A British officer risked his neck on a cliff face to crack cuneiform

Carved on a sheer rock face in Iran by order of Darius the Great around 500 BC, the Behistun Inscription repeats the same royal proclamation in three cuneiform scripts. Henry Rawlinson had himself lowered by ropes to copy it in the 1830s, and his translation of the Old Persian text became the key that unlocked cuneiform — cuneiform's equivalent of the Rosetta Stone.

— Wikipedia contributors, on Henry Rawlinson's decipherment, Behistun Inscription — Transcribed 1835–1843; Old Persian translated 1838