...I'm embarrassed at how thrilled I am about our banal finds. I'm the first person to touch this potsherd in 100 generations! Though we've found nothing exciting, the Diggers for a Day routinely unearth genuine treasures. They've uncovered an ancient marriage contract (not Jewish!), coins, gold earrings, seals of kings, a stone phallus, and literally thousands of complete pottery vessels...

Iran is planning on submerging the tomb of King Cyrus (Coresh), the Persian King known for authorizing the Jewish exiles to return to Jerusalem to rebuild the Holy Temple.

According to a report by Omedia, an Iranian organization is demanding that the International Criminal Court take action against those responsible.

The Iranian ayatollahs are planning on destroying the tomb as part of a general campaign to sever the Persian people from their non-Islamic heritage; Cyrus was thought to be a Zoroastrian and was one of the first rulers to enforce a policy of religious tolerance on his huge kingdom. Journalist Ran Porat quoted a young Iranian who said that the measures being taken by the Islamic Republic’s regime include the destruction of archaeological sites significant to this heritage.

"The government is in the final stages of constructing a dam in southern Iran that will submerge the archaeological sites of Pasargad and Persopolis – the ancient capital of the Persian Empire," the report states. "The site, which is considered exceptional in terms of its archaeological wealth and historical importance, houses the tomb of the Persian King Cyrus."...

...A group of Iranian academics opposed to the regime’s policies founded a group called the Pasargad Heritage Foundation with hopes of getting the United Nations involved in protecting the historical site. Most recently, the foundation filed a petition with the International Criminal Court against the Iranian official in charge of maintaining the sites, charging him and his bureau with "crimes against humanity, due to the systematic state-sanctioned destruction of the culture of the ancient Iranian world and its historical heritage."...

A few words about some of these topics:

1) Pasargadae The site itself, is not endangered by the future lake in the Tang-i Bulaghi. The dam is about 17 km downstream and the uppermost part of the filling will be ca. 5 km far from the Cyrus tomb which is the southern end of the site. However one cannot exclude the mass of water to bring more humidity in that region. Only the specialists can answer such a question. By the way, in the Technical Office of Pasargadae some people are working on the stone and their problems (plants, diseases, etc.).

2) Tang-i Bulaghi/Sivand Dam Project True, many "sites" located in the gorge and in the valley (together ca 15km long) will be flooded in the next few years. The building of the dam started in 1992, then was stopped for many years and reactivated last year. I remember our caveat in our yearly reports since 2001. No danger, I was told=8A

These ca 130 "sites" actually are for many of them, the majority in my opinion, spots where some sherds or sherd concentrations have been noted by us, then by two Iranian archaeologists committed to survey the valley, respectively last Spring and last Summer. I doubt all of these "spots" are of primary interest. For the rest, we, archaeologists, have to work quickly in order to estimate the potential and the necessary time to excavate. In this aim, the Iranian Center for Archaeological Research (Dir. Dr. M. Azarnoush) and the Parsa-Pasargadae Research Center (Dir. Mr. Ing. Talebian, Cultural and Scientific Advisor, Dr. Shahbazi) have recently launched a Rescue Project. I am quite aware of that since I was urgently requested to come last July and finally was able to go to Iran in late August to help them to prepare an "international call". To my direct knowledge three teams have already agreed (French, Italian, Polish) and three others are reported to do it (British, German, Japanese)...