TEHRAN -- Glazed bricks unearthed from the ancient mound of Qalaichi in northwestern Iran will be studied today during the monthly meeting of the National Museum of Iran in Tehran.

Hekmatollah Molla-Salehi, Mohammad Lamei, Mahnaz Abdollahkhan Faranak Bahrololumi, Kamyar Abdi are among the experts scheduled to deliver lectures during the meeting that begins at 9:00 a.m.
Located at a distance of 12 kilometers northeast of the city of Bukan in West Azerbaijan Province, the site was excavated for the first time in 1982.
Excavatations were carried out at Qalaichi at other times, but most of the bricks were discovered in 2006 during an archaeological dig that resulted in the discovery of platforms believed to have been used as altars for sacrifices and religious rites during the Mannai era (early 1st millennium BC).
Many bones of sheep and goats as well as small canals have been found near the platforms built of glazed bricks, thus the archaeologists surmise that the structures may have been sacrificial altars of the ancient Manneans.
The bricks have azure, white, and yellow glazes.
A number of bricks found in illegal excavations by smugglers along with some other bricks discovered by archaeologists will be put on display in an exhibition on the sideline of the meeting.
Mannai was an ancient country in northwestern Iran, south of Lake Urmia. During the period of its existence in the early 1st millennium BC, Mannai was surrounded by three major powers: Assyria, Urartu, and Media.
With the intrusion of the Scythians and the rise of the Medes in the 7th century BC, the Manneans lost their identity and were subsumed under the term Medes. Place names and personal names in Mannai are thought to be in a dialect related to the Hurrian language of the Hittite empire.
The Manneans worshiped Haldi, the god of the ancient kingdom of Urartu.