National museum of Iran is a collection of artifacts from pre-historic and historic times of Iran. Located at the heart of Iran capital Tehran this museum host many valuable objects. Also the museum has an Islamic section with diverse objects from that period. The building of ancient Iran museum opened in 1937 and the Islamic Section in 1996. The oldest object in this museum is from eight hundred thousand years ago.
History
After the idea of preserving ancient artifacts became important to Iranian officials they tried to gather them in a special place. So they prepared a hall in Dar ol-Fonon the first modern school of Iran. They transferred some of these objects to this hall. Including bronze, ceramic, glass and some coins and weapons. Then Iran gave the privilege of excavations at Susa to French Archaeologists. Since they found many other valuable stuff the government decided to open a national museum and library. They also gave this job to French. In 1929 Andre Godard the French architect started his work on National Museum.
Artifacts and objects
The tour of museum starts with stone objects from Paleolithic era. Among these objects are basic stone tools like axes and stones to hunt and kill animals. Also there are clay statutes and early ceramics from Neolithic times. Continually you can see interesting artifacts belonging to Bronze age. For instance some famous objects of Luristan bronze. Although probably the oldest civilization of Iran everyone know about is Achaemenids. But in National museum of Iran you can also see many amazing art objects from more ancient civilization in central plateau. Such as Jiroft and Elam civilizations. The ancient mythical motives on the objects show just a part of Iranian culture and history. The ancient section ends with glorious statue and objects from Achaemenids and Persepolis and Sassanid empire.
The Islamic section has also great artifacts from early Islamic periods. The objects varies from early texts, textiles, ceramics, astrolabes, calligraphy and paintings to more recent ones.
