TEHRAN – Iranian authorities have recently confiscated nine pieces of historical relics form a gang of illegal diggers and antique dealers in Lorestan province, western Iran, Mehr reported on Monday.

The objects date from two difference epochs of the Bronze Age and the pre-Islamic Persia, provincial tourism chief Seyyed Amin Qassemi said. 

The discovery was made when policemen inspected a vehicle that was treated as suspicious.

Western Asia and the Near East was the first region to enter the Bronze Age, which began with the rise of the Mesopotamian civilization of Sumer in c. 3300 running through 1200 BC.

Lorestan was inhabited by Iranian Indo-European peoples, including the Medes, in c. 1000 BC. Cimmerians and Scythians intermittently ruled the region from about 700 to 625 BC.

Of ancient highlight of the region are the Luristan Bronzes that comprise small cast objects decorated with bronze sculptures from the Early Iron Age, found in large numbers in Lorestan and Kermanshah provinces in western Iran.

Under Cyrus the Great, Lorestan was incorporated into the growing Achaemenid Empire in about 540 BC and successively was part of the Seleucid, Parthian, and Sassanid dynasties.

AFM/MG