The Behistun Inscription
Darius, the king Ezra and Haggai date their events by, left his own account of his reign — and the same stone is what made Akkadian readable.
Named outside the BibleInscriptionc. 520 BC
Darius I's account of his rise, cut into a cliff a hundred metres up, in three languages. Because the same text appears in three scripts it became the key that unlocked cuneiform — which is why any of the Assyrian and Babylonian records here can be read at all.
I am Darius the Great King, King of Kings, King in Persia, King of countries…
- Found
- A cliff face at Behistun, western Iran, 1835 — Copied at great risk by Henry Rawlinson
- Now held at
- In place, on the cliff
- Language
- Old Persian, Elamite, Akkadian
- How it reached us
- Dug up, or still standing where it was built.
What it shows
Darius's version of his own accession is royal propaganda and is read as such; its value here is the king, the dating and the decipherment.
How historians use it
The foundation of Assyriology. Every cuneiform text quoted anywhere is read through the decipherment this inscription enabled.
In Scripture
Connects to
Sources
These summaries are written in English for now. Translations follow.