Persepolis Fortification Archive Project

These were records produced by the operations of a single administrative organization in the years around 500 BC, all strands of a single information system.

In 1933, Oriental Institute archaeologists working at Persepolis, clearing the ruined palaces of Kings Darius, Xerxes, and their Achaemenid Persian successors, found clay tablets in two small rooms of a bastion in the fortification wall at the edge of the great stone terrace. Most of the Fortification tablets came to the Oriental Institute in 1936, on loan for study and analysis. The results of lo  ...