TEHRAN – An exhibit at the National Museum of Iran offers its visitors Tehran’s thousands of years of history by showcasing relics excavated from southern and northern neighborhoods of the city.

Titled “Ancient Tehran: From Plain to Mountain”, the exhibit features relics that have been unearthed from Cheshmeh-Ali and Qeytariyeh neighborhoods of the Iranian capital, IRNA reported on Tuesday.

The exhibition that opened on Wednesday showcases 110 objects including potteries decorated with delicate red lines that were unearthed in Cheshmeh-Ali and date from 4800 BC to 5200 BC, said Jebrail Nokandeh who presides over the National Museum of Iran.

Qeytariyeh relics were excavated from a cemetery in the northern neighborhood in the years 1968-69. They include clay and metal objects that date from 1000 BC to 1200 BC, the official said.

Organized in close cooperation with Tehran Municipality, the Iranian National Committee for ICOM (the International Council of Museums), and the Ministry of Cultural Heritage, Tourism and Handicrafts, the exhibit will be running through October 22.

Archaeologists said last year that the history of Tehran that may go down in time some 6,600 years more than previously thought.

Cheshmeh-Ali, literally meaning “Spring of Ali”, a historical and recreational spot located in the south of Tehran and north of Rey as the history of settlement in the latter goes down to the 3rd millennium BC.

The history of Rey, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica is featured in the Avesta (the original document of Zoroastrianism, an Iranian religion) as a sacred place, and it is also mentioned in the book of Tobit, of the biblical Apocrypha, and by classical authors.

According to the encyclopedia, the enigmatic evidence of human presence on the Iranian plateau as early as Lower Paleolithic times comes from a surface found in the Bakhtaran valley.

The first well-documented evidence of human habitation is in deposits from several excavated cave and rock-shelter sites, located mainly in the Zagros Mountains of western Iran and dated to Middle Paleolithic or Mousterian times (c. 100,000 BC).

AFM/MG