Introduction to Iron Age Museum
Surviving objects from different periods of history, tell the narrations of human being past life. Objects that need suitable platforms to display them. Tabriz, one of the oldest cities in Persia, is an extraordinary city in which, museums with different themes have been established to show these types of discoveries. The Iron Age Museum is one of those unique places in the city of Tabriz, including 38 ancient tombs that belong to the first millennium BC. It is interesting to mention that the Iron Age Museum is the first desert museum in Persia.
History of Iron Age Museum
The discovery date of the Iron Age Museum goes back to 1997 when an excavation operation was taking place near the Kaboud Mosque in Tabriz. The artefacts obtained from this site include mass graves, pottery, and ornaments, all of which belong to the Qajar, Zandi, Safavid, Timurid, and patriarchal periods. Three years after discovering the cemetery, the excavating operation was begun. Archaeologists took a lot of stuff out from the ground. Finally, in 2006, the cemetery was turned into a museum. The exciting thing about these graves is that most of the bodies inside died at a young age and were buried as embryos, which shows they believed in the religion of Mithraism. Most of these tombs contain objects that include food, tools, toys for children, or possessions that are useful for the afterlife. If we pay attention to burial objects, we will understand their class differences. In the graves of the rich, the number of objects is more than the stuff inside the graves of normal people. It could be said that The Iron Age Museum is a historical site because it’s a museum at the place of discovery, so can see the skeletons inside their burial place.
The architecture of the Iron Age
To enter the museum, you pass through a small door and reach a structure with simple thatched walls and wooden stairs that lead to the entrance door. Due to the hill shape of the place, the depth of the buried crays is different. This site has kept its cave form since the discovery date. Therefore, the visitor population is limited. The museum includes two sections of clays and artefacts; Narrow wooden bridges are constructed higher than the graves not to cause damage while walking across them.