Darius Seizes the Throne and Carves the Behistun Inscription

What happened

Cambyses died in 522 BCE under disputed circumstances, and a man named Gaumata seized the throne claiming to be Cambyses' brother Bardiya. Darius, a distant relative of the royal line, killed Gaumata and took the throne himself, then spent roughly two years suppressing a wave of revolts across the empire before his rule was secure. Darius had his version of these events carved into a limestone cliff at Behistun in western Iran, a relief and trilingual inscription set about 100 meters up the rock face, showing Darius with his foot on the chest of the defeated Gaumata while nine bound rebel leaders stand before him under the winged symbol of the god Ahura Mazda. The text, written in Old Persian, Elamite, and Babylonian cuneiform, opens "I am Darius, the great king, king of kings, king of Persia, king of countries," and lists twenty-three subject lands. The trilingual text later proved essential to modern scholarship: British officer Henry Rawlinson used it in the 1830s and 1840s to crack Old Persian and then Babylonian cuneiform, the same role the Rosetta Stone played for Egyptian hieroglyphs.

How we know

The inscription is a primary source, a physical monument Darius commissioned in his own reign, though its self-serving purpose means historians treat its account of Gaumata's illegitimacy with some skepticism since only Darius's version of the coup survives.

Sources

• Livius.org (Jona Lendering). Behistun · Primary source (author-declared)livius.org · Cited as a "primary" source (no stronger domain match). · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
• World History Encyclopedia. Behistun Inscription · Reputable sourceworldhistory.org · The domain "worldhistory.org" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)