Bisotun inscription

The Bisotun inscription is a monumental rock relief carved into a sheer limestone cliff some 100 metres above the Kermanshah plain, commissioned by the Achaemenid king Darius I around 520 BCE. It records his rise to power and suppression of rebellions in three languages simultaneously — Old Persian, Elamite, and Babylonian Akkadian — each rendered in its own cuneiform script. Its role in the history of linguistics mirrors that of the Rosetta Stone: in the 1830s, British officer Henry Rawlinson risked his life scaling the near-vertical face to copy the inscriptions, and his work became the foundation for deciphering cuneiform writing as a whole. The site was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2006. Visitors follow a viewing path at the base of the cliff; the scale of the main relief panel — roughly 5.5 by 3 metres — only fully registers when seen against the vast rock face above.