The Iron Age Museum of Tabriz; A Journey through Human History

Several museums have been established in Tabriz to display the various manifestations of thousands of years of human life. One of these museums is the “Iron Age Museum”, which comprises a collection of ancient graves and can be a special experience for visitors.

The Iron Age Museum is located near the Blue Mosque of Tabriz and the graves and related objects exhibited there are about 3500 years old and belong to the Iron Age. This museum was inscribed as a national heritage in the year 2000.

Iron Age and Its Features

The Iron Age is the third and final epoch of the three historical Metal Ages. It has also been considered as the final Age of the three-age division starting with prehistory (before recorded history) and progressing to protohistory (before written history). In this usage, it is preceded by the Stone Age (subdivided into the Paleolithic, Mesolithic, and Neolithic) and Bronze Age. These concepts originated in describing Iron Age Europe and the Ancient Near East, but they now include other parts of the Old World.

The Appearance of the Iron Age Museum of Tabriz

During excavation operations in 1997, a collection of 38 ancient graves was discovered, which prompted the construction of the Iron Age Museum as the first field museum of Iran began in 2006 and a year later, its doors were opened to the public.

The bodies were buried in a hilly area and as a result, the depth of the graves is different. The museum has been so designed that the passage of visitors is lower than the graves, making it easier to see the remains of the corpses.

Entry to the museum is through a small door followed by some staircases to reach the main part of it, which is a dark place and eight meters underground with small wooden stairs and mud walls. Being located alongside a river, the air in the museum is quite humid and, therefore, several air conditioners have been installed to reduce the humidity of the environment.

Different Parts of the Iron Age Museum of Tabriz

The first part of the museum comprises the unearthed graves. Experts have extracted the age and gender of each of the buried bodies, which are on display next to each grave. One of the interesting things about this cemetery is the way the bodies had been placed in the graves. The people of that period believed that people should be buried in the same way they were born, so they buried them in the form of fetuses. However, one of these bodies has been buried differently and experts believe that the reason is that this corpse did not have the necessary flexibility to be buried in the same way as others. The graves of newborns have a simple appearance and are much smaller in size, and the graves of teenagers are square-shaped. Most of the graves in this collection are that of young people.

In another part of this museum, the objects obtained from these graves have been put on display Most of these objects are pottery wares. Each grave had special objects according to the age of the person buried in it. For example, children were buried with toys, women with ornaments, and men with war tools. Usually, people who had more financial resources were buried with more objects.

Even though women are buried on their left side and men on their right side, the faces of all the bodies are towards the north. This way of burying the dead was due to the belief of the people of that period in the religion of Mithraism. The surrounding walls of the corpses are covered with stones in such a way, which probably symbolizes the mother’s womb.

The remains in the graves have led scientists to conclude that some of these corpses belong to nomadic people and that their bodies were brought here after being buried in another place. Some of the corpses were badly damaged while being transferred, but such a change of location indicates the great importance of this place for the people of that era.

One of the interesting things about this cemetery is the way the bodies had been placed in the graves.