The Daiva Inscription of Xerxes (XPh)
A royal inscription of Xerxes I, known from stone slabs found at Persepolis and Pasargadae. It gives his titles and lists the lands he ruled, from India to Nubia.
The text is one of the standard inscriptions of Xerxes I, cut in Old Persian with Elamite and Babylonian versions. After praising the god Ahuramazda, the king names himself son of Darius and lists some thirty lands that paid him tribute, among them Babylonia, Egypt, the Greeks on both sides of the sea, India and the Nubians. He then says that he put down a rebellion and destroyed a sanctuary of false gods, the daiva from which the inscription takes its modern name.
It is the king’s own statement of the extent of his empire. The book of Esther describes the realm of Ahasuerus in the same terms, as reaching “from India even to Ethiopia”; see Esther and the Origin of Purim.
Cited in
- 483 BC to 473 BC, traditional date