Already, even before his victory in Persia, masons had been set to work at Bisitun. For the first time ever, ‘cut like the pages of a book on the blood-coloured rock’,16 the Persian language was to be transcribed into written form. The story of how Darius had rescued the world from evil was far too important to be trusted to the recitations of the Magi alone. Only solid stone could serve such an epic as its shrine.