Behistun Inscription

Surroundings of the inscription (visible in the upper right) in 1969. A climber is visible ascending the cliff in the lower left; a narrow ledge then leads to the inscription

Elamite cuneiform fell into disuse c. 400 BC, and after the fall of the Achaemenid Empire in 330 BC Old Persian cuneiform also died out. Babylonian cuneiform persisted for longer, with the last surviving examples being from c. 75 BC. After this point, the inscription was no longer understood by contemporary observers and its purpose was forgotten. For centuries, it was misattributed to the reign of the Sassanid king Khosrau II, who lived over 1000 years after Darius the Great.

The inscription is mentioned by the Greek traveller Ctesias of Cnidus around 400 BC; modern historian's regard Ctesias as an unreliable source. He states that a well and a garden were located beneath the inscription. Ctesias incorrectly concluded that the inscription had been dedicated by Semiramis of Babylon (a semi-legendary ruler) to Zeus. The Hellenistic historian Diodorus also mentions "Bagistanon" in his writing, but incorrectly repeats Ctesias' claim that the inscription was produced by Semiramis.

The Roman historian Tacitus mentions the inscription and describes the presence (in the first century AD) of ancillary monuments at the base of the cliff, including an altar to Herakles. Modern archaeology of the site, including the discovery of a Hellenistic statue dedicated in 148 BC, is consistent with Tacitus's description.

In 1598, Englishman Robert Sherley saw the inscription during a diplomatic mission to Safavid Persia on behalf of Austria, and subsequently brought it to the attention of scholars in western Europe. His party incorrectly concluded that the inscription was Christian in origin.[5] Italian explorer Pietro della Valle visited the inscription in 1604 and made drawings of the monument.[6] German survey Carsten Niebuhr visited in around 1764, exploring for Frederick V of Denmark. Niebuhr recorded the (then unintelligible) text of the inscription, leading to its first publication in 1778 in his account of his journeys.[7]

In the early 19th century, the French ambassador to Persia Claude Matthieu, Count Gardane thought it showed "Christ and his twelve apostles", and a decade later the British traveller Robert Ker Porter thought it represented the Lost Tribes of Israel and Shalmaneser of Assyria.[8]

Face-on view of the inscription and accompanying relief carvings

Details of Darius

The inscription and associated relief is approximately 15 m (49 ft) high by 25 m (82 ft) wide. It is carved into a limestone cliff, 100 m (330 ft) above an ancient road that connected the capitals of Babylonia and Media (Babylon and Ecbatana, respectively). The location is difficult to access, with modern explorers having to climb the sheer cliff face and traverse a narrow ledge. Reaching the Elamite part of the inscription requires jumping across a chasm. This inaccessible location, combined with the dry desert environment, may have aided the preservation of the inscription.

The bas-relief depicts Darius and twelve other figures. Darius is shown facing right and larger than the other figures, approximately life-size, holding a bow in his left hand as a sign of kingship. His right hand is raised, and he wears a crown. Darius' left foot is on the chest of a figure lying on his back before him. The supine figure is not named, but usually identified as Gaumata, one of the pretenders discussed in the text. On the left of Darius are two servants, also facing to the right, carrying a bow and a spear. To the right of Darius, facing towards him, are nine smaller figures representing conquered peoples. These are smaller, approximately 1 metre (3 ft 3 in) tall, shown with their hands tied and a rope around their necks, which ties them all together. One figure appears to have been added after the others were completed. So was Darius's beard, which consists of a separate block of stone attached with iron pins and lead. A Faravahar (Zoroastrian winged spirit) is depicted in front of and slightly above Darius, giving its blessing to the king.

The cuneiform text is inscribed above, below, and to the right of the figures. Its layout is haphazard, as if not originally planned as part of the monument, being instead added to whatever blank regions could be found after the bas-relief was completed. The Old Persian text contains 414 lines in five columns; the Elamite text includes 260 lines in eight columns, and the Babylonian text is in 112 lines.[9][10]

Column 1 (DB I 1–15), sketch by Friedrich von Spiegel (1881).

Papyrus with an Aramaic translation of the Behistun inscription's text, known as TAD C2.1.

Georg Friedrich Grotefend and others attempted to decipher the Old Persian cuneiform script, using Niebuhr's transcriptions as their main source. By 1802, Grotefend had deciphered ten of the 37 symbols of Old Persian, after realizing that unlike the Semitic cuneiform scripts, Old Persian text is alphabetic and each word is separated by a vertical slanted symbol.[11]

The Old Persian text was copied and deciphered before recovery and copying of the Elamite and Babylonian inscriptions had even been attempted, which proved to be a good deciphering strategy, since Old Persian script was easier to study due to its alphabetic nature and because the language it represents had naturally evolved via Middle Persian to the living modern Persian language dialects, and was also related to the Avestan language, used in the Zoroastrian book the Avesta.

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 Bisotun's name was anglicized as "Behistun" at this time, the monument became known as the "Behistun Inscription". Despite its relative inaccessibility, Rawlinson was able to scale the cliff with the help of a local boy and copy the Old Persian inscription. The Elamite was across a chasm, and the Babylonian four meters above; both were beyond easy reach and were left for later. In 1847, he was able to send a full and accurate copy to Europe.[12]

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.[12] The first section of this text contained a list of the same Persian kings found in Herodotus but 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 deciphered the type of cuneiform used for Old Persian by 1838 and presented his results to the Royal Asiatic Society in London and the Société Asiatique in Paris.

In the interim, Rawlinson spent a brief tour of duty in Afghanistan, returning to the site in 1843. This time he crossed the chasm between the Persian and Elamite scripts by bridging the gap with planks, subsequently copying the Elamite inscription. He found 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 several other scholars, most notably 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 translation of the Old Persian sections of the Behistun Inscription paved the way to the subsequent ability to decipher the Elamite and Babylonian parts of the text, which greatly promoted the development of modern Assyriology.

Close-up of the inscription showing damage

The site was visited by the American linguist A. V. Williams Jackson in 1903.[13] 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.[14][15][16][17] It also became apparent that rainwater had dissolved some areas of the limestone in which the text was inscribed, while leaving new deposits of limestone over other areas, covering the text.

In 1938, the inscription became of interest to the Nazi German think tank Ahnenerbe, although research plans were cancelled due to the onset of World War II.

The monument later suffered some damage from Allied soldiers using it for target practice in World War II, and during the Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran.[18]

In 1999, Iranian archeologists began the documentation and assessment of damages to the site incurred during the 20th century. Malieh Mehdiabadi, who was project manager for the effort, described a photogrammetric process by which two-dimensional photos were taken of the inscriptions using two cameras and later transmuted into 3-D images.[19]

In recent years, Iranian archaeologists have been undertaking conservation works. The site became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2006.[20]

In 2012, the Bisotun Cultural Heritage Center organized an international effort to re-examine the inscription.[21]

The site covers an area of 116 hectares. Archeological evidence indicates that this region became a human shelter 40,000 years ago. There are 18 historical monuments other than the inscription of Darius the Great in the Behistun complex that have been registered in the Iranian national list of historical sites. Some of them are:

• 
  Statue of Herakles in Behistun complex
• 
  Herakles at Behistun, sculpted for a Seleucis Governor in 148 BC.
• 
  Bas relief of Mithridates II of Parthia and bas relief of Gotarzes II of Parthia and Sheikh Ali khan Zangeneh text endowment
• 
  Damaged equestrian relief of Gotarzes II at Behistun
• 
  Vologases's relief in Behistun

The Anubanini rock relief, dated to 2300 BC, and made by the pre-Iranian Lullubi ruler Anubanini, is very similar in content to the Behistun reliefs (woodprint).

The Anubanini rock relief, also called Sarpol-i Zohab, of the Lullubi king Anubanini, dated to c. 2300 BC, and which is located not far from the Behistun reliefs at Sarpol-e Zahab, is very similar to the reliefs at Behistun. The attitude of the ruler, the trampling of an enemy, the lines of prisoners are all very similar, to such extent that it was said that the sculptors of the Behistun Inscription probably have seen the Anubanini relief beforehand and were inspired by it.[23] The Lullubian reliefs were the model for the Behistun reliefs of Darius the Great.[24]

The inscriptional tradition of the Achaemenids, starting especially with Darius I, is thought to have derived from the traditions of Elam, Lullubi, the Babylonians and the Assyrians.[25]

• Behistun palace
• Darius I of Persia
• Achaemenid empire
• Taq-e Bostan (Rock reliefs of various Sassanid kings)
• Pasargadae (Tomb of Pasargadae Cyrus the Great)
• Shapur I's inscription at the Ka'ba-ye Zartosht
• Naqsh-e Rajab
• Cities of the Ancient Near East
• Gaumata (False Smerdis)
• Anubanini rock relief
• List of colossal sculptures in situ
• World Heritage Sites by country

• Adkins, Lesley, Empires of the Plain: Henry Rawlinson and the Lost Languages of Babylon, St. Martin's Press, New York, 2003.
• Blakesley, J. W. An Attempt at an Outline of the Early Medo-Persian History, founded on the Rock-Inscriptions of Behistun taken in combination with the Accounts of Herodotus and Ctesias. (Trinity College, Cambridge,) in the Proceedings of the Philological Society.
• Rawlinson, H.C., Archaeologia, 1853, vol. xxxiv, p. 74.
• Thompson, R. Campbell. "The Rock of Behistun". Wonders of the Past. Edited by Sir J. A. Hammerton. Vol. II. New York: Wise and Co., 1937. (pp. 760–767) "Behistun". Members.ozemail.com.au. Archived from the original on January 13, 2010. Retrieved 2010-04-23.
• Cameron, George G. "Darius Carved History on Ageless Rock". National Geographic Magazine. Vol. XCVIII, Num. 6, December 1950. (pp. 825–844)
• Rubio, Gonzalo. "Writing in another tongue: Alloglottography in the Ancient Near East". In Margins of Writing, Origins of Cultures (ed. Seth Sanders. 2nd printing with postscripts and corrections. Oriental Institute Seminars, 2. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), pp. 33–70."Oriental Institute | Oriental Institute Seminars (OIS)". Oi.uchicago.edu. 2009-06-18. Archived from the original on 2014-06-04. Retrieved 2010-04-23.
• Louis H. Gray, Notes on the Old Persian Inscriptions of Behistun, Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. 23, pp. 56–64, 1902
• A. T. Olmstead, Darius and His Behistun Inscription, The American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures, vol. 55, no. 4, pp. 392–416, 1938
• Paul J. Kosmin, A New Hypothesis: The Behistun Inscription as Imperial Calendar, Iran - Journal of the British Institute of Persian Studies, August 2018
• Saber Amiri Parian, A New Edition of the Elamite Version of the Behistun Inscription (I), Cuneiform Digital Library Bulletin 2017:003

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Behistun Inscription.

Wikisource has original text related to this article:

Full translation of the Behistun Inscription

• King, L. W.; Thompson, R. Campbell (1907). The sculptures and inscription of Darius the Great on the Rock of Behistûn in Persia : a new collation of the Persian, Susian and Babylonian texts, with English translations, etc. British Museum.
  • The Behistun Inscription Archived 2016-03-03 at the Wayback Machine, livius.org article by Jona Lendering, including Persian text (in cuneiform and transliteration), King and Thompson's English translation, and additional materials
• Tolman, Herbert Cushing (1908). The Behistan inscription of King Darius: translation and critical notes to the Persian text with special reference to recent re-examinations of the rock. Vanderbilt University.
  • Tolman's English translation of the inscription text
• Brief description of Bisotun from UNESCO
• "Bisotun receives its World Heritage certificate", Cultural Heritage News Agency, Tehran, July 3, 2008
• Other monuments of Behistun Archived 2016-11-07 at the Wayback Machine
• Rüdiger Schmitt, "Bisotun i", Encyclopaedia Iranica
• Hyland, John O. (2014). "The Casualty Figures in Darius' Bisitun Inscription". Journal of Ancient Near Eastern History. 1 (2): 173–199. doi:10.1515/janeh-2013-0001. S2CID 180763595.