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US Returns to Iran Latest Batch of Ancient Clay Tablets

Achaemenid-era clay tablets returned from the United States and on display at Iran's National Museum in Tehran on October 2, 2019 - AFP
Achaemenid-era clay tablets returned from the United States and on display at Iran's National Museum in Tehran on October 2, 2019 - AFP
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US Returns to Iran Latest Batch of Ancient Clay Tablets

Achaemenid-era clay tablets returned from the United States and on display at Iran's National Museum in Tehran on October 2, 2019 - AFP
Achaemenid-era clay tablets returned from the United States and on display at Iran's National Museum in Tehran on October 2, 2019 - AFP

The United States has returned to Iran more than 1,000 clay tablets dating from the Achaemenid-era, official media said, reporting the sixth such handover of its kind.

Iran's official IRNA news agency said Thursday evening that the tablets, 1,100 in all, were returned with President Masoud Pezeshkian who had attended the United Nations General Assembly in New York.

Found at the ruins of Persepolis, the capital of the Persian Achaemenid Empire which ruled from the 6th to 4th centuries BC in southern Iran, the repatriated tablets reflect how the ancient society was organised and its economy managed.

According to AFP, the tablets constitute records of "the rituals and the way of life of our ancestors", said Ali Darabi, vice-minister of cultural heritage, cited by IRNA.

The tablets were returned to Iran by the University of Chicago's Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures, West Asia & North Africa, formerly known as the Oriental Institute.

A large portion of the tablets were returned in three batches between 1948 and 2004 before the rest were blocked by legal action until 2018.

More than 3,500 tablets were repatriated in September, 2023.

"The American side undertook to return the rest," Darabi said, cited by Iran's ISNA news agency.

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Thousands Greet the Winter Solstice at the Ancient Stonehenge Monument

A person holds up a smart phone as they wait for sunrise during the winter Solstice celebrations at Stonehenge, England, Saturday, Dec. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Anthony Upton)
A person holds up a smart phone as they wait for sunrise during the winter Solstice celebrations at Stonehenge, England, Saturday, Dec. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Anthony Upton)
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Thousands Greet the Winter Solstice at the Ancient Stonehenge Monument

A person holds up a smart phone as they wait for sunrise during the winter Solstice celebrations at Stonehenge, England, Saturday, Dec. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Anthony Upton)
A person holds up a smart phone as they wait for sunrise during the winter Solstice celebrations at Stonehenge, England, Saturday, Dec. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Anthony Upton)

Thousands of tourists, pagans, druids and people simply yearning for the promise of spring marked the dawn of the shortest day of the year at the ancient Stonehenge monument on Saturday.

Revelers cheered and beat drums as the sun rose at 8:09 a.m. (0809 GMT) over the giant standing stones on the winter solstice — the shortest day and the longest night in the Northern Hemisphere. No one could see the sun through the low winter cloud, but that did not deter a flurry of drumming, chanting and singing as dawn broke.

There will be less than eight hours of daylight in England on Saturday — but after that, the days get longer until the summer solstice in June.

The solstices are the only occasions when visitors can go right up to the stones at Stonehenge, and thousands are willing to rise before dawn to soak up the atmosphere.

The stone circle, whose giant pillars each took 1,000 people to move, was erected starting about 5,000 years ago by a sun-worshiping Neolithic culture, according to The AP. Its full purpose is still debated: Was it a temple, a solar calculator, a cemetery, or some combination of all three?

In a paper published in the journal Archaeology International, researchers from University College London and Aberystwyth University said the site on Salisbury Plain, about 128 kilometers (80 miles) southwest of London, may have had political as well as spiritual significance.

That follows from the recent discovery that one of Stonehenge’s stones — the unique stone lying flat at the center of the monument, dubbed the “altar stone” — originated in Scotland, hundreds of miles north of the site. Some of the other stones were brought from the Preseli Hills in southwest Wales, nearly 240 kilometers (150 miles) to the west,

Lead author Mike Parker Pearson from UCL’s Institute of Archaeology said the geographical diversity suggests Stonehenge may have served as a “monument of unification for the peoples of Britain, celebrating their eternal links with their ancestors and the cosmos.”