system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Are there any other examples of objects like the Rosetta Stone that have been vital to understanding not just Egyptological matters but other lost languages and obscured civilisations?
gpt
Yes! There's a much-underappreciated carving on a mountain in Iran called the Behistun Inscription, which was crucial to the decipherment of cuneiform, and thus the ability to read ancient texts from the Near East that were rediscovered in the 18th and 19th centuries. It's a carving commissioned by Darius (the ruler of the Persian Empire at the time of the First Greco-Persian War), and it lists some of Darius's accomplishments in three different cuneiform languages: Old Persian, Elamite, and Akkadian. It's basically the Rosetta Stone of cuneiform.