The site

The Behistun inscription is a multilingual Achaemenid royal relief carved high on a cliff at Mount Behistun in western Iran, ordered by Darius the Great between 522 and 486 BCE. Written in Old Persian, Elamite, and Babylonian, it opens with Darius's autobiography and recounts the nineteen battles by which he crushed rebellions across the empire. As the longest known trilingual cuneiform text, it was the key that unlocked the decipherment of cuneiform. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Field notes

civilizations

Persian (Achaemenid)

types

Petroglyph

built

600 BCE

occupied

600 BCE — 486 BCE

country

Iran