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Why Did Darius Carve His Story into the Cliff at Behistun? - Truth, Falsehood, and the Achaemenid Succession Crisis | Sleepy Facts About History
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In 520 BCE, a usurper who had murdered his way to the throne of the world's largest empire carved his justification into a cliff face a hundred meters above the road between Ecbatana and Babylon. The Behistun Inscription is the most detailed royal account of a succession crisis to survive from the ancient Near East. It tells the story of Darius I, a man who seized the Achaemenid throne through violence and conspiracy, and how he transformed that messy, contested takeover into a divinely…
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