Bisotun

Around 520 BC Darius I had a relief and a long inscription cut into a limestone cliff sixty-six metres above the old road from Babylon to Ecbatana, showing himself with a bound line of defeated claimants to the throne and giving his account of how he took power, written three times in Old Persian, Elamite and Babylonian. Because the same text appears in three scripts, it functioned for cuneiform as the Rosetta Stone did for hieroglyphs, and Henry Rawlinson's copying of it in the 1830s and 1840s, done hanging on ladders over the drop, was the basis for deciphering Akkadian. The site also holds a Hellenistic Heracles statue, Parthian reliefs, a Median fortress and a Safavid caravanserai below the cliff.

What you actually see

• The Darius relief and inscription - sixty-six metres up the cliff face.
• Three scripts on one panel - Old Persian, Elamite and Babylonian.
• The Hellenistic Heracles - a reclining statue of 148 BC below the cliff.
• A Safavid caravanserai - the later stopping place at the foot of the site.

When to go

April to June and September to October. Two hours. Morning light falls on the cliff face. Binoculars make a real difference because the panel is high and cannot be approached.

Honest expectations

The inscription is sixty-six metres up and cannot be reached, so you look at it from below with binoculars or from photographs on the panels. Without knowing the story it is a distant carving. There is limited shade. The road below is busy.

Nearby

Taq-e Bostan is west toward Kermanshah; Hamadan lies east.