TEHRAN -- Iran’s Art Bureau plans to publish the Encyclopedia of the World’s Mythologies and Ancient Rites, two volumes of which will be completed by March 2007.

“My team and I began conducting research and studies on this project in (Iranian calendar year) 1337 (March 1958-March 1959). The book was supposed to be published in five volumes a few years ago. However, the Art Bureau made a proposal to expand research on the project,” project director Qolamreza Masumi said at a meeting held at the Art Bureau on Wednesday to discuss the encyclopedia.

In addition to the first two volumes, the preface of the 15-volume work will also be completed by March.

“The ancient rites covered in the book exclusively involve non-monotheistic religions,” said Masumi, who is also the encyclopedia’s archaeologist.

“Wherever archaeology and history are silent, myths begin to speak and to convey human beings’ culture from ancient times to the present,” he added.

“The study and understanding of myths leads to an understanding of the gradual stages of humanity’s intellectual growth in different periods of time. It also fills the gap between the prehistoric and the civilized eras and leads human beings to the worship of the one God and to the belief in the unity of God. “Man has always sought answers to his unanswered questions. He has always been interested in discovering where he originally came from and where he will go in the end. Will there be an afterlife or will man’s life end with this world? Will the body be resurrected on Judgment Day or will the soul alone be resurrected? Is man a mortal or an immortal creature?”

Masumi said that monotheism is the Almighty’s gift to humanity, adding that archaeologists have conducted a raft of research to discover which appeared first, monotheism or the worship of numerous idols and gods.

The scientists have presented a convincing answer to the question, saying that human beings were originally monotheistic and only later turned to polytheism and worshipping totems, he explained.

Masumi also showed pictures of ancient Iran, Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, Rome, China, and Japan, which gave birth to some of the earliest civilizations and myths.