Memoirs of Akbar Hashemi – December 2, 1990

At nine o'clock in the morning, we went from home to the National Library [located on Si Tir Street]. [Mr. Mohammad Rajabi], the director of the library explained. We visited book and magazine stores. The building is old and inappropriate and does not have the capacity for so many books. They have about 200,000 volumes here and 300,000 volumes in the other two centers. A new building is supposed to be built according to the needs in Abbas Abad area.

From there we went to the Museum of Ancient Iran and visited there until two o'clock in the afternoon. We saw the pre-Islamic and post-Islamic antiquities in two separate sections, the Qur'an Museum, and then the Antiquities Center, which was recently discovered by the Ministry of Information from several antiquities smuggling gangs. It is astonishing. As many museums, they have taken all kinds of historical works from them and it is still going on.

In the years after the revolution and during the war, when we were caught up in other matters, the smugglers, with a kind of collective conscience, engaged in this looting and theft, and by unauthorized excavations and collecting artifacts from the hands of individuals and centers, they collected them and sent some of them abroad with the help of agents of foreign embassies. Now, fortunately, they have been caught and identified, and it seems that around 100 people have been arrested so far and the pursuit continues. We have also brought back some objects from abroad. I had an interview and went to my office.

In the evening, I attended the meeting of the government board. Note 29 - related to finance - was in the order. At night, we had a meeting with Ayatollah Khamenei. We discussed the new issues of the Persian Gulf crisis and the possibilities and current domestic issues and differences and their meeting on Wednesday.

At night, due to doing things that I didn't have time to do today, I stayed in my office and did things until eleven o'clock at night.