Review of Seven Pieces of Luster Tiles in the National Museum of Iran; New Archaeological Finds from Lar Plain in Tehran

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Researcher

2 Assistant Professor, Department of Archaeology, Tarbiat Modares University

https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.14754300

Abstract

The first manual of the National Museum of Iran (NMI) was published in 1917, at the same time as the opening of the museum. This manual includes a description of the NMI's duties and activities. It also has a descriptive list of museum objects. The description of some objects in the manual is very important, but this has not been considered in the study of some of the objects of the NMI in previous research. 34 pieces of luster tiles have a complete description in the manual. The first purpose of this article is to review the information about some of the above-mentioned luster tiles based on the first manual of the NMI. The second one is to introduce the archaeological context in which they were found. The question is how are these luster tiles described in the manual of the NMI? What are the characteristics of the archaeological context where they were discovered? The data were collected by studying the mentioned manual and according to the characteristics of the tiles and conducting field studies. According to the results, at least seven pieces of luster tiles of the NMI are among the objects excavated from the Lar Plain of Tehran. While now they are registered as discovered tiles from Kashan, Gorgan, and Rey. Although these seven tiles are similar in style to the luster tiles of Kashan and Takht-e Soleyman, they were excavated by Etemad-al-Saltaneh in Khoshi-khaneh, Lar Plain, based on historical sources. The excavation was carried out by order of Nasser al-Din Shah during his summer trip to Lar. After that, these tiles were transferred to one of the large rooms of the old building of the Ministry of Education in the northern part of the Dar al-Fonun school, and then they were transferred to the Mirror Hall of Masoudiyeh Palace. Eventually, they were placed in the NMI and at the same time, they were registered in the manual of the museum.

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