Zoroastrian Temple at Naqsh-e Rostam in Fars province

TEHRAN, March 12--Sections of the ancient Zoroastrian Temple, known as Bardia Tomb located at Naqsh-e Rostam in Fars province, which had collapsed, are to be repaired and the surrounding walls will also be reinforced.
A master craftsman, who has undertaken the repair operation of Parse historical site, Hassan Rahsaz said that walls of the temple were repaired in 1966-1967. The walls were located eight meters below the surface of the surrounding areas and the temple itself was excavated after 1935.
Rahsaz noted that sections of the walls were built in 1967 to preserve the mud-bricks which were used in constructing the temple. The walls have been damaged in the past 30 years and should be repaired for Norouz holidays when visitors from different cities come to see the cultural heritage site.
He said that the Zoroastrian Temple was built of limestone, a category of white stone which has remained durable.
He added that the stone on the doorstep of Hafez Tomb, Shiraz, which had caved in by three centimeters has been repaired.
“Hafez Tomb’s balcony on pillar has also caved in. The situation is being examined. The copper ceiling of the tomb has been repaired and a drainage system has been placed to channel the rainwater away from the rooftop during the rainy season,“ he concluded.

TEHRAN, March 12--First digital library with an initial capacity of 300,000 titles of books will be launched in cooperation with publishers.
According to Mehr news agency, Iran’s Book House seeks to place the digital library online once it manages to overcome legal entanglements.
The institute has imported the latest advanced equipment which can digitalize a 200-page book within five minutes.
Book House has so far compiled information on more than 300,000 titles of books and is now in talks with publishers to make them available online.
The online information cover all relevant particulars of books including their titles, names of authors and/or compilers, numbers of pages, names of publishers, their size, year of publication and illustrations on the covers.
While, Book House has the potential to create the largest digital library in the country, given some problems, most of which pertain to rights of the authors and publishers, this has not materialized so far.
According to the same source, one of the most important challenges in this respect is the lack of clear-cut law on copyright which can serve as the basis for the institute to engage in negotiations with publishers.
Book House now has the potential to produce digitalized versions of all the books published in the country.

TEHRAN, March 12--The seventh international archeological film festival is currently underway at Belgrade National Museum, in the Serbian-Montenegro capital, and will continue until March 28.
The event features 28 films from Serbia-Montenegro, Iran, Italy, Spain, Germany, France, Russia, Belgium, Cyprus and Switzerland.
According to ISNA, two Iranian films called ’Takht-e Jamshid (Persepolis)’ and ’Firouzabad’ both by Mehrdad Zahedi are making a premiere at the festival.
Iranian Cultural Center, which has been in close cooperation with the museum for the last two months, undertook the responsibility of translating for the subtitles of the films.
Several distinguished directors from Germany, Italy and Spain will take part in the event as guests.
The documentary film ’Firouzabad’ was screened on the second day of the event while ’Takht-e Jamshid’ will be shown with Serbian subtitle on Tuesday.
An exhibition of German archeological photos will be held on the sidelines of the festival at Belgrade National Museum.

Chehelsotoun Palace in Isfahan

TEHRAN, March 12--Secretary General of International Conference on ’Isfahan School of Art’ Bahman Namvar Motlaq has announced that he will publish the pictures which he took of Chehelsotoun Palace concurrent with an international confab due to be held both in Tehran and Isfahan next November.
Namvar Motlaq said that the conference will be organized by the Art Academy in cooperation with national and international organizations such as national commission of UNESCO, national commission of ISESCO, Institute for Artistic Creations of the Holy Shrine of Imam Reza (AS) and Iran’s Cultural Heritage and Tourism (ICHTO).
Namvar Motlaq, who is deputy chairman of the Art Academy for research affairs, told reporters that Isfahan has been designated the cultural capital of the Muslim world and Iran will help transform the city into the base for sciences.
He said that some 80 members of the academic board will work in the framework of eight groups and the outcome of their studies will be printed in 50 volumes of books.
The conference will study Isfahan School of Art between the years 1502-1736 AD when Isfahan was the capital of Safavid dynasty.
Isfahan School of Art will be studied in eight branches of art: painting, calligraphy, arts techniques, music, dramatic art, architecture and urban development, literature and philosophy.

An illustration from Shahnameh

TEHRAN, March 12--A veteran recitor of Shahnameh, Valiollah Torabi will produce a tape recorded version of Shahnameh, an epic poem by renowned Iranian poet Abolqassem Ferdowsi, which is the first such undertaking in the country, reported the Persian daily Aftab.
Announcing this, director of the Department for Dramatic Arts, Hossein Parsaei said that his department plans to sponsor research studies on traditional customs. He added that Torabi had made a proposal to the Center for Dramatic Arts to record a recitation of Shahnameh in a narrative scheme and the Center has accepted the offer.
Parsaei said that since Shahnameh is to be recorded in narrative form, the Center for Dramatic Arts would help raise the dramatic aspects of recitation to bring it in line with traditional drama.
Several workshops will also be held to enrich the artistic feature of Shahnameh from the dramatic perspective.

TEHRAN, March 12--Veteran translator Mehdi Sahabi once said that book readers can be placed in two categories: First are those who have read the novel ’Search for the Time Lost’, the second are those who have not done so.
In a recent interview with the Persian daily Aftab, Sahabi pointed to the glut in the book market in terms of translated books and questioned the quality of books which are available in large numbers from different translators.
He blamed this problem on the lack of copyright in Iran which gives translators a free hand to translate materials from different subjects.
Accession to the Copyright Law may not completely stop the process of translating different books since some books may be smuggled into the country.
Sahabi said that he believes that prior to accession to Copyright Law, publishers should set up a union or an organ to define the criteria for conducting business and bringing the activities in the market under control. At the same time, he added they should keep up the standards and quality.
Such an organ, he noted, can monitor the market to ensure that a book is not translated more than once.
Sahabi also called on his colleagues to respect professional ethics and said that since the authors of the books are unaware of the quality of the translations, respective translators should be trustworthy.
He said that translators interpreting poetry or philosophy should have adequate knowledge about specialized subjects to do the job satisfactorily.
Otherwise, it would be clear at first glance that their translations are poor.

NEW YORK, March 12--Catholic bishops in the US have launched an internet attack on the best-selling novel ’The Da Vinci Code’ ahead of the worldwide cinema release of Ron Howard’s film adaptation in May, reported Sunday Herald.
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB)--an assembly of the Catholic Church hierarchy based in Washington--launched jesusdecoded.com on Friday, in response to several of the claims made in Dan Brown’s 40 million-selling novel.
Arguing that the New Testament “does not offer any support for speculation about Jesus being married or having a child“, bishops say the site will “rebut speculation and inaccuracies about Christ and the origins of Christianity“.
Brown’s 2004 novel, which claims at the outset to be based on historical fact, centers on the idea that Jesus married Mary Magdalene, that their descendants married into a line of French kings, and that the lineage continues to this day.
Monsignor Francis Maniscalco of the Diocese of Rockville Center in New York said there were concerns over the novel’s influence on readers.
“Reporters have asked whether even a best-selling novel can seriously damage a church of one billion believers. No, in the long run, it cannot. But that is not the point. The pastoral concern of the church is for each and every person.
“The Da Vinci Code is a mess,“ writes one bishop, “a riot of laughable errors and serious mis-statements. We need to challenge the evidence used in The Da Vinci Code and not let up.“
Brown’s theory that Leonardo Da Vinci’s master work The Last Supper portrays Mary Magdalene at Jesus’s side, and not the apostle John, is also hotly disputed, as are claims that the artist was linked to the fictional Priory of Sion.