The treasure book
For generations the people of Hamedan could not read the wedge-shaped letters on the mountainside, and they decided the carvings must be a code revealing where a great treasure was hidden. So the place came to be called Ganjnameh, the Treasure Book.
The real message is a royal declaration. Each panel praises Ahura Mazda, “the great god who created this earth, who created yonder sky, who created man,” and names the king and his lineage. The two texts are the same apart from the king’s name: Darius carved the left panel and Xerxes the right, each in three languages so every people of the empire could read it.
On the road to Ecbatana
Hamedan is ancient Ecbatana, capital of the Medes and later the summer capital of the Achaemenid kings, who came here to escape the heat of the plains. Ganjnameh stands on the old route through Mount Alvand, where travellers to the city would have passed beneath it. Today a waterfall tumbles down the valley beside the inscriptions, and families from Hamedan come to picnic, walk and climb in the mountains.
