DNa inscription

It dates to c. 490 BCE, the time of Darius the Great, and appears in the top-left corner of the façade of his tomb.

[7] The nationalities mentioned in the DNa inscription are otherwise vividly illustrated through the large sculptural relief on the upper registers of all the tombs, including that of Darius I, at Naqsh-e Rostam.

The inscription is written in the Old Persian cuneiform, a nearly alphabetical, simple form of the ancient cuneiform scripts (36 phonetic characters and 8 logograms), which was specially designed and used by the early Achaemenid rulers from the 6th century BCE.

[8] The full inscriptions consists in two parts, the first one being related to a description of the lineage of Darius, as well as a list of the countries under his rule.

(15) King Darius says: By the favor of Ahuramazda these are the countries which I seized outside of Persia; I ruled over them; they bore tribute to me; they did what was said to them by me; they held my law firmly; Media, Elam, Parthia, Aria, (23) Bactria, Sogdia, Chorasmia, (24) Drangiana, Arachosia, Sattagydia, Gandāra [Gadāra], (25-26) India [Hiduš], the haoma-drinking Scythians, the Scythians with pointed caps, Babylonia, Assyria, (27) Arabia, Egypt, Armenia, (28) Cappadocia, Lydia, the Greeks (Yauna), the Scythians across the sea (Sakâ), (29) Thrace, the petasos-wearing Greeks [Yaunâ], the Libyans, (30) the Nubians, the men of Maka and the Carians.

A photograph of the DNa inscription at Naqshe Rostam , 2018
The Achaemenid Persian Empire at its greatest extent, c. 500 BCE [ 1 ] [ 2 ] [ 3 ]
The nationalities mentioned in the DNa inscription are also depicted on the upper register of the tomb of Darius I , as on all the dynastic tombs at Naqsh-e Rustam and Persepolis . [ 4 ] [ 5 ]
DNa inscription part I
DNa inscription part II