In the following years, the efforts of Burnouf, Lassen, and Rawlinson (who had the remainder of the inscription transcribed in two parts, in 18) contributed to translating the Old Persian cuneiform text using the Zoroastrian book Avesta as a key, in addition to cross referencing with modern Persian and Vedic languages. 'Translation of the text was a multi-step and multi-national effort based on earlier work done on the decipherment of the Old Persian script by Georg Friedrich Grotefend in the late 1700's when Grotefend discovered that, unlike Elamite and Babylonian texts, Old Persian text is alphabetic. In effect, then, the inscription is to cuneiform what the Rosetta Stone is to Egyptian hieroglyphs: the document most crucial in the decipherment of a previously lost script. Babylonian was a later form of Akkadian: unlike Old Persian, they are Semitic languages. 'The inscription includes three versions of the same text, written in three different cuneiform script languages: Old Persian, Elamite, and Babylonian. Darius the Great proclaimed himself victorious in all battles during the period of upheaval, attributing his success to the 'grace of Ahuramazda (God)'. Darius' inscription states in detail that the rebellions, which had resulted from the deaths of Cyrus the Great and his son Cambyses II, were orchestrated by several impostors and their co-conspirators in various cities throughout the empire, each of whom falsely proclaimed kinghood during the upheaval following Cyrus the Great's death. Later in the inscription, Darius provides a lengthy sequence of events following the death of Cyrus the Great and Cambyses II in which he fought nineteen battles in a period of one year (ending in December of 521 BC) to put down multiple rebellions throughout the Persian Empire. the inscription begins with a brief autobiography of Darius I, the Great including his ancestry, lineage etc.

The Behistun Inscription (also Bisitun or Bisutun, Modern Persian: بیستون Old Persian: Bagastana, meaning 'the god's place or land'), a multi-lingual stone inscription approximately 15 meters high and 25 meters wide, located on Mount Behistun in Kermanshah Province, near the city of Kermanshah in western Iran, was written by Darius I, the Great sometime between his coronation as Zoroastrian king of kings of the Achaemenid, or Persian, Empire in the summer of 522 BCE and his death in autumn of 486 BCE.

King of kings torrent rosetta stone