium or earlier. It
appears to have been sacked and deserted in about
the 8th century BC. You can still see the outline of
various mud-brick buildings and a large number of
potsherds embedded throughout the two mounds.
Perhaps the most interesting finds are some
inscribed clay tablets dating from the late 3rd and
early 2nd millennia BC. The remains here give an
interesting record of the waves of immigrants and
conquerors who passed this way, and settled near the
abundant water supply at the site of the present-Day
Bagh-e Fin. Nowadays, Tappeh Sialk is situated along
the Amir Kabir Street.
Annual
Temperature average:
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Sialk is one of four ziggurats built by
the
Elamite civilization. The other three
are:
Choqa Zanbil (1250 BC), Susa ziggurat
(1800 BC), and Haft Teppeh
[3]
(1375 BC), all in
Khuzestan. The Ziggurat at
Ur was rebuilt by
Saddam Hussein with bricks stamped with
his name. Sialk is the 32nd and most recent
ziggurat to be discovered.
"Teppe Sialk" (In
Persian, Tappe means "hill" or
"mound") was first excavated by a team of
European
archeologists headed by
Roman Ghirshman in the
1930s. His extensive studies were
followed by D.E.McCown, Y. Majidzadeh, P.
Amieh, up until the
1970s, and recently reviewed by
Iran's Cultural Heritage Organization in
2002 (led by Shah-mirzadi, PhD, U of
Penn). But like the thousands of other
Iranian historical ruins, the treasures
excavated here eventually found their way to
museums such as The
Louvre, The
British Museum,
The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New
York, and private collectors.
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The Sialk ziggurat has 3 platforms, and
although the ziggurat itself was built in
2900 BC, it still predates Urnamu's
Ziggurat at
Ur, which was built in
2100 BC. However, the earliest
archeological remains of the north mound
date back to the middle of the 6th
millennium BC, i.e. about 7500 years ago. A
joint study between Iran's Cultural Heritage
Organization,
The Louvre, and
Institute Francais de Recherche en Iran
also verifies the oldest settlements in
Sialk to date back to 5500 BC.
Sialk, and the entire area around it, is
thought to have first originated as a result
of the pristine large water sources nearby
that still run toDay. The Cheshmeh ye
Soleiman (or "Solomon's Spring") has
been bringing water to this area from nearby
mountains for thousands of years. The Fin
garden, built to its present form in the
1600s is a popular tourist attraction
toDay. It is here where Persian Kings of the
Safavid dynasty would spend their
vacations away from their capital cities. It
is also here where, Piruz
(Abu-Lu'lu'ah), the Iranian assassin of
Islam's second Caliph is buried. All
these remains are located in the same
location where Sialk is.
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What little is left of the two crumbling
Sialk ziggurats is now threatened by the
encroaching suburbs of the expanding city of
Kashan. It is not uncommon to see kids
playing soccer amid the ruins, while only
several meters away lie the supposedly "off
limit" 5,500 year old skeletons unearthed at
the foot of the ziggurat. (see
referenced articles below) The site
still remains to be registered as a World
Heritage Site at
UNESCO for protection. |
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