Inscription bearing Persian King Darius the Great’s name discovered in Israel

An inscription bearing the name of the Persian king Darius the Great was discovered in the Tel Lachish National Park in the first discovery of an inscription bearing the king’s name anywhere in Israel.

The discovery was made by Eylon Levy, the international media advisor to Israeli President Isaac Herzog.

Levy reportedly chanced on a 2,500-year-old potsherd with the inscribed letters of the ancient king and reported it to the Israel Antiquities Authority.

The king’s name on the inscription, Darius the Great, is the father of King Ahasuerus, also known as the biblical Achashverosh from the story of Purim and the Book of Esther.

“When I picked up the ostracon and saw the inscription, my hands shook. I looked left and right for the cameras because I was sure someone was playing an elaborate prank on me,” said Levy.

The Darius inscription. (credit: YOLI SCHWARTZ/ISRAEL ANTIQUITIES AUTHORITY)

“When I was walking around here with a friend just exploring the history, I was turning over pieces of pottery and stones in my hand and suddenly, I found something that had letters on it and I thought this was too good to be true,” Levy added.

Analysis of the discovery

When Levy found the potsherd, he reported it to the Israel Antiquities Authority, where he said that three people at the organization were skeptical that it was real but intrigued by what Levy had found.

A few weeks later, Levy received a phone call from Saar Ganor of the Israel Antiquities Authority and said that he was “on his way from the Dead Sea Scrolls labs. We’ve put it through three scanners. This is authentic. No modern had could do it and it’s from two and a half thousand years ago from before the story of Purim.”
“When I was walking around here with a friend just exploring the history, I was turning over pieces of pottery and stones in my hand and suddenly, I found something that had letters on it and I thought this was too good to be true.”

Eylon Levy

Ganor analyzed Levy’s discovery with Dr. Haggai Misgav of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and they both confirmed that the artifact dated to the Persian royal administration at Lachish in the Achaemenid period, at the turn of the fifth century BCE.

The inscription reads “Year 24 of Darius,” which dates back to 498 BCE. The king’s reign began in 522 BCE and ended in 486 BCE.

Eli Escuzido, Director of the Israel Antiquities Authority, stated that “it’s amazing that visitors to the site come across such a rare inscription ‘reviving’ the Persian King Darius known to us from the sources! His son King Ahasuerus could never have imagined that we would find evidence of his father in Israel 2,500 years after the dramatic events in his royal court!”