The Stone Tablets of Cyrus and Darius

Cyrus's Cylinder

Few ruler. in ancient history have earned the renown and respect accorded to Cyrus the Great, founder, 2,5OO year. ago, of the Persian Empire. One of the importsnt source for the history of Cyrus is the cuneiform writing on the Cylinder of Cyrus (above) discovered during excavations at Babylon which Cyrus entered in 539 B.C. In this written message to the Babylonians, dated 538-529 B.C., Cyrus declared: "I (am) Cyrus, thie king of the world, the king of Babylon, the king of Shumer and Akkad, the king of the four regions . . . When I entered Tintar (ancient name of Babylon) peacefully . . . I established my sovereignty in the palace of the princes, Marduk (the Babylonian national god) inclined the noble hearts of the people of Babylon towards me, for I was daily attentive to his worship . . ."  Cyrus did in fact scrupulously respect the Babylonian religions and repaired the temples . In 539 B.C. he authorized the return to Palestine of the jews deported by Nebuchadrezzar and arrange for the rebuiidir'g of the Hebrew temple in Jerusalem.

The ruins of ancient Susa, administrative capital of Darius I and his successors, probed and uncovered by archaeologists since 1884. have yielded a rich harvest of historical remains and arti acts. But in 1970 the Palace of Darius had yet another surprise in store for the archaeologist.

A French mission, in collaboration with Iran's Service for the Protection of Historic Monuments, was excavating the foundations of the palace walls, a preliminary to their partial restoration, when they came across two stone tablets inscribed with cuneiform characters. As they soon realized, they had discovered the stones inscribed with the charter of the foundation of the palace of Darlus, placed beneath the walls at the end of the 6th century B.C. The tablets of grey marble, in a perfect state of preservation. were engraved on their six sides. The one placed under the east wall of a corridor bore a text in Akkadian an ancient language of Mesopotamia. used in cuneiform writing from about the 28th to the 1st century B.C. (photo right). The second, recovered from beneath the west wall, was inscribed in Elamite (the language ol Elam. an ancient country to the east of Babylon). It is probable that a third tablet with an inscription in ancient Persian - the third official language of the Empire- was also placed in the foundations.

Not only has the discovery brought to light a new text dating from the Achaemenid epoch with in the Elamite text, a dozen new words to add to the lexicon of this language. It has also given to a millimetre the length of the royal cubit under Darius (33.60 cm.). and has confirmed beyond all doubt that the section of the palace where the finds were made was the work of Darius.

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