TEHRAN – A select of 1,783 Achaemenid-era clay tablets and fragments, which were on loan from Iran to the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago since 1935, will be put on show in the city of Qazvin.

Some of the recently-recovered clay tablets will go on display in Qazvin museums, deputy tourism minister Mohammad-Hassan Talebian said on Thursday.

These treasured documents decipher an important segment of recorded history of Achaemenids during the reign of Darius I (Darius the Great who reigned from 522 to 486 BC).

The tablets also reveal economic, social and religious history of the Achaemenid Empire (550-330 BC) and the larger Near Eastern region in the fifth century BC.

The Achaemenid [Persian] Empire was the largest and most durable empire of its time. The empire stretched from Ethiopia, through Egypt, to Greece, to Anatolia (modern Turkey), Central Asia and to India.

AFM/MG