A mummified body discovered near the site of a former royal mausoleum in Iran may be the remains of Reza Shah Pahlavi, the founder of the Pahlavi dynasty and the father of the country’s last shah. The recent find of the gauze-wrapped body — and the speculation it triggered — puts new hurdles in the way of the Islamic Republic’s efforts to fully erase the country’s dynastic past, which includes the destruction of the autocrat’s tomb immediately after the 1979 revolution.
Yet, as disaffection and economic problems grow in the run-up to the Islamic Revolution’s 40th anniversary, mystique around Iran’s age of monarchies persists even with its history of abuses. Reza Shah’s grandson, the U.S.-based exiled Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, already tweeted about it as forensic experts in Iran try to determine whose body they found. Construction workers discovered the mummified remains while working at the Shiite shrine of Abdul Azim, whose minarets once rose behind Reza Shah’s mausoleum. A digger pulling away dirt and debris uncovered the body, according to the semiofficial Iranian Students News Agency.
