Even more significant was the prescient role Teymourtash assumed by establishing the Society for National Heritage in the early 1920s. In due course, this society was joined by some of Iran's leading personalities and assumed a critical role advocating in favour of archeological discoveries, the construction of mausoleums to honour Iran's past poets, and the establishment of museums and libraries in the decades that followed. The society spurred considerable interest by western orientalists to undertake archaeological excavations in Iran, and lay the foundation for the construction of a mausoleum to honour Ferdowsi in 1934 and of Hafez in 1938, to name a few of its more notable early achievements. Teymourtash believed that the "services of Firdawsi toward preserving Iranian nationality and creating national unity must be compared to the services of Cyrus the Great". As such during a visit to Paris in 1931, Teymourtash took time out of his busy schedule to visit Exposition coloniale, while in Moscow he arranged to view Lenin's Mausoleum. The Ernst Herzfeld Archives in fact reveal that Teymourtash made some final changes to the decorative designs adorning the Ferdowsi mausoleum.