TEHRAN – Inscriptions discovered in a ruined mosque in a small village in Armenia can help trace the history of the Iranian lion symbol back several hundred years, a member of Iran’s Research Institute of Cultural Heritage and Tourism has said.

It turns out that Armenian inscriptions place the history of the lion symbol in Iranian petroglyphs 600 years earlier than archaeologists originally thought, ISNA quoted Morteza Rezvanfar as saying on Friday.

In one of these Persian inscriptions, a lion is engraved with a sword in hand next to the name of Imam Ali (AS), he added.

According to historical documents, this motif dates back to the time of the Qajar king Fath Ali Shah who reigned from 1797 to 1834, but these newly discovered inscriptions may push that date back over 600 years, he explained. 

In addition to the lion and sun symbol, which dates back thousands of years, the first image of a lion holding a sword in inscriptions discovered in Iran, dates back to Qajar-era (1789-1925), and before that, the lion symbol have always had its feet on the ground, he noted. 

Ancient Iran, also known as Persia, historic region of southwestern Asia that is only roughly coterminous with modern Iran. The term Persia was used for centuries, chiefly in the West, to designate those regions where the Persian language and culture predominated, but it more correctly refers to a region of southern Iran formerly known as Persis, alternatively as Pars or Parsa, modern Fars. 

Parsa was the name of an Indo-European nomadic people who migrated into the region about 1000 BC. The first mention of Parsa occurs in the annals of Shalmanesar II, an Assyrian king, in 844 BC. 

During the rule of the Persian Achaemenian dynasty (559–330 BC), the ancient Greeks first encountered the inhabitants of Persis on the Iranian plateau, when the Achaemenids—natives of Persis—were expanding their political sphere. The Achaemenids were the dominant dynasty during Greek history until the time of Alexander the Great, and the use of the name Persia was gradually extended by the Greeks and other peoples to apply to the whole Iranian plateau.

ABU/AM