Nasq-e Rustam

• About 6km north of Persepolis, the great royal city built by Darius
• it is the burial site of four Persian kings, including Darius.
• Carrying him on the throne are human figures, each one representing the lands of the empire. It is thought that Darius had this tomb built during the final years of his reign
• The inscriptions at Nasq-e Rustam are just one of a number of Persian royal inscriptions, in which Persian kings set out their ideology
• It should be said that there were no historians in the Persian Empire, and so we are very limited in our access to sources on the Persian side
• The royal inscriptions are in fact out most detailed written documents from the Persian perspective. No royal inscription makes any mention of a military campaign against in the Greek world - the only mention of the Greeks is simply as one of the subject peoples of the empire