The curator of the National Museum of Iran said on Tuesday that there are many Achaemenid era artifacts kept at the museum and if all the items were sent to the expo, the museum would look empty to visitors.

“So we have decided to send only some items from the Persepolis Museum to the exhibition,” Mohammadreza Kargar explained.

Several Achaemenid era works of art from the Hegmataneh ( Ecbatana ) Museum in Hamedan will also be displayed at the British Museum , he added.

The exhibition, which was previously entitled “Persian Glory”, will open at the British Museum on September 8, 2005 and will continue until January 2006.

About 400 artifacts will be put on display, of which about 80 items belong to the collection of the National Museum of Iran, and the rest are from the Louvre and the British Museum .

Once the main building of "Xerxes’ Harem", the Persepolis Museum is one of the country's oldest structures dedicated to house a museum.

It was restored to its original state in 1932 and opened as a museum in 1937. Prehistoric, Achaemenid, and Islamic artifacts are exhibited there, most of which were excavated at the site of Persepolis and the ancient city of Estakhr .