The behistun inscription: Did you mean...?

Funerary inscription of a Roman soldier who served in the Legio XXI Rapax. Roman Museum, Nyon, Switzerland.

The Dipylon oinochoe inscription is a short text carved on an ancient Greek pottery vessel dated to c. 740 BC. It is one of the oldest known examples of the use of the Greek alphabet. The letters are scratched on a wine jug (oinochoe) which...

This large and partially broken clay tablet tells us how Ishtar, goddess of love and war, decided to descend and enter the underworld. During her long journey, she was gradually stripped of her attributes, therefore, she lost all of her...

Dutch explorer, Dirk Hartog (1580-1621), sailed into Shark Bay on Australia’s west coast, 850 kilometres (528 miles) north of Perth on his ship, the Eendracht on 25 October 1616. Hartog made landfall at the northern tip of an island in Shark...

This marble slab was inscribed with an Aramaic script mentioning the name of "Hatra" as the center of the region "Araba". From the 11th temple at Hatra, Ninawa Governorate, Iraq. Parthian period, 1st to 3rd century CE. On display at the Iraq...

This is the 4th tablet of the story of Etana, which tells us how Etana was carried to Heaven on the back of an eagle. Etana did this long journey in order to find the plant of birth. He was a Sumerian king of Kish. This story is one of the...

This is a detail of a large Etruscan ritual calander from Santa Maria Capua Vetere, Italy. The Etruscan language is preserved in about 10,000 short texts; the grave, votive, and ownership inscriptions. Only four longer texts are known so...

Cuneiform writing on the Jerwan Aqueduct (703-690 BCE). King Sennacherib I of Assyria made sure that, thousands of years later, people would know that it was he who ordered the construction of this feat of Assyrian engineering.

Funerary stela of a mining boy from Hispania Citerior, 1st century CE. National Archaeological Museum, Madrid.

It was a Sumerian tradition to deposit or bury objects bearing inscriptions within temples and important public buildings. These recorded the names of the persons who were responsible for the building and also ensured divine protection. The...