later known by the name of Alexander the Great, overthrew the incumbent Persian
king, by which the Achaemenid Empire was ended.
Old Persian is attested in the Behistun Inscription (c. 519 BC), recording a proclamation
by Darius the Great.[67] In southwestern Iran, the Achaemenid kings usually wrote their
inscriptions in trilingual form (Elamite, Babylonian and Old Persian)[68] while elsewhere
other languages were used. The administrative languages were Elamite in the early
period, and later Imperial Aramaic,[69] as well as Greek, making it a widely
used bureaucratic language.[70] Even though the Achaemenids had extensive contacts
with the Greeks and vice versa, and had conquered many of the Greek-speaking area's
both in Europe and Asia Minor during different periods of the empire, the native Old
Iranian sources provide no indication of Greek linguistic evidence.[70] However, there is
plenty of evidence (in addition to the accounts of Herodotus) that Greeks, apart from
being deployed and employed in the core regions of the empire, also evidently lived and
worked in the heartland of the Achaemenid Empire, namely Iran.[70] For example, Greeks
were part of the various ethnicities that constructed Darius' palace in Susa, apart from
the Greek inscriptions found nearby there, and one short Persepolis tablet written in
Greek.[70]
The early inhabitants of the Achaemenid Empire appear to have adopted the religion
of Zoroastrianism.[71] The Baloch who speak a west Iranian language relate an oral
tradition regarding their migration from Aleppo, Syria around the year 1000 AD,
whereas linguistic evidence links Balochi to Kurmanji, Soranî, Gorani and Zazaki
language.[72]