The Behistun Inscription
Why carve the founding document of an empire — 1,200 lines in three languages, the size of a house — a hundred metres up a sheer cliff, and then cut away the only ledge that could reach it, leaving a text meant to be read that essentially nobody could read for 2,300 years?
c. 520-518 BCE, Achaemenid Persia, reign of Darius I · Mount Behistun (Bisotun), Kermanshah Province, IranAdded September 2026