Darius conceived and built Persepolis as a sacred capital, reserved for the celebration of the New Year festival, the Nawrōz.32 In fact, Persepolis was not a political capital, had no strategic importance, and, unlike Pasargadae, Ecbatana, Susa, and Babylon, is not mentioned in any Western or Eastern source.33 The Nawrōz, like every ritual scenario of the New Year, renewed the world by symbolic repetition of the cosmogony.
