TEHRAN – A team of Iranian and French archaeologists has commenced a follow-up survey on the ruins of Viranshahr, situated in the Khorasan region, northeast Iran.

It is the fifth archaeological season on the ancient site aimed to sharpen the focus on hidden gems of cultural heritage in Viranshahr, which is situated near the city of Faruj in North Khorasan province.

The survey is co-led by Meysam Labbaf-Khaniki of Iran’s Research Institute of Cultural Heritage and Tourism and Louvre Museum’s Rocco Rante from the University of Provence Aix-Marseille.

Last year, the team unearthed the ruins of a fortified structure during the fourth archaeological season. Based on initial evidence, experts from the Louvre and the University of Tehran, the structure had a religious or administrative use in its heyday.

According to Labbaf-Khaniki, many historians and archaeologists believe that Viran-Shahr is the birthplace of the Parthian Empire (247 BC–224 CE) and housed the first administrative institutes of the dynasty.

Parthian Empire, also known as the Arsacid Empire, largely adopted the art, architecture, religious beliefs, and royal insignia of their culturally heterogeneous empire, which encompassed Persian, Hellenistic, and regional cultures. At its height, the Parthian Empire stretched from the northern reaches of the Euphrates, in what is now central-eastern Turkey, to eastern Iran.

The Sassanid era (224 CE–651) is of very high importance in the history of Iran. Under Sassanids, Persian art and architecture experienced a general renaissance. Architecture often took grandiose proportions, such as palaces at Ctesiphon, Firuzabad, and Sarvestan, which are amongst the highlights of the ensemble.

Khorasan — meaning the “Land of the Sun” — is a historical region and realm comprising a vast territory now lying in northeastern Iran, southern Turkmenistan, and northern Afghanistan. The historical region extended along the north, from the Amu Darya (Oxus River) westward to the Caspian Sea and, along the south, from the fringes of the central Iranian deserts eastward to the mountains of central Afghanistan.

AFM