Word: mounds
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...Iranian Archaeologist Ezat Negahban and his crew dig spectacular ancient artifacts out of a low mound in the fertile Goha Valley, 186 miles northwest of Teheran. By night, they stand guard against raiding peasants, crooked local officials and stealthy professional thieves. The round-the-clock duty is wearing but necessary, for the location is one of the richest in archaeological history, and the entire valley around the mound has gone digger-daffy. Peasants are even uprooting their vines and fruit trees in a frantic search for ancient gold...
Full-Dress Dig. Dr. Negahban's party made exploratory borings in a mound named Marlik aftera nearby olive grove. Out of the red earth came gold buttons, small bronze cows, red carnelian beads, and two cylindrical seals used to roll impressions on moist claydocuments. The University of Teheran granted Dr. Negahban funds for a full-dress dig, and the 400-ft.-long boat-shaped mound was systematically excavated...
Stream of Treasure. Day after day, treasure poured from the mound, which is now known locally as "the mound that lays golden eggs." The biggest bowl, 8 in. high and 6 in. in diameter, shows a bird with animal legs and a mane. Other bowls are lively with prancing unicorns, bulls, rams, eagles, fish, a warrior in chain mail holding two leopards by their necks. The diggers turned up gold jewelry and gold household and toilet articles (ear cleaners, tweezers, needles), stone maceheads, terra-cotta figurines, a marble sword hilt inlaid with gold and lapis lazuli. Said one ragged workman...
Most of the treasures of Marlik Mound are already safe in the Iranian Archaeological Museum, but new finds always give Dr. Negahban something else to guard. By now he is surfeited with gold; he would rather dig up a clay tablet...
From the style and workmanship of the articles he has found, he has guessed that they date from about 1000 B.C., but he cannot be sure until he finds some written record connecting Marlik Mound with the known chronology of ancient Iran. Perhaps he will never be sure; at the beginning of the first millennium B.C., the whole Near East was in turmoil, with fierce barbarians making forays far into the Assyrian Empire. Little was written down during this dark...