Behistun is a rock it was discovered by a German scholar named Grotefend in order to find out what the sumerians writing ment.
The Behistun Inscription was discovered in 1835 by a British officer named Henry Rawlinson in present-day Iran. It was carved on a cliff at Mount Behistun and dates back to the Persian Empire of King Darius the Great around 520 BC.
The Behistun Rock was discovered by a British officer and linguist named Henry Rawlinson in 1835 during a surveying mission in Persia (now Iran). Rawlinson was intrigued by the inscriptions on the rock and began studying and deciphering them, eventually leading to a breakthrough in understanding cuneiform script and ancient languages.
The Behistun Script
Old Persian, Elamite, and Babylonian.
Behistun Inspription
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The Behistun Inscription was deciphered by British army officer and diplomat Sir Henry Rawlinson in 1835. Rawlinson's work with the inscription was instrumental in the decipherment of Old Persian cuneiform script.
The Behistun Rock, located in Iran, features a multilingual inscription carved around 520 BCE by the Persian king Darius the Great, which played a crucial role in deciphering cuneiform script. The Rosetta Stone, discovered in Egypt in 1799, is inscribed with the same text in three scripts: Greek, Demotic, and hieroglyphics, enabling scholars, notably Jean-François Champollion, to unlock the secrets of ancient Egyptian writing. Both artifacts are significant for understanding ancient civilizations and their languages.
In the Behistun Inscription, Darius justifies his assumption of power by claiming that the crushed rebellions were orchestrated by several impostors and their co-conspirators in various cities throughout the empire, each of whom falsely proclaimed kinghood during the upheaval following Cyrus's death. Darius claims himself to be the true ruler of the Persion Empire through the "grace of Ahura Mazda."
The Behistun Inscription, carved on a cliff in western Iran by King Darius I of Persia around 520 BCE, is crucial for several reasons. It serves as a key artifact in understanding the history of the Achaemenid Empire, detailing Darius's rise to power and his conquests. Additionally, the inscription is significant for its trilingual format (Old Persian, Elamite, and Babylonian), which helped scholars, notably Henry Rawlinson in the 19th century, to decipher cuneiform writing, unlocking vast amounts of ancient history and culture.
Henry Rawlinson, Deciphered Cuneiform > WebsiteSir Henry Creswicke Rawlinson, 1st Baronet GCB was an English soldier, diplomat and orientalist. He is sometimes referred to as the "Father of Assyriology." Knowledge of cuneiform was lost until 1835 when Henry Rawlinson, a British East India Company army officer, found the Behistun inscriptions in Persia. Carved in the reign of King Darius of Persia (522 BC-486 BC), they consisted of identical texts in the three official languages of the empire: Old Persian, Babylonian, and Elamite. The Behistun inscription was to the decipherment of cuneiform what the Rosetta Stone was to the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs.