LONDON, ENGLAND—The ruins of a 1,400-year-old palatial Sasanian building with five connected halls, two columned halls, and a courtyard have been discovered in western Iran. Its decorative moldings were crafted from stucco in geometric, human, animal, and mythological motifs. The archaeologists also uncovered two pieces of pottery used for writing. One of these ostracons had been engraved with 13 paragraphs, the other with eight paragraphs. The house was probably used during the summer by a noble family living in a nearby city that has been flooded by the recent construction of the Seimareh Dam.
Palatial Home Uncovered in Western Iran
News February 26, 2013
Recommended Articles
Off the Grid January/February 2026
Prophetstown, Indiana
Letter from France January/February 2026
Neolithic Cultural Revolution
How farmers came together to build Europe’s most grandiose funerary monuments some 7,000 years ago
Features January/February 2026
The Cost of Doing Business
Piecing together the Roman empire’s longest known inscription—a peculiarly precise inventory of prices
Features January/February 2026
The Birds of Amarna
An Egyptian princess seeks sanctuary in her private palace
-
Features January/February 2013
Neolithic Europe's Remote Heart
One thousand years of spirituality, innovation, and social development emerge from a ceremonial center on the Scottish archipelago of Orkney
Adam Stanford/Aerial Cam -
Features January/February 2013
The Water Temple of Inca-Caranqui
Hydraulic engineering was the key to winning the hearts and minds of a conquered people
(Courtesy Tamara L. Bray) -
Letter from France January/February 2013
Structural Integrity
Nearly 20 years of investigation at two rock shelters in southwestern France reveal the well-organized domestic spaces of Europe's earliest modern humans
-
Artifacts January/February 2013
Pacific Islands Trident
A mid-nineteenth-century trident illustrates a changing marine ecosystem in the South Pacific
(Catalog Number 99071 © The Field Museum, [CL000_99071_Overall], Photographer Christopher J. Philipp)