Behistun Inscription

Decipherment of this inscription unlocked all cuneiform literature and confirmed Darius I as a historical figure consistent with biblical accounts in Ezra, Nehemiah, and Daniel.

The Behistun Inscription is carved into a sheer limestone cliff near the ancient caravan road connecting Babylon and Ecbatana, in what is now the Kermanshah Province of western Iran. The monument sits about 100 meters above the base of the cliff, high enough that ordinary travelers could see it but not easily read or damage it. The inscription was ordered by Darius I (also called Darius the Great) around 522 to 520 BCE to celebrate his rise to power and suppress the memory of the political chaos that followed the death of Cambyses II.

The inscription covers a carved panel roughly 15 meters wide and 25 meters tall. It combines a large relief sculpture with multiple columns of text. The sculpture shows Darius standing with his foot on a defeated figure (identified as the false claimant Gaumata), with nine bound rebel leaders lined up before him, and the winged figure of Ahura Mazda, the supreme Zoroastrian deity, hovering above. Darius holds a bow, a symbol of royal authority.

The text is written in three languages: Old Persian, Elamite, and Babylonian (a form of Akkadian). All three versions tell essentially the same story: Darius's account of how he came to the throne after defeating a series of pretenders who rose across the empire. He names each rebel, describes the battles, and attributes his victories to the favor of Ahura Mazda.

British army officer Henry Rawlinson first made careful copies of the inscription in 1835 while stationed in western Iran. The site was extremely difficult to access. Rawlinson dangled from ropes to reach portions of the text and later used ladders and local helpers to copy more remote sections. He published his copies progressively from 1837 onward and spent years working to decode the Old Persian column, which used a script that had not been read in over a thousand years.

Rawlinson's insight was to use the known names of Persian kings, including Darius, Xerxes, and Hystaspes, as anchors to identify repeated signs and begin cracking the script. By 1847 he had produced a working decipherment of Old Persian. He then turned to the Babylonian column, which used a related but far more complex cuneiform script. By the early 1850s, he and other scholars including Edward Hincks and Jules Oppert had made enough progress that they could read Babylonian cuneiform with reasonable accuracy.

This decipherment was transformative for the study of the ancient Near East. It unlocked the ability to read hundreds of thousands of clay tablets already sitting in museums and storage rooms across Europe, tablets that documented Sumerian, Assyrian, Babylonian, and other ancient cultures in their own words. The Behistun Inscription played the same role for cuneiform that the Rosetta Stone played for Egyptian hieroglyphics.

The inscription was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2006. The cliff face has been studied repeatedly using modern techniques including photogrammetry and high-resolution imaging. Some portions have suffered weathering and erosion over the centuries, and some damage occurred during the early 20th century when workers quarried stone from the base of the cliff. Conservation efforts are ongoing. The site is accessible to visitors who travel the main highway through the Bisotun area.

• The largest known royal inscription of the Achaemenid Persian period, covering a panel roughly 15 meters wide and 25 meters tall on a cliff face 100 meters above the road
• Written in three languages (Old Persian, Elamite, Babylonian cuneiform) with parallel texts that allowed decipherment of cuneiform script for the first time in modern history
• The relief sculpture shows Darius I standing over the defeated pretender Gaumata, with nine bound rebel leaders and the winged symbol of Ahura Mazda above
• Darius I is named and his reign described in detail, making this the primary historical source for events immediately following the death of Cambyses II in 522 BCE
• Henry Rawlinson's decipherment of the Old Persian column in the 1840s provided the key that unlocked Babylonian cuneiform and opened access to the entire ancient Near Eastern textual record
• Modern photogrammetric surveys have produced detailed 3D models of the inscription face, revealing text details not visible from the ground
• UNESCO designated the site a World Heritage property in 2006 for its outstanding universal value as both a monument and a key to ancient history

Darius I is mentioned multiple times in the Old Testament in connection with the return of Jewish exiles to Judah and the rebuilding of the Jerusalem temple. Ezra 6:1 records that Darius issued a search of the royal archives and found the decree of Cyrus authorizing the temple's rebuilding, then issued his own decree confirming the project and ordering it funded from royal revenues. The Behistun Inscription confirms Darius as an actual ruler of Persia who wielded exactly this kind of administrative authority over a vast empire. Daniel 6:1 introduces 'Darius the Mede' who takes over the kingdom after the fall of Babylon. The historical identity and chronology of this figure have been debated by scholars, but the inscription confirms that a king named Darius ruled the empire that succeeded Babylon, consistent with the general political setting of Daniel 6. Daniel 6:9 records that Darius signed an irrevocable law into the 'law of the Medes and Persians.' The Behistun Inscription demonstrates how Achaemenid kings justified their authority through divine sanction and formal decrees, and how those decrees were publicized widely. The inscription itself is a form of royal proclamation meant to be authoritative and permanent. Nehemiah 2:1 is set 'in the twentieth year of Artaxerxes the king,' but the broader Ezra-Nehemiah narrative depends on the historical reality of the Persian empire as a context, and it is the decipherment enabled by Behistun that made reading the Persian royal records possible in the first place.