Four pieces of gold with a combined weight of about three kilograms were unearthed beside one of the columns of the main hall of the Darius Palace at Bardak Siah by a team of archaeologists working at the 2500-year-old site located near the city of Borazajan in Iran’s southern province of Bushehr.
     "Three pieces of the gold are folded thick sheets and the other piece seems to be the upper part of a cup, having a carved simple line on the edge,"  the director of the team, Dr. Ehsan Yaghmaii, added. "The three pieces seem to be the covers of the wooden gates of the hall or epigraphs, which were carved on thick sheets of gold during the Achaemenid era, but the sheets have not yet been precisely identified," he said.
       Any inscription or relief will become evident when the folds are opened by experts, Yaghmaii noted, adding, "In order to precisely identify the gold items, the folds must be opened at the appropriate temperature in an equipped laboratory."
 
Source: Mehr News (24 April 2005)