itself extraneous to the “royal discourse” – in the literacy conditions prevailing in any ancient Near Eastern country (cf. Rossi 2020).
The Bisotun complex (DB), carved high on the rockface dominating the main road leading from the Mesopotamian plain to Ecbatana, is an exceptional document (Schmitt 1990). It contains by far the longest Achaemenid royal inscription, strictly integrated with the accompanying relief (note: “inscription” OP dipi‐/AE tuppi/LB narû, “relief” OP patikara‐/AE patikara/LB ṣalmānu); most scholars believe that this is the oldest Achaemenid epigraphic complex. DB occupies a particular place among the Achaemenid inscriptions also with regard to its content. The first four columns relate how Darius took the power and coped with the uprisings that followed. A fifth column, added later, relates what happened in Darius' second and third years; of this supplement, only an OP version was produced (for lack of space perhaps).
Careful investigation by German scholars (1963–1964) has revealed that the Elamite text was the first carved (not necessarily produced), followed by a Babylonian version, both of them flanking the relief. Only later was an OP copy inscribed below the relief. Part of the AE text had to be removed when the ninth rebel was added to the others, and the AE text was inscribed anew to the left of the OP text.
The relation between the texts attested in DB is still open to debate, however. At least two of them are translations, and it seems reasonable to assume that although the OP version was demonstrably (e.g. from some details of the minor inscriptions) inscribed later, it could have been the “original source text,” and not only as an oral text in the form of the king's dictation (against the orality‐only thesis also Henkelman 2011: pp. 614–622); Sancisi‐Weerdenburg's last stand (1999: p. 108), based on Borger's (1982: pp. 106, 113, 130), seems to come back to the idea of an Aramaic original; Huyse (1999: pp. 57–58 and n. 66) hypothesizes an original ‘dictation’ in OP with a contemporary writing down in both Elamite and Aramaic (cf. Schmitt 1991: p. 20: “it may be (and indeed it has been) supposed that the text was originally written down (on the King's Old Persian dictation) in the royal chancellery in both Aramaic and Elamite”; Schmitt [1998: p. 161] remains convinced that DB/OP is a retranslation from Elamite). The usage of Aramaic at some intermediate phase in the editing process has been hypothesized also by Sims‐Williams (1981: p. 2) on the basis of two OP words “phonetically” transcribed in a fragmentary passage from an Aramaic DNb version. The present writer is convinced that all the texts of the Achaemenid royal documentation, including DB, are the product of the great activity of the efficient and influential royal chancellery to which the verbal expression of Persian kingship was assigned. Though acting on behalf of the king and with his (or his experts') final approval, the scribal staff were responsible for the multilingual text production, the way of organizing the information flow and selecting the lexicon with which the royal ideology was diffused and reinforced, and marking a set of countersigns aimed at the dissemination (cf. Filippone 2020; also Jacobs 2010, 2012). Particular attention to the audience of the royal discourse has recently been given by Jacobs (2012: pp. 110–114) and Rollinger (2014: pp. 203–204).
The exceptional length of DB allows focus on the ideological constructs and programmatic statements which we find also in other Achaemenid inscriptions (e.g. DN at Darius' tomb), all planned, together with their iconography, as an ethical and political message to his successors as well as an exhibition of royal power imagery for common people (cf. Jacobs 2010: pp. 108, 111, particularly contrary to the usage of the concept of “propaganda” in Achaemenid contexts).
Among the other inscriptions in the name of Darius and Xerxes, some are outstanding: those at Darius' tomb at Naqsh‐e Rostam (DN) present the king as an ideal sovereign (for latest analysis of the interrelation between texts and iconography see Nimchuk 2001: pp. 68–91); the famous stone table discovered in the 1930s and known as “Daiva Inscription” (XPh) contains Xerxes' proscription of religious practices that were not devoted to the worship of Ahuramazda (Filippone 2010; Henkelman 2011: pp. 620–621; Rollinger 2014: pp. 200–201).
Among the minor trilingual texts there are a certain number of building inscriptions, connected with the palatial complexes at Susa and Persepolis (cf. for general information Stolper 2005: pp. 22–24; Rollinger 2015: pp. 117–121). Some texts (“foundation texts” in a broad sense, cf. Curtis, Razmjou 2005: pp. 56–59; Root 2010) were carved on stone (or precious metal) tables, in repeated exemplars laid in foundations and/or displayed in the buildings (as we know from fragments of display inscriptions in Susa bearing parts of the same inscriptions as those of the foundation tables, Steve 1974: p. 163). A series of short inscriptions (authorship marks) contains the name of the king and the denomination of parts of buildings, such as the inscribed knobs (Basello 2012) or the labels on the doorframes from Persepolis.
Longer texts containing statements by the king are separated into sections by the OP formula: θāti xšāhyaθiya “says the king.” A set of formulaic elements is generally present: an evocation to Ahuramazda, a statement of the king's name, royal epithets and genealogy; and a call for Ahuramazda's blessings on the king's works/land/household. The Achaemenid inscriptions contain Avestan echoes and more or less direct citations according to Skjærvø (1999) and Kellens (2002); on the attitude of the Achaemenids toward Ahuramazda and other religions see Jacobs and Trampedach (2013) and Jacobs (2014b). A list of subject lands/peoples (OP dahyāva/AE dahyauš/LB mātāti) is sometimes appended in different formats, but these variations do not seem to point to actual political events (such as rebellions, changing role of different regions) since the narrative style of the royal discourse is mostly and intentionally timeless (cf. Sancisi‐Weerdenburg 1999; Jacobs 2014a points to historical events that can be guessed in some specific cases). A particular variant of these lists is contained in the inscriptions from the palaces of Darius at Susa (DSf, DSz), which list the subject lands/peoples entrusted with transporting and crafting the building materials. Short texts sometimes accompanying reliefs identify the figures as representatives of subject lands/peoples and are similar to those usually styled “label inscriptions” in Assyriology.
After Xerxes the royal inscriptions diminish in length, no lists of dahyāva are attested, and the only information besides genealogies concerns buildings (Rollinger 2014: pp. 201–202). A progressive change in attitude after Darius as regards the royal legitimation is studied by Jacobs (2014a).
Greek historiography reports about Achaemenid inscriptions that we do not possess. Some of them might have existed (Schmitt 1988), that (on (a) statue(s)?) at the Bosporus, for which Herodotus (4.87.1) mentions two versions (στήλας ἔστησε δύο […] ἐνταμὼν γράμματα ἐς μὲν τὴν Ἀσσύρια ἐς δὲ τὴν Ἑλληνικά), may have been a quadrilingual monument as Darius' statue (cf. recently Jacobs 2012: p. 110; Rollinger 2013: pp. 97–99, emphasizing Assyrian analogies).
An updated catalogue of all royal inscriptions is now available (Schmitt 2009: pp. 7–32); all other reference works (most quoted: Kent 1953, OP, now severely outdated) have only monolingual catalogues. Schmitt's edition (2009: pp. 33–199) contains only OP texts and their German translations. A collection of OP texts (without DB) containing supplementary material data is Schweiger (1998); the only recent collection of all inscriptions in the three languages is Lecoq (1997, original texts not given). The first volume of a new critical edition (all Achaemenid royal inscriptions in all languages), by the DARIOSH editorial board, has appeared recently (Rossi et al. 2012; cf. also Rossi 2017).
REFERENCES
1 Basello, G.P. (2012). Doorknobs, nails or pegs? The function of the inscribed pegs from Persepolis (DPi and XPi). In G.P. Basello, A.V. Rossi (eds.), DARIOSH Studies II: Persepolis and his Settlements: Territorial System and Ideology in the Achaemenid State, Series Minor 78. Napoli: Università degli Studi di Napoli ‘L’Orientale’, pp. 1–66.
2 Borger, R. (1982). Die Chronologie des
