Dernières recherches sur le site proto-achéménide de Tol-e Ajori (Fars, Iran)

Issued in 2022 as a Communication presented by Callieri to the Académie des Inscriptions et belles-lettres, Paris, in December 2019, at the invitation of M. Henri-Paul Francfort, the article represents a detailed introduction to the architecture and decoration of the exceptional monument discovered by the Iranian-Italian Joint Archaeological Mission in Fars at only 3.5 km to the west of the Persepolis Terrace, in the site of Tol-e Ajori. This monument, excavated since 2011, has been recognised as an Early Achaemenid copy of the Babylonian Ishtar Gate, the plan of which it repeats at a larger scale and with some modifications, among which the use of mud-brick for the central core of the 10m thick walls, which are incorporated in a totally Babylonian tradition. Also the decoration in glazed bricks is strikingly similar to the Babylonian model and suggests that the same moulds were used after Cyrus' conquest of Babylon in 539 BC. Epigraphic evidence supports the pre-Darius dating given the absence of Old Persian from the 13 fragments of cuneiform inscriptions retrieved. The construction of a permanent roof has allowed to transfrom the monument in a site-museum.