Tehran – An open-air museum will be established on the premises of the ca. 7,000-year-old Qoli Darvish Hill, which is situated in the north-central Qom province.

“The first phase of the project involves building an access road and installing metal grating fences along the route of visitors to the Iron Age site,” deputy provincial tourism chief Ammar Kavusi announced on Tuesday.

A budget of 2.7 billion rials ($64,000 at the official exchange rate of 42,000 rials per dollar) has been allocated to the project, the official added.

The museum site will be designed and constructed to attract tourists and display old and discovered objects from the area as well as creating a pleasant atmosphere for those interested in ancient and historical monuments, he explained.

Back in January, the provincial tourism chief, Hamid Yazdani, announced that an archaeological project is scheduled to be launched on the ancient hill with a budget of one billion rials (about $24,000).

Dating back to the Iron Age, the hill is located southwest of the city Qom. Archeological excavations, which began in 2002 showed that Qoli Darvish dates back to six to seven thousand years ago.

The hill covers the land as big as 50 hectares. The discovery of historical elements of an ancient temple from the Bronze Age to the end of the Iron Age led to conclusions about the social classes and further anthropological researches about those periods of history.

In recent years, domestic and foreign tourists can visit the ancient hill, which was inscribed on the National Heritage list in 2003.

Iron Age is the final technological and cultural stage in the Stone–Bronze–Iron Age sequence. The date of the full Iron Age, in which this metal, for the most part, replaced bronze in implements and weapons, varied geographically, beginning in West Asia and southeastern Europe about 1200 BC but in China not until about 600 BC, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Although in West Asia iron had limited use as a scarce and precious metal as early as 3,000 BC, there is no indication that people at that time recognized its superior qualities over those of bronze.

The country’s second-holiest city after Mashhad, Qom is home to both the magnificent shrine of Hazrat-e Masumeh (SA) and the major religious madrasas (schools).

Apart from sightseers and pilgrims who visit Qom to pay homage at the holy shrine, the city is also a top destination for Shiite scholars and students who come from across the world to learn Islamic studies at its madrasas and browse through eminent religious bookshops.

The city’s antiquity goes back to the Sassanid era (224 CE–651) and several historical mosques, mansions, and natural sceneries have been scattered across the city as well as towns and villages nearby.

ABU/AFM