Death
After becoming aware of the Persian defeat at the Battle of Marathon, Darius began planning another expedition against the Greek-city states; this time, he, not Datis, would command the imperial armies. Darius had spent three years preparing men and ships for war, when a revolt broke out in Egypt. This revolt in Egypt worsened his failing health and prevented the possibility of leading another army himself. Soon Darius died. In October 486 BCE the body of Darius was embalmed and entombed in the rock-cut sepulcher which had been prepared for him several years earlier.
Xerxes, eldest son of Darius and Atossa, succeeded to the throne as Xerxes I; however, prior to Xerxes's accession, he contested the succession with his elder half-brother Artobarzanes, Darius's eldest son who was born to his commoner first wife before Darius rose to power.
In 1923 German archaeologist Ernst Herzfeld made casts of the cuneiform inscriptions on Darius's tomb. They are currently housed in the archives of the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC.
Read more about this topic: Darius I
Famous quotes containing the word death:
“for it is not so much to know the self
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—Archie Randolph Ammons (b. 1926)
“For, surely, surely, where
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Nothing of death can any feel or know.”
—Walter Savage Landor (1775–1864)
“Night is a dead monotonous period under a roof; but in the open world it passes lightly, with its stars and dews and perfumes, and the hours are marked by changes in the face of Nature. What seems a kind of temporal death to people choked between walls and curtains, is only a light and living slumber to the man who sleeps afield.”
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