The Rock at Behistun, Iran

The Rock at Behistun, Iran, showing the inscription that led to the decipherment of cuneiform. They are located more than 300 feet (100 metres) above the road

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Dinesh ^club

. . . The ‘Rosetta Stone’ www.khanacademy.org/humanities/ancient-art-civilizations/egypt-art/ptolemaic/a/the-rosetta-stone for cuneiform turned out to be the massive inscription of Darius en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darius_the_Great cut into a cliff in the Zagros Mountains of Western Iran near the little town of Behistun (today’s Bisitum) As a Persepolis, three scripts had been used: Old Persian, Elamite and Babylonian

But before this great trilingual could be of use, it had to be copied. This was easier said than done, since there was only a narrow ledge on which to stand (the mountainside seems to have been removed in antiquity, perhaps to make the inscription more prominent and to protect it). The upper portion of the inscription appeared to be completely inaccessible.

The challenge was taken up by an adventurous, polyglot English army officer, Sir Henry Creswickle Rawlinson (1810-95). He served in India from 1826 to 1833, where he acquired the knowledge of Hindustani, Arabic and modern Persian, and a reputation as an outstanding polo player and athlete. Seconded to Persia to help train the Shah’s army, he became an adviser to the governor of Kurdistan. Rawlinson was able to copy the lower lines of the Old Persian inscription by standing on the narrow ledge. Using ladders, he precariously copied higher up standing on the topmost rung “with no support than studying the body against the rock with the left arm, while the left hand holds the note book and the right hand is employed with the pencil.’ But the upper most inscriptions were beyond his power. Luckily, ‘a wild Kurdish boy appeared, managed to squeeze himself up a cleft in the cliff, drive a wooden peg into the cleft, cross the face of the inscription, drive in another rpeg and rig ropes such that he could take papier-mache casts of the inscription, directed from below by Rawlinson. It was an extraordinary feat of courage and determination. By 1847, after some tne years’ effort, the entire Behistum inscription had been copied.

. . . Cuneiform is three languages surrounds Darius who has his foot on his rival and judges nine others, their hands tied behind their backs. Above them floats Ahura Mazda, the supreme diety of the Persian (and Zoroastrians). Until Rawlinson read the Old Persian inscription, some scholars imagined the scene to show the captive tribes of Israel.

Rawlinson is generally credited with the decipherment of Babylonian cuneiform, but he never explained how he did it, unlike Jean-Francois Champollion and Michael Ventris. Recent study of his notebooks suggests that he borrowed without attribution from the work of scholar Edward Hincks. ~ Page 76

2 years ago. Edited 2 years ago.

Dinesh ^club

2 years ago.

J.Garcia ^club

Unbelievable!!!
Thank you very much!!

2 years ago.

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