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Iran / Persia: A tablet from the Persepolis Fortification Archive, 509-493 BCE

Iran / Persia: A tablet from the Persepolis Fortification Archive, 509-493 BCE

The Persepolis Fortification Archive and Persepolis Treasury Archive are two groups of clay administrative archives - sets of records physically stored together - found in Persepolis (Old Persian: Pârsa, Modern Takht-e Jamshid in Fars near Shiraz in southwestern Iran) dating to the Persian Achaemenid Empire.

The discovery was made during legal excavations conducted by the archaeologists from the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago in the 1930s. Hence they are named for their in situ findspot: Persepolis (Greek meaning City of Persians). The archaeological excavations at Persepolis for the Oriental Institute were initially directed by Ernst Herzfeld from 1931 to 1934 and carried on from 1934 until 1939 by Erich Schmidt.

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