   #copyright

Behistun Inscription

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Ancient History,
Classical History and Mythology

   The Behistun Inscription, carved into a cliffside, gives the same text
   in three languages, telling the story of King Darius' conquests, with
   the names of twenty-three provinces subject to him. It is illustrated
   by life-sized carved images of King Darius with other figures in
   attendance.
   Enlarge
   The Behistun Inscription, carved into a cliffside, gives the same text
   in three languages, telling the story of King Darius' conquests, with
   the names of twenty-three provinces subject to him. It is illustrated
   by life-sized carved images of King Darius with other figures in
   attendance.

   The Behistun Inscription (also Bisitun or Bisutun, بیستون in modern
   Persian; in Old Persian is Bagastana the meaning is "the god's place or
   land") is to cuneiform what the Rosetta Stone is to Egyptian
   hieroglyphs: the document most crucial in the decipherment of a
   previously lost script. It is located in the Kermanshah Province of
   Iran.

   The inscription includes three versions of the same text, written in
   three different cuneiform script languages: Old Persian, Elamite, and
   Babylonian. A British army officer, Sir Henry Rawlinson, had the
   inscription transcribed in two parts, in 1835 and 1843. Rawlinson was
   able to translate the Old Persian cuneiform text in 1838, and the
   Elamite and Babylonian texts were translated by Rawlinson and others
   after 1843. Babylonian was a later form of Akkadian: both are Semitic
   languages.

The inscription

   The text of the inscription is a statement by Darius I of Persia,
   written three times in three different scripts and languages: two
   languages side by side, Old Persian and Elamite, and Babylonian above
   them. Darius ruled the Persian Empire from 521 to 486 BC. Some time
   around 515 BC, he arranged for the inscription of a long tale of his
   accession in the face of the usurper Smerdis of Persia (and Darius'
   subsequent successful wars and suppressions of rebellion) to be
   inscribed into a cliff near the modern town of Bisistun, in the
   foothills of the Zagros Mountains of Iran, just as one reaches them
   from the Kermanshah Plain.

   The inscription is approximately 15  metres high by 25 metres wide, and
   100 metres up a limestone cliff from an ancient road connecting the
   capitals of Babylonia and Media ( Babylon and Ecbatana). It is
   extremely inaccessible as the mountainside was removed to make the
   inscription more visible after its completion. The Old Persian text
   contains 414 lines in five columns; the Elamite text includes 593 lines
   in eight columns and the Babylonian text is in 112 lines. The
   inscription was illustrated by a life-sized bas-relief of Darius,
   holding a bow as a sign of kingship, with his left foot on the chest of
   a figure lying on his back before him. The prostrate figure is reputed
   to be the pretender Gaumata. Darius is attended to the left by two
   servants, and ten one-metre figures stand to the right, with hands tied
   and rope around their necks, representing conquered peoples. Faravahar
   floats above, giving his blessing to the king. One figure appears to
   have been added after the others were completed, as was (oddly enough)
   Darius' beard, which is a separate block of stone attached with iron
   pins and lead.
   Column 1 (DB I 1-15), sketch by Fr. Spiegel (1881)
   Enlarge
   Column 1 (DB I 1-15), sketch by Fr. Spiegel (1881)

   It is believed that Darius placed the inscription in an inaccessible
   position to make it tamper-resistant. Readability took second place to
   this demand: the text is completely illegible from ground level. The
   Persian king did not account for the creation of a pool of water at the
   bottom of the cliff, which brought increased human traffic to the area.
   Considerable damage has been caused to some figures.

In ancient history

   The first historical mention of the inscription is by the Greek Ctesias
   of Cnidus, who noted its existence some time around 400 BC, and
   mentions a well and a garden beneath the inscription dedicated by Queen
   Semiramis of Babylon to Zeus (the Greek analogue of Ahura Mazda).
   Tacitus also mentions it and includes a description of some of the
   long-lost ancillary monuments at the base of the cliff, including an
   altar to Hercules. What has been recovered of them, including a statue
   dedicated in 148 BC, is consistent with Tacitus' description. Diodorus
   also writes of "Bagistanon" and claims it was inscribed by Queen
   Semiramis.

   After the fall of the Persian Empire and its successors, and the fall
   of cuneiform writing into disuse, the nature of the inscription was
   forgotten and fanciful origins became the norm. For centuries, instead
   of being attributed to Darius — one of the first Persian kings — it was
   believed to be from the reign of Chosroes II of Persia — one of the
   last.

   A legend arose that it had been created by Farhad, a lover of Chosroes'
   wife, Shirin. Exiled for his transgression, Farhad is given the task of
   cutting away the mountain to find water; if he succeeds, he will be
   given permission to marry Shirin. After many years and the removal of
   half the mountain, he does find water, but is informed by Chosroes that
   Shirin had died. He goes mad, throws his axe down the hill, kisses the
   ground and dies. It is told in the book of Chosroes and Shirin that his
   axe was made out of a Pomegranate tree, and where he threw the axe a
   Pomegranate tree grew with fruit that would cure the ill. Shirin is not
   dead, naturally, and mourns upon hearing the news.

Translation

   Modern day picture of the inscription.
   Enlarge
   Modern day picture of the inscription.

   The inscription was noted by an Arab traveller, Ibn Hawqal, in the
   mid-900s, who interpreted the figures as a teacher punishing his
   pupils. It was not until 1598, when the Englishman Robert Sherley saw
   the inscription during a diplomatic mission to Persia on behalf of
   Austria, that the inscription first came to the attention of western
   European scholars. His party came to the conclusion that it was a
   picture of the ascension of Jesus with an inscription in Greek.

   Biblical misinterpretations by Europeans were rife for the next two
   centuries. French General Gardanne thought it showed Christ and his
   twelve apostles, and Sir Robert Ker Porter thought it represented the
   12 tribes of Israel and Shalmaneser of Assyria. Italian explorer Pietro
   della Valle visited the inscription in the course of a pilgrimage in
   around 1621, and German surveyor Carsten Niebuhr visited in around 1764
   while exploring Arabia and the middle east for Frederick V of Denmark,
   publishing a copy of the inscription in the account of his journeys in
   1777. Niebuhr's transcriptions were used by Georg Friedrich Grotefend
   and others in their efforts to decipher the Old Persian cuneiform
   script. Grotefend had deciphered ten of the 37 symbols of Old Persian
   by 1802.

   In 1835, Sir Henry Rawlinson, a British army officer training the army
   of the Shah of Iran, began studying the inscription in earnest. As the
   town of Bisistun's name was anglicized as "Behistun" at this time, the
   monument became known as the "Behistun Inscription". Despite its
   inaccessibility, Rawlinson was able to scale the cliff and copy the Old
   Persian inscription. The Elamite was across a chasm, and the Babylonian
   four metres above; both were beyond easy reach and were left for later.

   Armed with the Persian text, and with about a third of the syllabary
   made available to him by the work of Grotefend, Rawlinson set to work
   on deciphering the text. Fortunately, the first section of this text
   contained a list of Persian kings identical to that found in Herodotus,
   and by matching the names and the characters, Rawlinson was able to
   crack the form of cuneiform used for Old Persian by 1838 and present
   his results to the Royal Asiatic Society in London and the Société
   Asiatique in Paris.

   Next came the remaining two texts. After a stretch of service in
   Afghanistan, Rawlinson returned in 1843. Using planks he crossed the
   gap between the Old Persian text and the Elamite, and copied that. He
   was then able to find an enterprising local boy to climb up a crack in
   the cliff and rig ropes across the Babylonian writing, so that
   papier-mâché casts of it could be taken. Rawlinson set to work and
   translated the Babylonian writing and language, working independently
   of Edward Hincks, Julius Oppert and William Henry Fox Talbot, who also
   contributed to the decipherment; Edwin Norris and others were the first
   to do the same for the Elamite. As three of the primary languages of
   Mesopotamia, and three variations of the cuneiform script, these
   decipherments were one of the keys to putting Assyriology on a modern
   footing.

After Rawlinson

   Later expeditions, in 1904 sponsored by the British Museum and led by
   Leonard William King and Reginald Campbell Thompson and in 1948 by
   George G. Cameron of the University of Michigan, obtained photographs,
   casts and more accurate transcriptions of the texts, including passages
   that were not copied by Rawlinson. It also became apparent that
   rainwater had dissolved some areas of the limestone in which the text
   is inscribed, while leaving new deposits of limestone over other areas,
   covering the text.

   The monument suffered some damage from soldiers using it for target
   practice during World War II. In recent years, Iranian archaeologists
   have been undertaking conservation works. The site became a UNESCO
   World Heritage Site in 2006.

   Retrieved from " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behistun_Inscription"
   This reference article is mainly selected from the English Wikipedia
   with only minor checks and changes (see www.wikipedia.org for details
   of authors and sources) and is available under the GNU Free
   Documentation License. See also our Disclaimer.
