Everything about The Behistun Inscription totally explained
The
Behistun Inscription (also
Bisitun or
Bisutun,
Modern Persian: بیستون ;
Old Persian:
Bagastana, meaning "the god's place or land") is a multi-lingual inscription located on
Mount Behistun in the
Kermanshah Province of
Iran, near the town of
Jeyhounabad.
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,
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. In effect, then, the inscription is to
cuneiform what the
Rosetta Stone is to
Egyptian hieroglyphs: the document most crucial in the
decipherment of a previously lost
script.
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.
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'll 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 isn't dead, naturally, and mourns upon hearing the news.
Translation
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 wasn't 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, an officer of the
British East India Company army assigned to the forces of the
Shah of Iran, began studying the inscription in earnest. As the town of Bisutun'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
Georg Friedrich Grotefend, Rawlinson set to work on deciphering the text. Fortunately, the first section of this text contained a list of the same Persian kings found in
Herodotus in their original Persian forms as opposed to Herodotus's Greek
transliterations, for example Darius is given as the original "Dâryavuš" instead of the Hellenized "Δαρειος". By matching the names and the characters, Rawlinson was able to decipher the type 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.
Surprisingly, the Old Persian text was copied and deciphered before the recovery and copying of the Elamite and Babylonian inscriptions had even been attempted. In the interim, Rawlinson spent a brief tour of duty in
Afghanistan, returning to the site in 1843. He first crossed a chasm between the Persian and Elamite scripts by bridging the gap with planks, subsequently copying the Elamite inscription. He was then able to find an enterprising local boy to climb up a crack in the cliff and suspend ropes across the Babylonian writing, so that
papier-mâché casts of the inscriptions could be taken. Rawlinson, along with scholars
Edward Hincks,
Julius Oppert,
William Henry Fox Talbot, and
Edwin Norris, either working separately or in collaboration eventually deciphered these inscriptions, leading eventually to the ability to read them completely. The ability to read Old Persian, Elamite, and Babylonian was one of the key developments that put the field of
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.
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