Topic: epigraphy (9)
- PersonArtaxerxes I
Artaxerxes I (Old Persian Artaxšaça, "whose rule is through Truth"), the fifth Achaemenid King of Kings, reigned from 465 until late 424 or early 423 BCE. A younger son of Xerxes I and Amestris, he came to the throne through the murder of his father and the killing of his elder brother, and held…
- PersonArtaxerxes II
Artaxerxes II (Old Persian Artaxšaça, "whose rule is through Arta"; throne-name of a prince born Arsaces), the seventh Achaemenid King of Kings, reigned from 405/4 to 359/8 BCE. His forty-six years on the throne are the longest of the dynasty, and the Greeks who wrote of him called him Mnemon,…
- PersonDarius I
Darius I (Old Persian Dārayavauš, born about 550, reigned 522 to 486 BCE) was the third of the Achaemenid Great Kings and, in most respects, the true founder of the Persian empire as an organised state. He came to the throne by killing a king he called an impostor, spent his first year putting…
- SourceThe Behistun Inscription (DB)
The Behistun inscription (DB) is the monumental cliff-relief and trilingual text that Darius I had carved at Bagastāna in Media between about 520 and 518 BCE, recounting in the king's own voice his seizure and defence of the throne against Gaumāta and a wave of rebels. It is the longest Achaemenid…
- SourceThe Cyrus Cylinder
A barrel-shaped clay cylinder inscribed in Babylonian cuneiform, buried in the foundations of Babylon's city wall after Cyrus II took the city in 539 BCE. In the traditional idiom of a Mesopotamian building inscription it makes the god Marduk choose Cyrus, condemns the deposed Nabonidus, and…
- SourceThe Daiva Inscription (XPh)
The daiva inscription (XPh) is a trilingual proclamation of Xerxes I (r. 486–465 BCE), known from three Old Persian copies, with a Babylonian and an Elamite version. The surviving limestone tablets were recovered in secondary, reused contexts at Persepolis and Pasargadae, so their original…
- PeopleThe Elamites
The Elamites were the ancient people of south-western Iran, holders of the lowland plain of Khuzistan around Susa and of the highland valleys of Fārs, whose civilisation was already some two thousand years old when Cyrus rose. Within the Achaemenid story they are the heartland's other people: the…
- SourceThe Persepolis Fortification Archive
The working paperwork of Darius I's own heartland: tens of thousands of clay tablets from a bastion in the Persepolis fortification wall, recording the intake and disbursement of food, livestock, and travel rations across Fars and Elam in the middle of the reign. Dry, sealed, never meant for…
- PersonXerxes I
Xerxes I (Old Persian Xšayāršā, "ruling over heroes"), the fourth Achaemenid King of Kings, reigned from 486 to 465 BCE. Son of Darius I and of Atossa the daughter of Cyrus the Great, he was the heir in whom the two royal lines met, and he inherited a state his father had already made the largest…