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The Behistun Inscription, carved high on a cliff in western Iran around 520 BCE for the Persian king Darius I, gives the same text in three languages. In the nineteenth century, scholars including Henry Rawlinson used it to decipher cuneiform, the ancient wedge-shaped script.

Behistun, Iran, c. 520 BCE

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The story behind the card

Cuneiform, made of wedge-shaped marks pressed into clay or cut into stone, was used across the ancient Near East for some 3,000 years to write many different languages, and by the 1700s nobody could read it. The Behistun text, about 15 metres high and 25 wide, sits some 100 metres up a limestone cliff and tells, in Old Persian, Elamite and Babylonian, how Darius took the throne. Groundwork came from copies of Old Persian inscriptions published by the Danish traveller Carsten Niebuhr in 1778, which Georg Friedrich Grotefend used in 1802 to identify the first signs. Rawlinson climbed the cliff from 1835 to copy the text and sent a full copy of the Old Persian to Europe in 1847. The decipherment was a shared effort over decades.

Türkçe oku
Behistun Yazıtı, batı İran'da yüksek bir kayalığın üzerindedir ve aynı metni üç dilde verir. Pers kralı I. Darius onu MÖ 520 civarında oydurdu; 19. yüzyılda Henry Rawlinson'ın da aralarında bulunduğu bilginler, bu yazıttan yararlanarak kama biçimli eski bir yazı olan çivi yazısını çözdü.
Behistun, İran, MÖ 520 civarı

Çivi yazısı, kile bastırılan ya da taşa oyulan kama biçimli işaretlerden oluşur. Eski Yakın Doğu'da yaklaşık 3.000 yıl boyunca pek çok farklı dili yazmak için kullanıldı, ama 1700'lere gelindiğinde onu okuyabilen kimse kalmamıştı. Yaklaşık 15 metre yüksekliğinde ve 25 metre genişliğindeki Behistun Yazıtı, kireçtaşı bir kayalıkta yerden 100 metre kadar yukarıdadır; Darius'un tahta nasıl çıktığını Eski Farsça, Elamca ve Babilce anlatır. İlk adımlar, Danimarkalı gezgin Carsten Niebuhr'un 1778'de yayımladığı Eski Farsça yazıt kopyalarıyla atıldı; Georg Friedrich Grotefend 1802'de bu kopyalardan yola çıkarak ilk işaretleri çözdü. Rawlinson 1835'ten itibaren kayalığa tırmanarak metni kopyaladı ve 1847'de Eski Farsça bölümün eksiksiz bir kopyasını Avrupa'ya gönderdi. Çözüm, on yıllar süren ortak bir çabanın ürünüdür.

Sources and further reading

Background reading: Behistun Inscription
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