Achaemenid Period, 486 BCE.

(BLMJ 1979)

This jar bears a unique quadralingual inscription of Darius I. The three cuneiform inscriptions in Akkadian, Elamite and Old Persian languages read: "Darius [great] king".

The inscription in hieroglyphic reads: "King of Upper and Lower Egypt, Lord of the Two Lands, Darius, living eternally, year 36".

This jar was presumably made in Egypt where the hieroglyphic inscription was engraved and brought to the royal Persian treasury where it was then inscribed with the trilingual cuneiform inscription. Trilingual inscriptions of Darius I carved on a rock cliff at Behistun in Persia led scholars to correctly decipher the cuneiform scripts. One could compare the Behistun inscriptions to the Rosetta stone that served as the key to the decipherment of ancient Egyptian.