Editors’ Note:
On Friday, March 3, the Israel Antiquities Authority announced that the potsherd described below did not, in fact, bear an authentic Persian-era inscription. Rather, it was a re-creation made last year for educational purposes, accidentally left at the archaeological site, and then misidentified by experts. More can be read about it here.

On Monday night and Tuesday, Jews around the world will read the book of Esther, which is set in the court of the Persian king Ahasuerus—identified by modern scholars with the monarch known in Greek as Xerxes. Just in time for the holiday, the Israel Antiquities Authority announced a timely finding. Melanie Lidman reports:

A hiker in Israel’s Judean lowlands region recently discovered a 2,500-year-old pottery shard inscribed with the name of the Persian king Darius the Great, the father of king Ahasuerus. It is the first discovery of an inscription bearing the name of Darius I anywhere in Israel. . . . The site of the find, the ancient city of Lachish, was a prosperous city and a major administrative hub 2,500 years ago. The inscription is believed to be a receipt for goods received or shipped.

The ostracon, a potsherd that was used as a writing surface, bears an Aramaic inscription that reads “Year 24 of Darius,” dating it to 498 BCE. Darius I reigned from 522–486 BCE, during which time the Persian Achaemenid empire grew rapidly to encompass a large swath of the ancient world. But no written evidence of Darius’s reign has ever been found in Israel, until now.

This week, there have been numerous unconfirmed reports about the fate of Esmail Qaani, who is the head of the Quds Force, the expeditionary arm of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. Benny Avni writes:

On Thursday, Sky News Arabic reported that Mr. Qaani was rushed to a hospital after suffering a heart attack. He became [the Quds Force] commander in 2020, after an American drone strike killed his predecessor, Qassem Suleimani. The unit oversees the Islamic Republic’s various Mideast proxies, as well as the exporting of the Iranian revolution to the region and beyond.

The Sky News report attempts to put to rest earlier claims that Mr. Qaani was killed at Beirut. It follows several reports asserting he has been arrested and interrogated at Tehran over suspicion that he, or a top lieutenant, leaked information to Israel. Five days ago, the Arabic-language al-Arabiya network reported that Mr. Qaani “is under surveillance and isolation, following the Israeli assassinations of prominent Iranian leaders.”

Iranians are desperately scrambling to plug possible leaks that gave Israel precise intelligence to conduct pinpoint strikes against Hizballah commanders. . . . “I find it hard to believe that Qaani was compromised,” an Iran watcher at Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies, Beni Sabti, tells the Sun. Perhaps one or more of [Qaani’s] top aides have been recruited by Israel, he says, adding that “psychological warfare” could well be stoking the rumor mill.

If so, prominent Iranians seem to be exacerbating the internal turmoil by alleging that the country’s security apparatus has been infiltrated.