The Behistun inscription is a huge relief and text carved into a limestone cliff on Mount Behistun in western Iran, along an ancient road between Babylon and Ecbatana. Commissioned by the Persian king Darius the Great, it describes how he came to power and put down rebellions, and it shows him with captive rebels. The text is written in three languages, Old Persian, Elamite and Babylonian, each in cuneiform. In the nineteenth century the British officer Henry Rawlinson copied the inscription at great risk and used it to decipher Old Persian and then Akkadian cuneiform, much as the Rosetta Stone allowed Egyptian hieroglyphs to be read. It is a World Heritage Site and a key source for the history of the Achaemenid Empire.
Before and after
- 530 BCEConstruction of Tomb of Cyrus the Great
- 530 BCEDeath of Cyrus the Great
- 525 BCEBirth of Aeschylus
- from 525 BCE to 404 BCETwenty-seventh Dynasty of Egypt
- c. 520 BCECarving of the Behistun inscription
- from c. 510 BCE to 323 BCEClassical Greece
- c. 510 BCEThe Roman Republic is founded
- from 509 BCE to 27 BCERoman Republic
- 509 BCEOrigins of Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus
More in Art, literature & culture
- c. 1,500 BCEOrigins of Zoroastrianism
- 551 BCEBirth of Confucius
- 6th century BCEOrigins of Judaism
- c. 375 BCEWriting of the Allegory of the Cave
- 33 CEOrigins of Christianity
- 381 CEFirst Council of Constantinople
The era
This moment belongs to the Ancient civilizations (3,200 BCE to 500 CE), writing, cities and empires. You can also browse everything in the 6th century BCE.