Cylinder Seal of Darius the Great

A lion rears on its hind legs, one arrow already sunk in its eye, another in its paw — and still it stands its ground against a king who has not flinched. The whole scene is carved into a piece of banded chalcedony just 3.7 centimetres tall, weighing 21 grams, cut by hand in reverse so that when rolled across wet clay it stamped the mark of a king. ### The scene, element by element At the centre stands Darius the First in a two-wheeled chariot, wearing a four-pointed dentate crown and drawing a bow tipped with a curved bird's head. Two arrows are already in the great lion before the chariot; beneath the horses' hooves a second, smaller lion lies dead — order above, chaos crushed below, in the oldest language of Near Eastern kingship. Above the king hovers a winged disc from which rises a bearded god, Ahura Mazda, supreme lord of the Persians. One hand is raised in blessing; the other extends a ring — the ring of sovereignty, the sign that kingship itself is a gift handed down from heaven. Two date palms heavy with fruit frame the scene like the columns of a doorway, enclosing the violence with the settled, cultivated world the king defends. ### One king, three languages Beside the figures runs a panel of cuneiform — the same words cut in three scripts and three tongues: Old Persian, Elamite, and Babylonian. They declare, "I am Darius, the King," one ruler addressing each of his peoples in their own writing. Found far from Persia at Thebes in Egypt, the British Museum judges it, in all probability, a seal of office — so wherever it rolled, Darius was present. A whole empire, in the palm of a hand. For another Persian image of the god handing down the ring of kingship, see The Investiture of Ardashir I at Naqsh-e Rostam, carved into cliff rock seven centuries later.