The Gate of All Nations in Persepolis, Iran was built under the Achaemenid King Xerxes I (518-465 BC). All visitors to the royal palaces of Persepolis had to pass through it. Xerxes had ordered a text to be inscribed in three languages: Old Persian, Babylonian and Elamite.

The text reads: A great god is Ahuramazda, who created this earth, who made Xerxes the great king of all countries. The son of Darius. By the favor of Ahuramazda this Gate of All Nations I built. Much else that is good was built in this Persepolis which I and my father built.

King Xerxes says: May Ahuramazda preserve me, my kingdom, what has been built by me and by my father. The gateway represents a physical and figurative portal expressing the Persian king’s function as executer of “the good” throughout all the lands of the realm, not just Persia.

The Achaemenian dynasty expanded the most under the reign of Darius I and disappeared with the death of Darius III, who was defeated in 330 BC by Alexander the Great. J. Rose, J. Lendering, M. Brosius