The Charter

Elam rises three times

Açina rose first and was sent to Darius in chains. Martiya rose next, and the Elamites killed him themselves as Darius came near. In his second or third year Athamaita rose, and Gobryas put him down; this last revolt was added to the cliff later.

In the game: Athamaita's Elamites: four in ten of the host are bowmen with the King's own range.

Behistun inscription sections 16-23, 71

The charter

Darius's foundation charter lists it all: cedar from Lebanon, gold from Sardis and Bactria, lapis lazuli from Sogdiana, ivory from Ethiopia, Sind and Arachosia. Ionians and Sardians cut the stone, Medes and Egyptians worked the gold, Babylonians baked the bricks.

In the game: Charter caravans bring the cedar, gold, lapis and ivory the charter names.

Susa foundation charter DSf

Glazed brick

The palace walls shone with moulded, glazed bricks: rows of life-size archers, lions and winged bulls in blue, green, yellow and white. The craft came from Babylon. Pieces of the archers' frieze are in the Louvre.

In the game: The glazed-brick kiln makes the palace's bricks.

DSf; Louvre, frieze of archers

The Royal Road

Herodotus counts 111 stations from Sardis to Susa, about ninety days on foot. Royal riders passed messages from station to station so that 'neither snow nor rain' could stop them. The Persepolis tablets confirm the stations, with travellers' sealed passes and rations.

In the game: Road Stations speed the caravans, and their riders see raiders early.

Herodotus 5.52-53, 8.98; Persepolis Fortification tablets

A statue from Egypt

In 1972 French excavators found a headless statue of Darius at Susa's gate. It was carved in Egypt, in Egyptian style, with texts in hieroglyphs and in three cuneiform languages. Its base shows twenty-four subject peoples holding up the King.

Statue of Darius from Susa (National Museum of Iran)

A canal to the Red Sea

Stelae set up along the Wadi Tumilat say Darius ordered a canal dug from the Nile to the sea that goes to Persia, and that ships sailed it. Herodotus says Pharaoh Necho had begun it.

Darius's canal stelae (DZc); Herodotus 2.158, 4.39

Scylax sails the Indus

Darius sent Scylax of Caryanda down the Indus to the sea and round Arabia to Egypt, a voyage of thirty months. Then he conquered the Indus lands.

Herodotus 4.44

Udjahorresnet goes home

The Egyptian who had named Cambyses was at Darius's court in Elam. Darius sent him home to restore the House of Life at Sais, where scribes and physicians were trained.

Statue of Udjahorresnet (Vatican Museums)