The report “Ancient Underground City Unearthed in Hamedan” was originally posted by the Financial Tribune with the photos provided by Abdollah Heidari of the IRNA. The version printed below has been slightly edited from its original version.
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A two-millennia-old subterranean city has been unearthed after more than a decade of excavations in Samen, Hamedan Province, just south of the city of Malayer.
One of the interlinked tunnels at Samen (Photo: Abdollah Heidari, IRNA).
The city, located 400 km west of Tehran, provisionally dubbed the Underground City of Samen, is “under the modern city of Samen,” said Ali Khaksar, the head of the provincial office of Iran’s Culturally Heritage, Handicrafts and Tourism Organization.
Another one of the interlinked tunnels at Samen (Photo: Abdollah Heidari, IRNA).
Speaking to Khabar Online, the official said the ancient city is believed to be around 2,000 years old, built sometime in the transition years between the fall of the Achaemenid Empire (550-330 BCE) and rise of the Parthian Empire (247 BC-224 CE).
Human remains and tunnel walls tabulated by archaeologists at the Samen underground complex (Photo: Abdollah Heidari, IRNA).
Excavations began in 2005 and have continued to this day.
One of the underground chambers examined at Samen (Photo: Abdollah Heidari, IRNA).
The city is made up of interlinked tunnels comprising 25 rooms (which served as houses). Some 60 complete skeletons have been dug up from nine rooms.
One of the underground passageways with strewn human remains (Photo: Abdollah Heidari, IRNA).
