About a ceury ago, when photography was still a nasce art, Ernst Herzfeld, a pioneering German archaeologist and historian, traveled to Persepolis with his camera and recorded a unique collection of images of this ancie complex.
These photos, which revolutionized our understanding of Iran’s history, are preserved today as part of a precious heritage. The original glass negatives of this collection are in the archives of the Freer and Arthur M. Art Gallery. Seckler, part of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC, are an importa docume of the state of this magnifice building in the early 20th ceury.
Herzfeld, who played a fundameal role in the developme of ancie Near Eastern studies and the history of Islamic art, spe a total of six weeks in the grounds of Takht Jamshid in two periods, from December 5 to January 2, 1302 (November 26 to December 23, 1923) and from March 12 to March 25, 1924 (March 2 to 15, 1924). His purpose of this trip was to prepare detailed maps of the structures and create a complete photographic archive of this area. One of the promine images of this collection is called “The Gate of Nations and the Pond in the Foreground”, whose glass negative is classified under the number FSA A.6 04.GN.2299 in the Smithsonian Institution.
