Shahr-e Sukhteh

Listen first to the wind. Out here in eastern Iran it moves almost without pause, carrying fine grey dust across a low, wrinkled plain. Underfoot the ground crunches, because it is full of broken pottery. Pale fragments lie scattered everywhere you look. Some are no bigger than a fingernail. Each one was shaped and fired by someone who lived here around five thousand years ago.

This is Shahr-e Sukhteh, a name that means the Burnt City in Persian. It sits in the region of Sistan, close to the border with Afghanistan and not far from the town of Zabol. At first glance it looks like a field of eroded mounds. Only slowly does the eye begin to pick out the lines of walls, the shapes of rooms, and the outlines of streets. You are standing on the remains of one of the largest Bronze Age cities on the Iranian plateau.

The name has a simple origin. Archaeologists found layers of ash and burned material here. The city appears to have suffered fire several times during its long life. Nobody knows for certain whether these fires came from war, from accident, or from something else. The name was attached to the site long before the full story was understood. Even now, it is only part of the picture.

People settled here in the late fourth millennium before Christ, at roughly the same time that early cities were rising in Mesopotamia and Egypt. The city grew over many centuries and then declined, and it was eventually abandoned in the early second millennium before Christ. Archaeologists usually divide its life into several main periods. During that time the settlement grew from a modest village into a large, organised town with separate districts for homes, workshops, and the dead.

Why here, in a landscape that now feels so dry and harsh? The answer is water. In ancient times the Helmand River fed a wide delta and a system of wetlands and lakes in this basin. The land was greener, with reeds, fish, birds, and fields. Over time the river channels shifted and the climate changed. Many researchers think these changes played a major part in the city's slow decline. The emptiness around you today is partly the story of a river that moved away.

Systematic excavation began in the late 1960s, when an Italian team led by the archaeologist Maurizio Tosi started work here. From the late 1990s, Iranian archaeologists continued the excavations, and the site has been studied for decades since then. In 2014, UNESCO added Shahr-e Sukhteh to its World Heritage List. UNESCO recognised it as an important example of an early urban society on the eastern edge of the Iranian plateau.

Now for one of the surprises. In one grave, archaeologists found the skeleton of a woman with an artificial eye still resting in her eye socket. The eyeball was made from a light material, probably based on natural bitumen. Very fine golden lines were drawn on it to suggest the iris and the small veins. Tiny holes at the sides may have held it in place with a thread. It is one of the oldest artificial eyes ever found, and it was made for a living person around five thousand years ago.

The second surprise is a small clay goblet. Around its side, a painter drew a wild goat and a tree in a series of separate frames. In each frame the goat is in a slightly different position. When you turn the cup quickly, the goat seems to leap up and eat the leaves. Many people describe this as one of the earliest known attempts to show movement in sequence. It is something like a flip-book, painted on pottery.

The finds also show a society that loved games and fine craftwork. Excavators found a game board with playing pieces and dice, and it is often compared to an early form of backgammon. Workshops here processed semi-precious stones. Lapis lazuli, a deep blue stone, probably came from the mountains of what is now Afghanistan. Red carnelian and turquoise also appear. Beads and raw materials moved along routes that connected this city with the Indus Valley, Central Asia, and Mesopotamia. Sistan was not remote. It was a meeting point.

The cemetery is enormous. It holds tens of thousands of graves, which makes it one of the largest burial grounds of its age in the region. The bones show how people lived, worked, and fell ill. One famous skull belonged to a young girl, and some researchers think it shows signs of an early surgical operation. Scholars still discuss what exactly happened, and so the case remains a matter of debate. Even so, the skeletons give a close and human view of daily life here.

As you walk, look at the walls. They are made of mud brick, the same material that builders across Iran used for thousands of years. Clay, water, and straw were shaped and dried in the sun. When people abandoned these buildings, the walls slowly melted back into the earth. That is why the ruins look soft and rounded. In the excavated areas you can still see doorways, small rooms, and floors where families cooked, stored grain, and slept.

The climate shapes your visit. Sistan is known for a strong seasonal wind that local people call the wind of one hundred and twenty days. It can blow hard through the summer months and lift sand into the air. The light here is flat and bright in the middle of the day. In the early morning and late afternoon it turns softer and warmer, and the low mounds cast long shadows. At those times it is easier to read the shapes of the old city.

Many of the most famous objects from the site are no longer here. The goblet, the game pieces, and other important finds are kept in museums, including the National Museum of Iran in Tehran. So here, on the ground, the experience is different. It is about scale, silence, and imagination. You can see how far the city stretched. You can see how flat the horizon is. You can picture a town full of potters, bead makers, and traders on this dry plain.

Before you leave, stop for a moment and look down. Pick out one piece of pottery with your eyes, but leave it where it lies. Notice its colour and its curved edge, and perhaps a painted line. Someone's hands shaped that clay when this was a living city beside a river. Then look up at the open plain and feel the wind on your face. It is the same wind that blew over the Burnt City five thousand years ago.