Bīsotūn

At Bisotun a limestone cliff rises above the ancient road between Mesopotamia and the Iranian plateau. High on its face, Darius I had a great relief and inscription cut in 521 BCE. The king stands with a bow over a fallen opponent, while the text recounts his victories over claimants to the throne. It is written in Old Persian, Elamite and Babylonian, a monument to the empire Darius brought under his rule.

The road beneath the mountain remained in use for centuries. A caravanserai built in the Safavid period provided shelter for travellers passing the ancient carvings. In 1836 the British officer Henry Rawlinson climbed to the ledge and began copying the Old Persian text; by September 1837 he had completed that part. His work on the multilingual inscription helped open the way to reading the cuneiform writings of the ancient Near East.