Welcome back to the Deep Dive. Today, we are
standing at the threshold of something. Well,
something massive. And I don't just mean physical
size, though we are talking about huge buildings.
I mean massive in terms of memory. We're looking
at an institution that's basically holding the
hard drive of human civilization for an entire
region. It's a staggering archive. We're talking
about the National Museum of Iran. And to give
you a sense of the scale right off the bat. This
place isn't just a gallery with a few, you know,
pretty vases. No. It's a custodian of over three
million artifacts. Three million. That number
is just... It's hard to wrap your head around.
It's the oldest archaeological museum in West
Asia. And honestly, it's a heavyweight champion
when it comes to historical preservation. But
here's the thing that really got me when we were
digging into the research for this. It's not
just one building. It's actually two distinct
complexes in Tehran that function as this, well,
this massive time capsule. Precisely. You have
the Museum of Ancient Iran and then the Museum
of the Islamic Era. And between the two of them,
they're trying to do something almost impossible.
Which is? Tell the comprehensive story of us.
And by us, I mean humanity in that region, stretching
all the way from Neanderthals making stone tools
right up to the intricate mathematical artistry
of the Sothoic kings. That is a huge scope. Hundreds
of thousands of years. But before we get lost
in that timeline, can we just pause on the, wait,
what? factor of this place? The surprises. Yeah,
the surprises. Because there are some things
in this collection that just sound made up. Like
the fact that they have what is technically considered
the world's first animation. On a piece of pottery.
On pottery from 5 ,000 years ago. It's a remarkable
artifact from Sharia Sukteh. And we will definitely
unpack how that works later. It challenges a
lot of our assumptions about what ancient art
was capable of. And the other thing that threw
me, and maybe this is just my own ignorance showing,
is that the most iconic building of this Iranian
national treasure. a building that looks like
it grew out of the ancient history of Persia
itself, was actually designed by a Frenchman.
That's true. André Godard. And that origin story
is actually the perfect place to start because
the museum's existence wasn't exactly a straight
line. It didn't just appear overnight. No. It
had a bit of a rocky start. Right. So let's rewind.
Early 20th century. Who wakes up and decides
we need a museum? Because usually people are
worried about, you know, food and shelter. Well,
the intellectual class was very concerned with
heritage. The first serious proposal came in
1906. There was a man, Morteza Golikhan Hedayat.
He had this vision, but as is often the case
with ambitious projects, it didn't quite get
off the ground immediately. So it was just a
great idea on paper. Exactly. It wasn't until
1916 that something actually opened, but it was
incredibly modest. They called it the Museum
of Education. And if you're picturing a grand
hall, stop. Picture a closet. Picture a supply
closet. It was basically one room in the Ministry
of Education building. They had about 270 items,
some pottery, old weapons, seals. A far cry from
3 million items. This was a start. But the real
turning point, the moment it starts to become
the institution we know today, happens in the
late 1920s. And this connects to that French
influence you mentioned. Right, because at this
time... Archaeology in the region was heavily
dominated by Europeans. It was sort of the era
of the great game applied to history. It was.
The French specifically had a stronghold. For
a long time, French archaeologists had an unconditional
privilege to excavate in Iran. But in 1927, the
Iranian government pushed back. That privilege
was canceled. Okay. But the government still
wanted a proper national museum and library.
And as a sort of diplomatic tradeoff, the privilege
of designing it was given to France. So it was
a deal. You can't dig everywhere anymore, but
you can build the house where we keep the history.
In a way, yes. So in 1929, a French architect
and archaeologist named André Godard comes to
Iran. He's the key figure. And the building he
designed, the Museum of Ancient Iran, is fascinating
because it's this fusion of cultures. I was looking
at photos of it. It's this massive, dark brick
structure. It looks incredibly imposing. It is.
Construction was between 1935 and 1937. Godard,
along with Maxime Serru, designed it. But here's
the fascinating detail. Even though they were
French, they didn't build a French -style building.
They didn't drop a neoclassical bank from Paris
into Tehran. Exactly. They looked at Iran's own
history for inspiration. That huge dark archway
in the front, it looks ancient. That's the key
feature. It was intentionally influenced by the
Sassanid style. Specifically, the famous Takh
Khazra at Sessafan. That massive vaulted arch
that you want. So he's using the country's own
architectural language to house its history.
Which is a pretty respectful move for a foreign
architect in the 1930s. It frames the entry into
history through the lens of that history itself.
Now, if you look at the second complex, the Museum
of the Islamic Era, it's a totally different
vibe. Completely. Yeah, that one looks much more
modern. White stone sitting on the grass. White
travertine. But even there, the inspiration is
historical. It's built on an octagonal cruciform
plan inspired by the Sassanid Palace at Bishapur.
So both buildings are echoing the past, just
in different ways. One dark and heavy, the other
white and geometric. But the Islamic era museum
had a much more turbulent birth. It did. It was
being remodeled right when the Iranian revolution
swept the country in the late 70s. So its full
potential was, well, it was delayed. Okay, so
we have the stage set. Two buildings. Let's walk
inside. Let's do this walk through deep time.
Because you mentioned Neanderthals earlier, and
I feel like people don't usually associate museums
in Tehran with Neanderthals. And that's a huge
oversight. The Ancient Iran Museum has a collection
that goes back to the lower Paleolithic period.
We're talking about the very dawn of human activity
in the region. So what are we actually looking
at? Are these just rocks? To the untrained eye?
Maybe. But these are Mysterion -sewn tools from
places like Kashafrud and Darband. These were
made by Neanderthals. This is before Homo sapiens
were the only game in town. That's incredible,
just the idea of standing there looking at a
tool that a different species of human held in
their hand. It really grounds you, and it continues
through the upper Paleolithic. There are tools
from Jafta dating back 30 ,000, maybe 35 ,000
years. But as we move forward in time, the artifacts
get more complex. we start seeing art. And that
brings us to your favorite item. The goat. The
movie Goat? The pottery from Char et Soupde.
The Burnt City. Okay, lay it out for us. How
is a cup in animation? Because usually pottery
just sits there. So imagine an earthen goblet.
Around the side of it, the artist has painted
five panels. Each panel shows a goat in a slightly
different position. Right. And the first he's
standing, and the next he's rearing up. Then
he's midair. Then he's grabbing a leaf from a
tree. And if you spin it? If you spin the goblet,
The persistence of vision kicks in. The images
blur together and you see the goat jump up and
snatch the leaf. It is, for all intents and purposes,
the earliest known example of animation. That
is just mind -blowing. Someone 5 ,000 years ago
was sitting there thinking, I bet I can make
this goat move. It's like they were inventing
cinema before they'd even perfected the wheel.
It speaks to a very human desire to capture life
in motion. It wasn't enough to just draw the
goat. They wanted to capture the action of the
goat. I love that. Prehistoric cinema. Okay,
moving through the gallery, we hit the heavy
hitters. We have to talk about the salt men.
The salt men are fascinating. Yeah. A bit macabre.
These are naturally mummified remains preserved
in salt mines. The level of preservation is eerie.
You can see hair, clothing, leather, boots. And
these weren't kings wrapped in linen. No, these
were miners. Ordinary workers who died in a collapse.
The soul just dried them out. It gives you this
visceral connection to the past. You aren't looking
at a statue of a god. You're looking at a guy
who went to work 2 ,000 years ago and never came
home. That hits hard. And speaking of statues,
we do have the big ones. You have Darius the
Great. Yes, the statue of Darius. The massive
columns from Persepolis. Symbols of imperial
power. But there's another statue that I find
even more poignant. The statue of Penelope. Penelope
as in? From the Odyssey, Odysseus' wife. The
very same. A marble statue of Penelope grieving
for her lost husband found in the ruins of Persepolis.
What was a Greek mythological statue doing in
the capital of the Persian Empire? That's the
big question. It was likely a diplomatic gift
or maybe war booty. Yeah. But here's the beautiful
part. It's one of only four such statues in the
world. The others are in the Vatican and Rome.
Wow. And a few years ago, back in 2016, there
was this reunion exhibition. They brought the
sisters together. They did. First in Milan, and
then the Italian statues traveled to Tehran.
It was this beautiful moment where these marble
sisters, separated by history, were reunited
in the very place where one of them had been
buried for centuries. That's surprisingly emotional
for a story about rocks. It shows that art has
a life of its own. It does. And speaking of shiny
things, before we leave the ancient world, we
have to mention the gold, the Iron Age stuff.
The Marlet collection. The gold cups, the animal
statues. There's a ring of power from the Elamite
period. It shows the incredible richness of the
metalwork. It pushes back against any idea that
this is a dark age. The craftsmanship is world
class. Okay, so that's the ancient building.
We've done Neanderthals, the movie goat, the
salt men, the gold. Now we walk across the grass
to the white building, the Museum of the Islamic
Era. And here, the atmosphere changes completely.
You have about 1 ,500 works on display. The materials
shift. You start seeing delicate astrolabes,
adobe calligraphy, medieval textiles. It feels
more personal, maybe? It is closer to our time.
And you see the shift in focus towards the written
word, towards geometry. But the personalities
are still there. For example, the personal items
of Abbas the Great. This is the Shah who basically
rebuilt Isfahan. Yes. They have his sword, his
shield, his dress. Seeing the clothing of a historical
figure like that, it removes the abstraction.
He was a man who wore this dress, held this shield.
It makes the history tactile. And there's a piece
you flagged as important, the Paradise Gate.
Ah, yes. It's a mihrab, a prayer nish, from the
Ilkhanate Empire. And along with these intricate
wooden windows from 1126 A .D., it shows how
Iranian identity evolved. How so? It wasn't that
the ancient Persian identity disappeared when
Islam arrived. It blended. You see the artistic
continuity, the geometric mastery, the love of
detail applied to religious architecture. It's
a story of evolution, not replacement. So I want
to pivot a bit because a museum isn't just a
warehouse for old stuff. It's a player on the
world stage. And this museum seems incredibly
active in what we might call cultural diplomacy.
That's a very good term for it. Art can travel
across borders that people sometimes can't. Take
us back to 2010, the Cyrus Cylinder. This was
a massive moment, an exchange with the British
Museum. The Cyrus Cylinder is often called the
first charter of human rights. It's a huge point
of pride for Iranian history, but it lives in
London. So they brought it home. For four months.
And the reaction was overwhelming. Half a million
people visited it at Tehran. That's rock concert
attendance. It shows the hunger people have to
connect with that heritage. And then they did
it again with the Louvre in 2018. Yes. For the
museum's 80th anniversary, 50 masterpieces from
the Louvre came to Tehran, drew over 250 ,000
visitors. It's these moments of connection, Paris
to Tehran, London to Tehran, that bridge gaps.
But it's not always friendly loans. Sometimes
it's like a crime thriller. We have to talk about
the case of the smuggled relief. This is a wild
story. So there was this sassanid release, a
stone carving dating back to somewhere between
224 and 651 A .D. Worth a bit of money. Estimated
to be worth over 30 million pounds. It was illegally
smuggled out of Iran in the 80s, probably hacked
out of a rock face during the Iran -Rock War.
It ends up in the UAE, sits there for years.
And then in 2016, someone gets greedy and tries
to bring it into the UK to sell it. And they
got caught. Seized at Stansted Airport. Border
force officers saw the crate and thought, this
looks suspicious. I love that. Just sitting in
an airport hangar, a 30 million pound treasure
wrapped in bubble wrap. Exactly. It took years
of legal wrangling. But finally, in June 2023,
it was returned to Iran. It's now permanently
displayed at the museum. A real victory. It sends
a message, too. You can steal it, but you can't
keep it. Right. And speaking of returns, we have
to mention the Achaemenid tablets. From the University
of Chicago, right? Yes, in 2024. These have been
on loan since the 1930s. Thousands of clay tablets.
Now, be honest. Clay tablets sound kind of boring
compared to gold cups. Visually, maybe. They're
small brown lumps of clay with little scratches.
But the content, the content is thrilling. If
you want to know what life was actually like.
Why? That's on them. They aren't grand proclamations
of kings. They're receipts. Receipts. Administrative
records. They detail wages, road management,
how much barley a worker got paid, travel permits.
So it's the Excel spreadsheets of the Achaemenid
Empire. Exactly. And that's why they're so valuable.
They tell us about the common people, the economy,
the daily grind of life under Darius the Great.
You don't get that from a statue of a king. You
get that from the tax records. That's a great
point. The boring stuff makes the history real.
It turns the empire from a myth into a functioning
society. And recently, the museum has been taking
that history on the road on a scale we haven't
seen before. The China connection. The glory
of ancient Persia exhibition. This toured China
in 2024 and early 2025. The numbers were just
staggering. I saw this stat and I had to double
check it. 50 million visitors. Over 50 million.
It was the biggest exhibition abroad in the museum's
history. That's the population of a medium -sized
country walking through an exhibit of Persian
history. It shows the massive global interest.
It suggests the museum isn't just sitting in
Tehran waiting for visitors. It's aggressively
exporting its culture, using soft power in a
very effective way. So when we look at the National
Museum of Iran today in 2026, it seems like it's
operating on two levels. It is. On one hand,
it's the vault, the fortress in Tehran guarding
the musterian tools and the gold of Marlik. It's
the physical anchor of the nation's memory. And
on the other hand, it's a diplomat. It's a traveler.
It's reclaiming stolen art from British airports
and breaking attendance records in Shanghai.
It's remarkably dynamic for an institution that
deals with things that have been dead for thousands
of years. It really is. It's a reminder that
history isn't static. It moves. It gets smuggled.
It gets returned. It goes on tour. And that raises
an interesting question for us to chew on. What's
that? Well, the museum holds over 3 million artifacts,
but only a fraction around 300 ,000 are typically
on display in Tehran. Yet one exhibition in China
reached 50 million people. So, in the 21st century,
where does the true power of a national museum
lie? Is it inside the walls of that beautiful
brick building André Godard designed? Or is its
true power in its ability to leave those walls
and travel the world? That's a big question.
Is the museum the building or is the museum the
story it tells, wherever it tells it? I think
the answer is changing right in front of us.
Something to think about next time you walk into
a gallery or see a video of a jumping goat on
your feed. Indeed. That's all for this deep dive
into the time capsule of Tehran. Thanks for listening
and we'll catch you on the next one.