The burial place of kings
One of the first acts of Darius was to make it known to everybody that, by the grace of Ahuramazda, he had overcome all his enemies and was master of the entire world. An inscription, the relief and inscription were cut into the rock of Behistun.
The Achaemenid kings of ancient Persia—such as Darius the Great, Xerxes, and Artaxerxes—were usually buried in monumental rock-cut tombs carved into cliffs. The best-known examples are at Naqsh-e Rostam near Persepolis and at Pasargadae, where Cyrus the Great was placed in a freestanding stone tomb. These tombs were designed to symbolize royal authority and divine favor: high on the cliff face, inaccessible to ordinary people, with carved façades showing the king standing before the sacred fire—an important symbol of Zoroastrian religion, which shaped Persian royal ideology. Inside these tombs were chambers where the king’s body was laid to rest, sometimes along with objects believed to have symbolic or ritual value.
