TEHRAN—Archaeologists have found new traces of the Mede people during their recent excavations conducted in western Iran.

A team of archaeologists has found adobe bricks while they dug experimental trenches to propose legal boundaries for an ancient site situated in the Pa-Qaleh area of Sahneh county in Kermanshah province, Sahneh’s tourism chief said on Wednesday.

In that regard, some 20 trenches, measuring 1m by 1m, were carved by the team led by archaeologist Hamid Haririan, the official said.

The discovery of adobe bricks is of high importance as it underlines the presence of Mede people here, the official noted.

“In a previous excavation conducted three kilometers from the site, a statue of a Mede girl was excavated,” the official said.

Those sites will be turned into open-air museums to boost tourism, the official added. 

Medes were one of the Indo-European people who entered northeastern Iran probably as early as the 17th century BC and settled in the plateau land that came to be known as Media.

Media, ancient country of northwestern Iran, generally corresponding to the modern regions of Azarbaijan, Kurdestan, and parts of Kermanshah.

As mentioned by Britanica, Media first appears in the texts of the Assyrian king Shalmaneser III (858–824 BC), in which peoples of the land of “Mada” are recorded. The inhabitants came to be known as Medes.

Although Herodotus credits “Deioces son of Phraortes” (probably c. 715) with the creation of the Median kingdom and the founding of its capital city at Ecbatana (modern Hamadan), it was probably not before 625 BC that Cyaxares, grandson of Deioces, succeeded in uniting into a kingdom the many Iranian-speaking Median tribes. In 614 he captured Ashur, and in 612, in alliance with Nabopolassar of Babylon, his forces stormed Nineveh, putting an end to the Assyrian empire. The victors divided the Assyrian provinces among themselves, with the Median king taking over a large part of Iran, northern Assyria, and parts of Armenia.

Britannica says in many respects the internal organization of the Median empire probably resembled that of Assyria, but little is actually known. Few identifiable “Median” objects have been found, but the Medes apparently favored rich ornamentation and also received a strong artistic influence from Assyria. Since no Median written documents of any kind have ever been uncovered, their spiritual and economic life is also a matter of conjecture.

By the victory in 550 of the Persian chief Cyrus II the Great over his suzerain, Astyages of Media, the Medes were made subject to the Persians. In the new Achaemenian Empire, they retained a prominent position; in honor and war, they stood next to the Persians, and their court ceremonial was adopted by the new sovereigns, who in the summer months resided in Ecbatana.

AFM