"This jar comes from the western part of the Achaemenid Empire. It is inscribed with the words 'Xerxes Great King' in Old Persian, Elamite, Babylonian and Egyptian.
The Achaemenid Persians used a cuneiform script quite different from Akkadian cuneiform, and was probably an artificial royal creation of Darius I (521-486 BC). All the inscriptions written in this script ('Old Persian') appear either on buildings and rockfaces in Iran or on smaller portable objects probably emanating from his court. They are almost always accompanied by versions in other languages, and this vessel has Elamite (a language spoken in south-western Iran), written in cuneiform, and Egyptian, written in hieroglyphs. This demonstrates the extent of the Achaemenid Eempire, which stretched from Egypt and the Aegean to the Indus."
Works Cited:
Information: "Calcite Jar." The British Museum. The Trustees of the
British Museum. Web. 9 Oct., 2014.
Picture: http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/highlight_objects/me/c/calcite_jar.aspx
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