Persia from the Earliest Period to the Arab

HISTORY OF PERSIA. f)I
of all the Achaemenian remains. BehisWn 1 is the
name of a nearly perpendicular mountain near Kir-
manshdh, in Persia, which rises abruptly from the
plain to the height of 1700 feet, and is, as Sir H. C.
Rawlinson has remarked, singularly well adapted for
the holy purposes of the early Persian tribes. It was
known to the Greeks by the name of Payio-ravov Spos,
and was, of course, said to have been sacred to Zeus.
Sir H. C. Rawlinson further points out that the prin-
cipal description in Diodorus, extracted from Ctesias,
is geographically clear, though we do not now dis-
cern the sculptures, said to represent Semiramis and
her hundred guards. All of importance now visible are
the bas-reliefs of Darius and of the rebels he crushed,
together with " nearly a thousand lines in Cuneiform
characters."
That great pains were taken to ensure the per-
manency of the monument, is clear from its position,
at more than 300 feet above the plain, with
an ascent to it so steep, that the engravers must
have had a scaffold erected for them. Again, the
mere preparation of the surface of the rock for the
inscription must have occupied months ;
for wherever.
1 The following notice of the monument at Behistan, is taken
from the account published by its first interpreter, Sir Henry (then
Major) Rawlinson, in the Journ. of the Royal Asiatic Society,
vol. x. 1847. The portion of the translated inscriptions quoted,
is from the copy of them recently furnished by him to " Records
of the Past," vol. i. p. 111115, 1874. A handsomely-executed
volume has been published in St. Petersburgh (18/2), by M. C.
Kossowicz, comprising all the Perso-cuneiform inscriptions, under
the title " Inscriptiones Palaeo-Persicae Achaemenidarum." To
this work I am indebted for the plate forming the frontispiece of this
volume, exhibiting, as it does, a new view of the rock of Behistan.