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www.tehrantimes.com A team of Iranian archaeologists working at the ancient site of Zarbolagh near the central Iranian city of Qom recently discovered two graves in which they believe Mithraist Magi of the Median era were interred, the director of the team announced.
The graves were found in an Iron Age cemetery, 500 meters from a newly discovered stone chapel at Zarbolagh, which is in an area located between Tehran and Qom.
“Smugglers had previously looted some graves in the cemetery and destroyed all the evidence in the graves. It seemed odd that we could not find any shards near the graves because such items are usually found in large amounts in Iron Age cemeteries. However, new excavations carried out in another part of the cemetery led to the discovery of two different graves,” Mehrdad Malekzadeh said.
“During the Iron Age, bodies were entombed in graves with stones over a 50-centimeter hollow space above their heads, but the two bodies had been buried under stones without any hollow space,” he explained, adding that no trace of soil is seen in the graves, proving that they were not from the Iron Age.
Covered with a 5-7-centimeter layer of ash, the bodies have been buried under stones, and the layer of ash acted as a buffer between the body and the covering, Malekzadeh said.
Contrary to an Iron Age custom, in which bodies were buried with some gifts, no gift, shard, or pottery items were found in the two graves. Due to the lack of any gift in the graves, the archaeologists believe that the interred people were rich people, so no gifts had been used in their burial ceremonies. The skeletons are wearing bronze snake-shaped armlets on their left arms.
“On the other hand, great exertions were made digging the tombs in the stony tepe, so it seems the graves were for important persons. Otherwise, such efforts would not have been made to break the stones,” Malekzadeh noted.
“The Snake, scorpion, and ant are not creatures of Ahura Mazda in Zoroastrianism and they have been created by Angra Mainyu (the evil spirit who contends against Spenta Mainyu), but the Medes believed in Mithraism, in which the snake was a respectable sacred creature,” he added.
Due to the abovementioned evidence, the archaeologists believe that they have discovered the graves of Median Mithraist Magi who had been buried near the newly discovered stone chapel at the ancient site of Zarbolagh.
The team of archaeologists is also trying to solve the riddle of why the chapel had been deliberately camouflaged with stones, bricks, and mud. | 
