Some 400 miles [640 km] to the southeast of their summer residence at Ecbatana, the Persian emperors built a gigantic palace at Persepolis. A relief there shows Darius on his throne, and on an inscription he boasts: “I am Darius, great king, king of kings, king of lands . . . who constructed this palace.” A few towering columns of this splendid capital still stand today. Another capital was at Susa (Shushan), centrally located between Babylon, Ecbatana, and Persepolis. There Darius the Great built another magnificent palace.

Darius was succeeded by his son Xerxes, who apparently was the “Ahasuerus” of the Bible book of Esther. It says that Ahasuerus “was ruling as king from India to Ethiopia, over a hundred and twenty-seven jurisdictional districts” as he sat upon “his royal throne, which was in Shushan the castle.” It was there that Ahasuerus made the beautiful young Esther his queen. (Esther 1:1, 2; 2:17) In the museum of the Louvre in Paris, you can see an ornate bull capital that stood atop a towering column in this palace, as well as wall decorations representing proud Persian archers and splendid animals. Alabaster flacons, jewelry, and other items that were found there fit well the Bible’s statements about the extensive beauty treatments given to Esther, as well as the luxury that existed in Shushan.​—Esther 1:7; 2:9, 12, 13.

Some documents written on papyrus in the Aramaic language were found at Elephantine, an island in Egypt’s Nile River. These documents demonstrate the accuracy with which the Bible writers Ezra and Nehemiah depict both conditions and official communication during Persian rule. In Biblical Archaeology, Professor G. Ernest Wright states: “Now . . . we are able to see that the Aramaic of Ezra is precisely that of its age, while the government documents are of the general type which we have become accustomed to associate with the Persian regime.” One of the documents contained a royal Persian order concerning the Passover celebration by the Jewish colony in Egypt.