Tehran – A team of archaeologists began work on Iran’s Hirbodan hill, which is estimated to be around 4,500 years old.

“According to the head of the excavation team, based on the data collected from the archaeological trenches, the hill is associated with the Elamite civilization and dates from around 4,500 years ago,” said a local tourism official, CHTN reported. .

In addition to the excavations, the investigation aims to determine the legal limits of the former colony by carving and analyzing other trenches carried out under the supervision of the Research Institute on Cultural Heritage and Tourism (RICHT) .

Hirbodan Hill is located in Darab County, in the southern province of Fars, which was once the heart of the Achaemenian Empire (circa 550-330 BC), which stretched from Ethiopia , through Egypt, to Greece, to Anatolia (modern Turkey), to central Asia and India.

Throughout the late prehistoric periods, Elam was closely linked culturally with Mesopotamia. Later, possibly due to the rule of the Akkadian dynasty (c. 2334 – c. 2154 BC), the Elamites adopted the Sumero-Akkadian cuneiform script.

The modern provinces of Ilam and Khuzestan were once the seat of power for the Elamite kingdom.

Elamite language, extinct language spoken by the Elamites in the ancient land of Elam, which included the region from the Mesopotamian plain to the Iranian plateau. According to Britannica, Elamite documents from three historical periods have been found. The first Elamite writings are in figurative or pictographic writing and date from the middle of the 3rd millennium BC.

The documents of the second period, which lasted from the 16th to the 8th century BC, are written in cuneiform; the language stage found in these documents is sometimes referred to as Old Elamite.

The last period of Elamite texts is that of the reign of the Achaemenian kings of Persia (6th to 4th century BC), who used Elamite, as well as Akkadian and Old Persian, in their inscriptions. The language of this period, also written in cuneiform script, is often referred to as New Elamite.

AFM