BISOTUN i. Introduction

The original Old Persian form of the name Bīsotūn can be recovered from the Greek rendering Bagistanon (óros) “Mt. Bagistanon” in Diodorus (2.13.1, from Ctesias) as *Bagastāna “place or stand of the god(s)” (cf. Markwart, Ērānšahr, p. 71). In the works of medieval Arabic geographers like Ebn Ḥawqal, Eṣṭaḵrī, and Yāqūt the Middle/New Persian form Bahestūn/Behestūn (lit. “with good columns”), a recast of an unattested *Bahistān, occurs. The modern forms Bīsotūn, etc. (with or without anaptyctic vowel; lit. “without columns”), which are also used by Yāqūt, Eṣṭaḵrī, Qazvīnī, and Moqaddasī, represent popular transformations of Behestūn (Schwarz, Iran IV, p. 452 for the cliff, 487ff. for the village). Of the various archeological remains at the site, reflecting almost continuous use since prehistoric times, the most important is unquestionably the monument of Darius the Great on the last peak of a long, narrow range. It consists of a relief (ca. 3 m high and 5.5 m long, called by the natives “The Nine Dervishes”) carved out of the limestone cliff about 66 m above the springs on the plain, as well as a great trilingual inscription, the most famous and most important of the king’s proclamations.

The name clearly shows that the place had been holy from time immemorial and Darius’s monument was well known to the ancients: Ctesias (apud Diodorus, 2.13.1-2) speaks of Mt. Bagístanon with its sheer cliffs rising to a height of 17 stades as hieròn Diós “sacred to Zeus” (i.e., to the supreme god Ahura Mazdā) and mentions a great park (Gk. parádeisos) laid out by Queen Semiramis. He also refers to an image of her and an inscription in Syrian (i.e., Assyrian) letters (cuneiform writing); obviously he took Darius’s relief and inscriptions for a monument belonging to the legendary Babylonian queen. Moreover, Diodorus (17.110.5) tells of a Bagistánē district, through which Alexander the Great had passed, and calls it “best fitting for the gods” (theoprepestátē), an epithet recalling the etymon of the name. See further Isidore of Charax, Parthian Stations, ed. W. H. Schoff, London, 1914, par. 5, mentioning a city Bagistana (his emendation for ms. Báptana), situated on a mountain, with an image and stele of Semiramis; and Stephanus Byzantius, Ethnica, ed. A. Meineke, Berlin, 1849, p. 155, listing a Median city Bagístana and Mt. Bagístanon.

BISOTUN ii. Archeology

Although the relief and inscription of Darius on the cliff have made Bīsotūn famous, there are also various other remains in the neighborhood, including some that were discovered or identified only in 1962 and 1963. All these remains will be described here in chronological order (see Figure 19, plan of Bīsotūn).

Figure 19. Site plan of Bīsotūn.View full image in a new tab

Prehistoric remains. Some Paleolithic cave finds are the earliest evidence of human presence at the spring-fed pool of Bīsotūn (Coon, 1951, pp. 1ff.; 1957, p. 86, pls. 5-8; Golzārī, I, pp. 326ff., fig. 242). Next come traces of a 2nd-millennium settlement on the “Parthian slope” (Kleiss, pp. 133ff., esp. p. 159, pls. 75.3, 76.2; Luschey, 1974, p. 112). In addition, fragments of prehistoric pottery washed down from the ravine have been found in the debris below the relief of Darius (Luschey, 1974, p. 118, fig. 12).

The Median fortress. This name has been given to the remains of a fortress on the mountain slope because a bronze triangular fibula of the 8th/7th century b.c. was found in its wall (Kleiss, p. 174, fig. 221, pl. 75; Luschey, 1974, p. 118, fig. 11). The fortress was first investigated by F. Hinzen, then fully explored by W. Kleiss (pp. 133ff., plan fig. 20). In its construction, with rectangular buttresses, it resembles the fortress at Tepe Nūš-e Jan, which is not very far away (Stronach, 1978, 1981; idem, 1986, p. 289, fig. 7). Probably it was the old fortress named Sikayauvatiš where Darius and his companions slew Gaumāta, as reported in his inscription (Kent, Old Persian, DB 1.58, pp. 118, 120, 209; Luschey, 1968, pp. 66f.; 1974, p. 118); this identification would explain Darius’ decision to place his relief about 100 m from the gateway. Beside this gateway a relief depicting Heracles was erected in the Hellenistic period. His lion-skin cloak appears to be a separate figure and was taken by D. Stronach to be a Median gate monument (see Kleiss, pp. 145f., fig. 11, pl. 66.1-4; Luschey, 1974, p. 119), but the figure is not modeled in the round as a gate lion would be, is not on the line of the gateway, and has no counterpart on the opposite side. The terrace below the relief of Darius, which was covered with debris from the relief, may well be Median or early Achaemenid—perhaps for the worship of an earlier image that has not been preserved (Luschey, 1968, p. 66, figs. 1-2; 1974, p. 118, figs. 6-8).

The relief and inscription of Darius (Plate X and Plate XI). In 1963-64 the present writer had the opportunity to study this relief from a scaffolding and to take photographs that have served as the basis for all subsequent research (Luschey, 1968, pls. 29-42). In the text accompanying the publication of these photographs an attempt was made to draw up a detailed inventory of the motifs and stylistic features of the relief. Attention was also drawn to a previously unnoticed inconsistency in the distribution of the accompanying inscriptions, which led me to recognition that the Elamite text is the oldest and that the Babylonian and Old Persian versions were added later. The evidence is thus clear that Old Persian cuneiform script was introduced only after the relief was completed, that is, about 520 b.c. (see iii, below; Luschey, 1965, pp. 19-41; 1968, pp. 91f.; and Hinz, pp. 95ff.; see also Trümpelmann, p. 281).

Plate X. The Darius relief at Bīsotūn.View full image in a new tab

Plate XI. The head of Darius.View full image in a new tab

The relief of Darius is the first great expression of Achaemenid art in the idiom of his reign. In the modeling of figures it far surpasses anything from the time of Cyrus. The difficult task of portraying the defeat of the “false kings” in stone was accomplished by the same means as in the Anabanini relief from the 3rd millennium b.c.: by using scale to indicate importance. Darius and his allies Gobryas and Artaphernes are clearly distinguished in this way from the small-sized rebels. Over the entire scene hovers the beneficent god Ahura Mazdā, who is repeatedly invoked in the inscription. The extreme precision of detail in the carving can be appreciated only from close up, but it is now known that not only were replicas of the inscription put up in several localities but also that a copy of the relief itself was erected at Babylon (Seidl, pp. 125ff., pls. 34-37), presumably in a less lofty position.

The principal studies on the relief and inscription are given at the end of iii below; see also Golzārī, pp. 339-64, figs. 244-71. For descriptions and interpretations by early travelers, see Luschey, 1969, p. 63 n. 2; 1974, pp. 139ff. Assessments of the reliefs from an artistic point of view can be found in Sarre and Herzfeld, pp. 189ff.; Herzfeld, 1920, pp. 16ff.; Schmidt, 1953, pp, 38ff.; Luschey, 1968, pp. 63-94, pls. 24-42; 1974, pp. 118f.; Farkas, 1974, pp. 30ff., pls. 13f., 1985, pp. 82ff., pls. 34f.

The Ionic column base from the Bīsotūn cemetery (Plate XII). This architectural fragment is a piece of light-colored dressed sandstone. It was found in the Bīsotūn cemetery by the writer in 1962 and was removed, with the village headman’s consent, to the excavation depot; it is now kept at Ṭāq-e Bostān. The piece is an Ionic column base in the Attic style, with a projecting lower torus, a curved concavity, and an upper torus, as in the classical example on the north porch of the Erechthcion at Athens. The diameter of the column base is 52 cm, that of the column shaft 42 cm. The preserved height is 33 cm. In 1974 the writer noted (Luschey, 1974, p. 121) Herzfeld’s comment that “the greatest visitor [to Bīsotūn] did not record his name” (p. 31). But, as Alexander did cause a lion monument to be erected at Ecbatana in honor of Hephaestus (Luschey, 1968, pp. 115-22), it seems plausible to speculate that, during his preceding march to Bīsotūn after learning that its “mountain of the gods” was sacred to Heracles, he erected a naiskos for Heracles Callinicus there. The closest parallel for the column base is at Aï-Khanum (Āy-ḵānom; Schlumberger, 1969, p. 28 Bild 2), the Greek town on the Oxus now known to have been founded by Alexander, and it may therefore be cautiously suggested that the Ionic column base is the only known remnant of a building erected at Bīsotūn by Alexander. Such a building could have been a naiskos of about the same size as the temple of Nike on the Acropolis at Athens, where the column bases have exactly the same diameter, 52 cm.

Plate XII. The Ionic column base.View full image in a new tab

The Seleucid figure of Heracles from 148 B.C. (Plate XIII). This rock carving of Heracles recumbent is in such high relief that it almost seems to have been sculpted in the round. It was found by ʿA. Ḥākemī during work to lower the level of the main road (1338 Š./1959-60, pp. 3ff.; Luschey, 1968, p. 30, pl. 16.2, 1974, pp. 122f., pls. 15-16; Golzārī, pp. 367-69, figs. 272-76). It is a clumsy piece of work, not up to the standard of the period, but important because of its datable Greek inscription. Perhaps inspired by a carving from the time of Alexander, it is an early example of the tradition of portraying Heracles reclining. Opinions differ on the question whether the figure of a lion below that of Heracles is a somewhat unusual depiction of the lion skin on which he is supposed to be reclining or, as D. Stronach supposed, an independent carving from the Median period (see above).

Plate XIII. The Seleucid relief of Heracles.View full image in a new tab

Parthian remains. These comprise reliefs of Mithridates II (123-87 B.C.) and Gotarzes II (ca. 50 b.c.) and the Parthian stone (see Herzfeld, 1920, pp. 35ff., pls. 21-23, 52a). These rock carvings were among the earliest discoveries at Bīsotūn. The relief of Mithridates depicts four satraps in a line before the king, with all the figures in profile, and thus is still strongly within the Achaemenid tradition. The relief of Gotarzes, which shows horsemen in combat and Nike hovering above, is more in a Roman style. Both these somewhat provincial works have suffered damage from weathering, and part of the Mithridates relief has been obliterated by the insertion in 1094/1684-85 of a waqf inscription by Shaikh ʿAlī Khan Zangana, who also built the New Caravansary (Gropp and Nadjmabadi, pp. 211ff.). This Zangana was an ancestor of the engineer Zangana of Kermānšāh, who established the sugar factory at Bīsotūn only 800 m from the relief of Darius. The Parthian stone, first discovered by O. Mann (1903, p. 328, fig. 2), bears a very crude carving of a sacrificial victim on an altar and another human figure beside it. The name in the inscription has been read by Gropp, (Gropp and Nadjmabadi, pp. 200f., fig. 14, pl. 101) as Vologases. Five Parthian kings named Vologases reigned between a.d. 51 and 228 (See balāš).

For further discussion and illustrations of the Parthian reliefs, see Ghirshman, 1954, p. 279, pl. 35b, 1962, p. 53, pl. 66; Vanden Berghe, p. 107, pls. 133c-d; Kleiss, p. 133, pl. 72.1; Luschey, 1974, pp. 124f. figs. 17, 18; Schlumberger, pp. 1041, 1078, pl. 64; Huff, 1984, p. 246, pl. 25; Golzārī, pp. 371-76, figs. 277-83; [Kawami].

Sasanian remains. The three large sculptured capitals (Plate XIV, Plate XV). These capitals were the first Sasanian remains at Bīsotūn to attract attention, having been sketched by G. A. Olivier in 1796 (Luschey, 1974, p. 128, figs. 19-24, p. 141, fig. 41a). After the relief of Darius, they are the most significant monuments at Bīsotūn, constituting important documents for the history of Sasanian art (their find spots are marked 1-3 on the plan; see also Golzārī, pp. 388-94, figs. 300-306). The question of where and when they were originally erected has been highly controversial. Herzfeld (1920, pp. 104ff., pls. 55-59) considered them to be from Ṭāq-e Bostān and datable to the reign of Ḵosrow II (590-628), though he mentioned that two of them had been found at Bīsotūn (p. 111, fig. 28), whereas Erdmann (1943, pp. 1ff.) argued for Bīsotūn and the reign of Pērōz (459-83). In the opinion of the present writer, they belong to Ḵosrow’s reign (Luschey, 1968, pp. 129ff., pls. 51-54).

Plate XIV. Sasanian capital with relief of Ḵosrow II.View full image in a new tab

Plate XV. Sasanian capital with relief of Anāhīd.View full image in a new tab

On each capital the king is portrayed on one side and the goddess Anāhīd on the opposite side; the remaining two sides are carved with floral ornament, including finely detailed lotus plants. Together with a fourth capital, now missing, they must have formed an architectural unit in which the goddess on one capital presented the garland of sovereignty to the king on the next capital, each capital and its column being linked to the next by an arch. In an attempt to find the original position of this unit, the writer dug some trial trenches in an area beside the Bīsotūn pool, but no trace of any former structure was found. It was impossible to explore the whole area, however, as part of it is covered with massive buildings. Another possibility is that the site of the capitals may have been on the bank of the Gamašāb some 100 m north of the Mongol building, at the point where the retaining wall intersects with one axis of a 19th-century garden (which probably follows an older alignment). Various Sasanian architectural remains, including one section of a profile, a piece of column, and some fragments of stone blocks, have been discovered closer to the Mongol building. At any rate, a site near water would explain the portrayal of Anāhīd on the capitals. She is similarly associated with Ḵosrow II on the reverse of one of that king’s silver coins. The capitals are products of the last flowering of Sasanian art, in the years around a.d. 600, in Ḵosrow II’s reign, and cannot be dated to the 5th century, which would shorten the history of Sasanian art by 150 years.

The Gamašāb retaining wall. These remains, which previous investigators had missed, were pointed out by local people. They are 5 m thick and faced with two or three courses of large blocks, mostly 70 cm high; the infill is of small stories set in mortar. On the land side the wall reaches a height of about 5 m (Luschey, 1968, p. 130, plan fig. 1, 1974, p. 129, fig. 28; Golzārī, pp. 381ff., figs. 288ff.). Its course can be followed for approximately 1,000 m on the right bank of the Gamašāb, which flows directly south at this point; the wall forms a right angle with the Sasanian bridge known as Pol-e Ḵosrow. In the 1930s, according to Qāżīzāda, the village headman, many of the stone blocks were removed and used in the new bridge, which was built some distance downstream on the road to Harsīn; they can still be recognized there.

Pol-e Ḵosrow. Remains of a bridge by this name were mentioned by Rawlinson (p. 114), and the name is still current among the local people. The masonry consists of a rubble-concrete core faced with stone blocks. Nine piers, each pointed on both sides, are still standing, but none of the superstructure remains. Kleiss examined and measured the bridge in 1966-67 and surmised that it had been left unfinished, for no remains of arches could be found in the riverbed. The bridge is ca. 150 m long and 6 m wide. It provided crossing for a straight road running due east in the direction of Taḵt-e Šīrīn; the course of this old road can be clearly seen, especially from the Tarāš-e Farhād (see below). These traces are evidence for the Sasanian surveying system, based on accurate reckoning of the north-south and east-west coordinates. About 500 m east of the bridge’s western end the road is joined at right angles by an embankment that runs south parallel to the retaining wall. Kleiss inferred that the rectangular area thus defined, with the river flowing through it, was probably a marshy preserve for hunting wild boars, as depicted in the Ṭāq-e Bostān relief. It has approximately the same dimensions as the paradeisos in front of Ṭāq-e Bostān (Schmidt, 1940, p. 80, pl. 96). Only two fragments of the southern boundary wall of this hunting park are visible (see new plan in Matheson, Germ. tr., p. 152, fig. 49a; see also Golzārī, pp. 382ff., figs. 290f.).

Tarāš-e Farhād (Plate XVI). This section of the cliff is of key importance in understanding the entire Sasanian building program at Bīsotūn. It is a chiseled rock face approximately 200 m wide and 30 m high, with a retaining wall ca. 150 m in front of it; it is thus the biggest such work in Iran and has interested writers from medieval geographers like Eṣṭaḵrī and Yāqūt (Schwarz, Iran IV, p. 452) to travelers and archeologists in modern times. Interpretations have differed widely: It has been considered the rear wall of a palace of Ḵosrow Parvēz prepared for a relief of Semiramis (Rawlinson); the site for a Sasanian king’s palace (King and Thompson, p. xxvi); a field prepared for an inscription of Darius (Jackson, pp. 187ff.); of the Achaemenid period (Herzfeld, 1920, p. 17; 1941, p. 221); of unknown date (Schmidt, 1953, I, p. 39; see also Golzārī pp. 378ff., fig. 286, and Huff, 1985, pp. 27-29, 44).

Plate XVI. Tarāš-e Farhād.View full image in a new tab

Local tradition, as reported in the 1960s and as noted earlier by Jackson (p. 188), attributes the work to Ḵosrow Parvēz’s architect Farhād, which points to the Sasanian period and prompts examination of Neẓāmī’s poem Ḵosrow o Šīrīn, begun about 1180. Neẓāmī mentions three great works of Farhād: the milk channel, the passage cut through the mountain at Bīsotūn, and the portrait of Šīrīn. Miniature paintings are particularly helpful in clarifying matters at Bīsotūn. The story of Farhād and Šīrīn was a favorite theme for miniatures, stucco work, and paintings on tiles and under glass from the 9th/15th to the 14th/20th century. This subject requires detailed study, on which the present writer has embarked in connection with a forthcoming publication on Bīsotūn. One of the most revealing works of art is a miniature of ca. 973/1575 (at Oxford), which depicts a meeting of Farhād with Šīrīn in front of the pool at Mount Bīsotūn; a slab carved with effigies of two lovers is set into the hillside, which is clearly identifiable as the great rock face (Plate XVII). Taken together, the poetry, the miniatures, and the data from examination of the site suggest that Farhād was the architect of the Sasanian works at Bīsotūn. The chiseled rock face must be the wall of his “passage through the mountain for twenty horsemen.” The milk channel, which is also often depicted in miniatures (e.g., Guest, fig. 48A, a miniature in The Freer Gallery of Art), is likely to have been the working channel on top of the cliff—an opinion in which G. Cameron concurred (oral communication). The notion of the “portrait of Šīrīn” may well have been evoked by the capitals showing Anāhīd and Ḵosrow Parvēz, which were certainly visible in the time of Neẓāmī and his informants, as they have never been buried under earth. The first writer to connect them with Šīrīn was ʿAbd-al-Karīm, in 1145/1741, probably relying on local tradition (Luschey, 1974, p. 141). References to the Sasanian remains in the literature of the early Islamic period apparently stirred people’s imaginations and inspired poetic compositions in later times. Although Neẓāmī never left his hometown, Ganja, and thus never saw Bīsotūn, he had access to information recorded by geographers in the 4th/10th century and passed on as part of the literary tradition. (Cf. also Soucek, 1974, pp. 27-52, where Farhād is discussed in connection with Ṭāq-e Bostān, but not with Bīsotūn.)

Plate XVII. Miniature of Farhād and Šīrīn, Bodleian Museum, Oxford University.View full image in a new tab

Study of the cliff face of Farhād from a different point of view was undertaken by the architect W. Salzmann. His researches included especially the risky examination and measuring of the work area above the cut-away section of the rock (pp. 110-34, figs. 6-14, with a plan of the entire cliff and its surroundings). He has considerably clarified the method of working and has calculated the volume of rock removed at approximately 40,000 m³ (p. 120). In attempting to reconstruct what was originally planned, he concluded that there was to be a huge terrace at a height of 30 m and an enormous ayvān hollowed out of the rock, probably on the same scale as the Ṭāq-e Kesrā at Ctesiphon, with reliefs on either side (fig. 21). This hypothesis is consonant with earlier theories suggesting a palace (Rawlinson) or fire temple built against the cliff; it is impossible to prove conclusively, however.

The dressed stone blocks on the hillside. These stones were noted by early European travelers but were not identified as Sasanian until the present writer was able to gather evidence. He found that they are of the same rock as the Tarāš-e Farhād and that they bear masons’ marks that match markings on Sasanian seals and are clearly of the same form as the masons’ marks on the Tarāš-e Farhād, the Gamašāb retaining wall, and the dressed stones in the Old Caravansary. The blocks, numbering several hundred, are found along the whole stretch of the hillside below the Tarāš-e Farhād as far as the ravine of Darius and beyond along the Parthian slope up to the Kurdish gravestones—a distance of more than 2,000 m (Luschey, 1974, pp. 129, 142, fig. 27; Salzmann, p. 132, n. 46; Golzārī, p. 380, fig. 282).

The Old Caravansary (Plate XVIII). This monument was not discovered until rather late, as the village has been built on top of it. Herzfeld saw no sign of it, though Flandin and Coste had marked a “mur antique” on their plan of Bīsotūn in 1840 (I, pl. 15). It is a square building, measuring ca. 80 x 80 m, with the entrance in the center of the front wall and three slightly (80 cm) projecting buttresses on each side. The walls are about 2 m thick. The front wall is built of massive stone blocks ca. 80 cm high, three courses of which are still standing at one point. There are traces of interior rooms built against the perimeter wall, eight on each side. The writer named this building Old Caravansary because of early travelers’ reports. Abel Pincon, the secretary for Sir Anthony Sherley’s embassy to Shah ʿAbbās I, mentions that in 1598 the group had had to spend one night in a ruined caravansary at Bīsotūn. Pietro della Valle stayed there in 1618 and Jean de Thévenot in 1664 (see Luschey, 1974, pp. 139ff. for full references).

Plate XVIII. The old caravansary.View full image in a new tab

To replace this Old Caravansary, the New Caravansary was built in 1092-96/1681-85. Excavation revealed that the stonework of the old building remains only in the massive perimeter wall, the entrance (which is 2.60 m wide), and in an internal partition wall parallel to the east facade. In the 14th century the upper parts of the partition walls were demolished, and the previously mentioned rooms built over their remains. Some 14th-century pottery was found in the fill above the old walls.

The construction date of the older building was for a long time in doubt. The monumental stone blocks still standing in the outer wall have the same shape and the same masons’ marks as the blocks on the hillside and in the retaining walls of the Tarāš-e Farhād and the Gamašāb and must therefore be recognized as Sasanian. The question is whether the building in which they were used was of Sasanian or early Islamic origin. I was at first inclined to accept a Sasanian date (Luschey, 1965, pp. 22f.; Golzārī, pp. 384ff., figs. 292-99, following Luschey; Luschey, 1974, p. 130, figs. 30, 33), citing analogies with late Roman fortifications on the Euphrates) but finally came to a different conclusion. One consideration was the inconsistency of the building’s orientation with the Sasanian north-south and east-west axes, another the fact that no Sasanian artifacts were found in it, the third—and most decisive—the nature of a small structure in the center of the courtyard. This structure is a mosque, measuring ca. 10 x 10 m and oriented toward Mecca. It is the oldest Iranian example of the mosque in the courtyard, which was to become an essential component of Anatolian caravansaries (K. and H. Erdmann, pp. 92ff., esp. p. 98). The orientation deviates by only six degrees from that of the modern village mosque nearby. The walls are of rubble concrete 2 m thick, the internal area ca. 6 m², and the doorway 1.10 m wide.

Local people pointed out a stone block (Plate XIX) inscribed with the Islamic profession of faith in the Sonqorābād plain 4 km from Bīsotūn (Gropp and Nadjmabadi, p. 209; Luschey, 1974, p. 137, fig. 38; Golzārī, p. 397, fig. 367). From a combined study of this stone and the courtyard mosque the writer concluded that the stone may have come from above the doorway. There has never seemed any question that this fine inscription is from the Buyid period (4-5th/10-11th centuries). It may well have come from the same workshop as the stone blocks with Kufic inscriptions at Sarmāj, the fortress built by the Kurdish prince Ḥasanūya/Ḥasanwayh (d. 368/979), and eventually captured by the Saljuq Ṭoḡrel Beg in 441/1049 (Le Strange, Lands, p. 189). Ḥasanūya was an active builder, as the walls of his fortress at Sarmāj show; he is also reported to have built a large mosque at Dīnavar. It therefore seems reasonable to suggest him as the builder of the Old Caravansary. Probably it was not a caravansary at that time but a fortified military outpost, close to the spring and not far from the Sasanian bridge and the road to Taḵt-e Šīrīn and Sarmāj. Such a garrison would have been useful for blockading the old caravan route that passed through Bīsotūn from Kermānšāh to Hamadān.

Plate XIX. Inscribed block from Sonqorābād.View full image in a new tab

After the end of the German campaign of excavations at Bīsotūn (1963-67), and against the express wishes of the writer, the modern village was demolished. Subsequently, in 1975, further excavations in the Old Caravansary were conducted by M. Rahbar. He found a second entrance ca. 3 m wide on the west side (without steps) and barricade walls extending to the hillside (plan in Kleiss and Kīānī). Finds of artifacts were, however, evidently scarce (see Cinquième Symposium Annuel, p. 31). Photographs of Bīsotūn after the demolition of the village have been published by Masʿūd Golzārī (figs. 313, 315).

The Mongol building. This structure was discovered by the writer in a reconnaissance along the bank of the Gamašāb. A mound of debris could be seen there on a site roughly 25 m wide and 30 m long (22 x 30.7 m, as measured by Kleiss), and the presence of 14th-century potsherds and fragments of cut brick immediately suggested a Mongol building. This hypothesis was confirmed in subsequent excavation work by L. Trümpelmann and proved conclusively by Kleiss in 1966-67 (Golzārī, p. 400, with plan). The building was a sort of kiosk facing the river, decorated on the outside with cut bricks comparable to those on the Gonbad-e ʿAlawīān at Hamadān and the Mostanṣerīya in Baghdad. The interior rooms were decorated with glazed bricks.

In this connection Qāżīzāda, the village headman, related that a royal town named Solṭānābād-e Jamjamāl had once existed in the same part of the plain, which accords with the report of Ḥamd-Allāh Mostawfī Qazvīnī (writing in 741/1340) that the īl-ḵān Oljāytū/Öljeytü (703-17/1304-17) had erected buildings there (Schwarz, Iran, p. 487; Golzārī, pp. 398ff., figs. 310ff.).

The Safavid caravansary and bridge. The Safavid caravansary was built by Shaikh ʿAlī Khan Zangana, the same man who destroyed a large part of the relief of Mithridates to make way for his waqf inscription. This handsome structure, built in 1092-96/1681-85, is of brick on dressed stone socles and measures ca. 80 m wide and 90 m long; the interior courtyard is 50 x 52 m and has four ayvāns. The adjacent sleeping rooms are vaulted, and there is vaulted stabling behind. This plain, monumental building is one of the larger Safavid caravansaries still in a good state of preservation, though now lacking its original entrance pavilion. It was thoroughly surveyed by Kleiss in 1966-67 (1970, pp. 289-308, pls. 127-30; Golzārī, pp. 404-13, figs. 315-26).

The old caravan track over the plain to Kermānšāh is still discernible; it comes from the bridge at Sarpol-e Šāh but follows a different route from that of the modern highway, which runs closer to the foot of the mountains and then makes a 90-degree turn in the direction of Kermānšāh. The four-arched bridge was built in conjunction with the caravansary; it contains Sasanian stone blocks probably taken from the nearby hillside. As a work of engineering it is simple but typical of the period. It too was surveyed by Kleiss in 1966-67, but his report remains unpublished (Golzārī, pp. 402ff., fig. 313).

The surrounding district and the “Paradise of the Ḵosrows” (Figure 20). Bīsotūn must not be viewed simply as an isolated site containing historical monuments. It formed instead an integral part of a larger district, which was particularly well defined in the Sasanian period, as can be seen from other contemporary remains found throughout the entire area.

Figure 20. The landscape around Bīsotūn: “Paradise of the Ḵosrows”.View full image in a new tab

The most important is, of course, Ṭāq-e Bostān (q.v.), 30 km away, which is also connected with Ḵosrow II (Herzfeld, 1920, pp. 57ff., pls. 27-65; Erdmann, pp. 1ff.; Fukai and Horiuchi; see also Luschey, 1975, p. 113, pls. 25-32).

In the immediate neighborhood of Bīsotūn is Taḵt-e Šīrīn (q.v.), 10 km away, where stone blocks and debris from a collapsed building can be seen. A sloping terrace at Sarmāj, somewhat farther south, was reported by medieval authors to be the place where Ḵosrow II received envoys from China and Rome (Schwarz, pp. 485ff.). An inclined wall of large closely set blocks discovered by the writer in 1962-63 is probably to be identified with this terrace (Trümpelmann, pp. 11ff.). This Sasanian terrace (called dokkān by the Arab geographers) was later enclosed within the walls of Ḥasanūya’s castle. As already mentioned, the writer believes that this Kurdish prince of the Buyid period also built the Old Caravansary at Bīsotūn. In view of the importance of Sarmāj for both Sasanian and Buyid history, a full investigation was planned, but it could not be carried out.

Farther inland, at Harsīn, a cliff face has been hewn away in the same technique as at the Tarāš-e Farhād, though it is considerably smaller (Huff, 1985, pp. 15ff., pls. 1-22).

There is also a series of find spots on the old caravan route from Bīsotūn to Kermānšāh. At Ḥājīābād, Herzfeld saw some Sasanian capitals and plinths (1920, p. 115, fig. 29; Luschey, 1968, p. 132, fig. 3, pl. 53.3-4) . The bridge over the Qarasū at Sarpol-e Šāh contains plundered Sasanian capitals (observed by the writer in 1962 but not yet published). In Kermānšāh itself a number of Sasanian capitals can still be seen, and their distribution suggests that they are remains of a palace (Luschey, 1968, pp. 129ff., figs. 4-5, pl. 53.6). The founder of this city is traditionally said to have been Bahrām IV (r. 389-99). The capital found at Qalʿa-ye Kohna by Herzfeld in 1916 (1920, pp. 115ff., figs. 30-31, pl. 60) and rediscovered by the writer (Luschey, 1968, pp. 129ff., fig. 2, pl. 52.1-2) probably cannot be taken as evidence of a Sasanian building there; very likely it was brought there from Kermānšāh.

The evidence thus suggests a distinct cultural area on this fertile plain, for which C. Ritter (p. 975) suggested the name “Paradise of the Ḵosrows”; the original name may be Nisaya, as in Darius’s inscription (DB 1.58, Kent, Old Persian, pp. 118, 120, 194).

BISOTUN iii. Darius's Inscriptions

The monumental relief of Darius I, King of Persia, representing the king’s victory over the usurper Gaumāta and the nine rebels (cf. ii, above), is surrounded by a great trilingual inscription in Old Persian (text DB in Kent, Old Persian), Elamite, and Babylonian. This inscription is the most important document of the entire ancient Near East and a major key to understanding its languages. It alone made it possible to decipher cuneiform writing and thus to open the door to previously totally unknown ancient civilizations; in that sense it has had a value comparable to that of the Rosetta stone for Egyptology.

Over the millennia all the inscriptions on the rock at Bīsotūn, especially the Babylonian version, have suffered severe damage from erosion by rain and drifting sand and from seasonal torrents. Calcareous deposits on the engraved cuneiform characters caused by water seepage have obscured several passages, but at the same time they have preserved them from weathering. Further damage has been done in this century by soldiers marching along the highway below the range and using the figures in the relief as shooting targets. As a consequence of all these circumstances all three versions contain undecipherable portions and gaps. We must be thankful for the fact that after the monument had been completed the king ordered the stairway removed and the path and part of the cliff sheared off, eliminating all means of access to the relief and inscriptions, which until recently have thus been accessible only by means of a steep and difficult climb up the rock face.

Darius was presumably inspired to choose Bīsotūn as the site for his triumphal rock relief by the existence of such a relief sponsored by the local ruler Anubanini, king of the Lullubi tribes (r. ca. 2000 b.c.), at Sar-e Pol-e Zohāb at the so-called Gates of the Zagros mountains (also Gates of Asia) ca. 150 km west of Bīsotūn. It is quite possible that Darius traveled along Mt. Bīsotūn in the spring of 521 b.c., when he followed the old route from Babylon via Sar-e Pol to Media, where, on 8 May 521 near the town of Kunduruš, he fought the rebellious Fravartiš, who called himself XšaΘrita (DB 2.64-70, par. 31). It may also have been near Bīsotūn that Darius had won that decisive victory over Gaumāta of which he informs us in DB 1.55-61 (par. 13): “In the month Bāgayādiš 10 days were past [i.e., on 29 September 522]; then I with a few men slew that Gaumāta the Magian, and those who were his foremost followers. (There are) a fortress by name Sikayuvatiš (and) a district by name Nisāya in Media,—there I slew him. I deprived him of the kingdom. By the favor of Ahura Mazdā I became king. Ahura Mazdā bestowed the kingdom upon me.” Furthermore, certain formulas reminiscent of Urartian ones suggest that Darius may also have been inspired at least indirectly by the rock inscriptions of the Urartian kings. At any rate, work on the Bīsotūn relief began soon after the overthrow of the rebellious Margian Frāda on 28 December 521, thus early in the year 520 b.c.

History of research. The inscription was first studied in 1835-37, 1844, and 1847 by Henry C. Rawlinson, who had himself let down by ropes from the top of the cliff; he edited the Old Persian and Babylonian versions of the text himself (Rawlinson, 1846-47, 1849, 1851) but entrusted his paper impressions of the Elamite version to Edwin Norris for publication (Norris, 1855). By making his copies of the trilingual inscription available to scholars, Rawlinson paved the way for the decipherment of the Elamite and Babylonian writing systems and helped establish Assyriology, or cuneiform studies, as a distinct branch of learning.

Research on the inscriptions themselves was continued mainly by A. V. Williams Jackson, who in 1903 made a partial examination of the text and took the first photographs of it (see Jackson, 1903, 1906); by L. W. King and R. C. Thompson in 1904; and finally by George G. Cameron, who in the fall of 1948 made latex impressions and studied the entire text, including the first Elamite version, which had previously been regarded as completely illegible. Cameron’s squeezes of most of the Babylonian version were later seriously damaged in an unfortunate accident, but he took new ones in the spring of 1957.

An edition of the Old Persian version was published by Roland G. Kent in 1950 in his edition of the Old Persian texts (pp. 116-35, including text, critical apparatus, and English translation along with a grammar of Old Persian and a glossary). The second edition (1953) incorporated the readings published by Cameron (1951). The most recent translation (in German) is that by Rykle Borger and Walther Hinz (1984), based primarily on the Old Persian version and with an almost complete apparatus giving the divergences between the versions. An edition and translation of the Babylonian version was published by Elizabeth N. von Voigtlander for the Corpus Inscriptionum Iranicarum in 1978 (without illustrations). The Aramaic translation of the Bīsotūn inscription was published and translated by A. Cowley in his Aramaic Papyri of the Fifth Century B.C., 1923, and more recently by Jonas C. Greenfield and B. Porten for the Corpus Inscriptionum Iranicarum (1982). See further the Bibliography, which gives the publications that should still be consulted.

An up-to-date edition of the Old Persian text is an urgent desideratum, since the text as Kent printed it, has been emended on a great number of major or minor points. For the Elamite text one still has to rely on Weissbach’s edition and translation (1911), while consulting more recent Elamite studies, mostly scattered around in journals. Even Voigtlander’s edition of the Babylonian version, based on the squeezes made by Rawlinson and Cameron, because it does not include photographs or even a hand copy, cannot be verified in any respect. Thus this most important document of the Achaemenid era is still in need of reliable critical editions.

Arrangement of the inscriptions. The Old Persian version of the big inscription is engraved beneath the panel of sculptures; the so-called “first” Elamite version occupies the space to the right of the relief and the Babylonian one the space to the left. The second Elamite version, which was necessitated by an extension of the relief sculptures into the zone of the original text, was engraved diagonally to the left below the relief (Figure 21). In addition, there are minor inscriptions on the free parts of the relief panel itself and on its lower margin (DBa-1; Figure 22).

Figure 21. The positions of the Old Persian, Elamite, and Babylonian versions of the major trilingual inscription DB on the rock at Bīsotūn.View full image in a new tab

Figure 22. The positions of the minor Old Persian (“Per.”), Elamite (“Sus.”), and Babylonian (“Bab.”) inscriptions DBa-1 (“A-L”) on the Bīsotūn relief.View full image in a new tab

Apparently it was the relief that was intended to be the centerpiece of the whole monument; the main inscriptions, as Figure 21 clearly shows, are related spatially not to one another but to the relief. Research since the 1960s, conducted mainly by Trümpelmann, Heinz Luschey, Hinz, Voigtlander, and Borger, has demonstrated that there were several stages in the genesis of both the relief and the inscriptions. These stages are summarized in Table 8.

Table 8. The Different Stages in the Genesis of the Bīsotūn Monument.View full image in a new tab

The monument was created between the end of Darius’s first regnal year (in March, 520 b.c.) and after the end of his third (in 518 b.c.), and the first main inscription was in Elamite. Whether or not a preceding shorter version of the text (e.g., one containing pars. 1-51 only) ever existed is an open question; at any rate the final draft designed for engraving contained pars. 1-69. This inscription was in Elamite, which must have been the official language of the royal court until ca. 520 b.c., when the Babylonian and Old Persian versions were added (stages III and IV). Since the Old Persian script did not exist at that time the words were dictated by the king in Old Persian for translation into Elamite by bilingual Elamite scribes in the royal chancellery, where the text was to be preserved as the model for all later versions. Thus we see that, in contrast to the other trilingual inscriptions of the Achaemenid kings, the Bīsotūn inscription was not trilingual from the beginning but evolved through rather complex processes. The small inscriptions accompanying the figures in the relief must have been engraved in the same sequence as the main text: first Elamite, then Babylonian, and finally Old Persian. However, only the Elamite version of the small inscription DBa, placed on the relief itself, belongs to stage I and must have been engraved before the main Elamite text, as proved by differences in the titles of the king in paragraph 1 between the two texts (see Weissbach, pp. 8-9, 74, and 75 note b). One has the impression that the relief and DBa are more personal, conveying the immediacy of events, whereas the main inscription is the product of cool officialdom. The minor inscriptions DBb-j seem to form a separate group (which was then translated into Babylonian) and may thus be somewhat later.

Soon after the Elamite original was inscribed (presumably at the beginning of 519 b.c.), the Babylonian version was added on a projecting slope that looks like a huge clay tablet leaning against the rock, not on a perpendicular flat surface, as all the other texts. Engraving began at a level well above the top of the relief, but, when it became apparent that the entire text would not fit on the rock face, the left face of the projection was also dressed, and engraving continued there, beginning with fine 36. From that point on, the lines continue across both faces of the rock and are more than 4 m long. Later in the same year the Old Persian text was added. Though a translation of the Elamite text, it probably represents what the king regarded as the definitive version. It must have been read out to him for his approval and edited by him before engraving; this would account for the occasional omissions and minor changes. In Old Persian the text received an additional paragraph (par. 70). Today this paragraph is badly damaged, but its essentials can be recovered from its Elamite version (DB 1). Owing to lack of space, this paragraph could no longer be added at the end of the main Elamite text but had to be fitted into the free space above the relief to the left. The added paragraph (DB 4.88-92, par. 70) makes it perfectly clear that this was the first time Old Persian cuneiform was used and that the script was created expressly for this purpose: “Says Darius the king: By the will of Ahura Mazdā that is my script, which I made. Also, it was in Aryan, and it was placed (?) on clay tablets and parchment. Also, I made my name (?). Also, I made the lineage. And it was inscribed and was read before me. After that I sent this script everywhere into the lands. The people learned (?) (it).” In addition to Darius’s statement there is proof from the script itself that this was the first inscription to be written in Old Persian cuneiform. It differs from all other Old Persian texts in the shape of two signs: In the later texts all the signs fill the line to the top, while in DB both the word divider and the first vertical wedge of the y sign are only half as high as the rest. Furthermore, the word divider in DB is an oblique wedge and not an angle as in the later inscriptions (see Hinz, 1973, p. 24).

The Elamite text later had to be moved. After the defeat of the Elamites under Atamaita (not portrayed on the relief) and the Scythians under Skunkha in Darius’s second and third regnal years (DB 5), the figure of Skunkha had to be added to the right end of the queue of subdued rebels. It had thus to be cut into the first Elamite text, which had to be completely abandoned and therefore was meticulously copied and placed to the left of the Old Persian version. This second Elamite text was carved on a carefully dressed surface where the rock with the Babylonian version had been undercut. In the final stage, six more paragraphs recording the recent events were added to the Old Persian text in a separate, fifth, column.

It was noted above that the Elamite text of DBa (10 lines paralleling pars. 1-4 of the main Elamite text), which accompanies the figure of the king himself, must have been inscribed before the Elamite version of the main inscription was composed. There was no room for a Babylonian version of this short text; the Old Persian one (18 lines) must, as Figure 21 shows, be later than

DB 1 (the Elamite equivalent of DB OPers. par. 70).

Altogether the inscriptions occupy an area 7.80 m high and 22 m long. The first Elamite inscription is to the right of the relief (King and Thompson, who could read only a few words of the poorly preserved and much weathered text, called it “supplementary texts”); it is in four columns, totaling 323 lines. The second Elamite inscription is arranged in three columns of 81, 85, and 94 lines respectively, totaling 260 lines. Even though it was written after the Old Persian version, it does not contain the final paragraph 70. According to Cameron (1960, pp. 59-61), the two Elamite versions are largely identical.

The Babylonian text flanking the relief on the left is arranged in one single column containing 112 lines (some of them exceptionally long). Like the Elamite text it does not contain the final paragraph 70. The placement of the text and the empty space after it show clearly that this was the original arrangement. Voigtlander (p. 73) distinguishes eight engravers. The Old Persian version is placed directly below the relief in 5 columns of 96, 98, 92, 92, and 36 lines respectively, for a total of 414 lines (about 3,600 words).

The eleven minor inscriptions DBa-k identify the persons in the relief (DBa the king, DBb Gaumāta, DBc-k the nine rebellious pretenders to the throne), to whom they are placed as close as possible. The Elamite versions of DBc-j (3-8 lines each) are located directly above the heads of the figures; DBb was of necessity placed beneath the figure of Gaumāta, who lies prostrate under Darius. The Babylonian versions (3 or 4 lines) appear directly below the figures, DBb below the Elamite text. The Old Persian versions of these minor inscriptions (6-12 lines) were added above the Elamite ones wherever possible. The Old Persian DBe, however, was carved on the pretender’s skirt, because the winged emblem of Ahura Mazdā hovering over the scene extended above the Elamite text. DBb (Gaumāta) was placed directly under Darius himself. DBk (Skunkha), added later, is only in Elamite and Old Persian (2 lines each).

Copies of the Bīsotūn inscription. According to paragraph 70, Darius had copies and translations of the Bīsotūn inscription circulated to all the provinces of his empire. Parts of such copies in Babylonian have been found at Babylon and in an Aramaic translation at Elephantine. Dandamaev and others have claimed that it was also translated into other languages, such as Greek, but for lack of any conclusive supporting evidence this must remain an open question. It should be noted, however, that a number of statements in the histories of Herodotus look like literal translations of the inscription and suggest that the Bīsotūn text could have been known to the Greek author (see, e.g., Martorelli).

The two fragments of the inscription found in Babylon, though very small, are important because they show that the complete Bīsotūn inscription was made public in Babylon (Voigtlander, pp. 63-66). The first (BE 3627, renumbered Berlin VA Bab. 1502) is a piece (26 cm high, 40 cm long) of a basalt block containing the remains of 13 lines each from two columns, corresponding to lines 55-58 and 69-72 of the Bīsotūn text; it offers only a few additions to the Babylonian version of Bīsotūn and cannot be an exact copy of it; in fact, it seems closer to the Elamite and Old Persian texts. The second fragment (Bab. 41446, apparently now lost) contains only 5 lines of a few words each, corresponding to lines 91-95 and 108-9 of the Bīsotūn text. These two fragments, as well as some anepigraphic blocks preserved at Babylon, may come from a single monument, which U. Seidl (pp. 125-30) attempted to identify as a copy of Darius’s Bīsotūn relief and inscription.

The remnants of an Aramaic translation found on papyrus fragments at the Jewish military colony of Elephantine/Jeb in Egypt, dating from as late as ca. 420 b.c., are more important. There are two sheets and dozens of fragments, written in large, handsome letters but so badly damaged that not a single line is complete. The extant fragments no doubt represent a translation copied from an older document preserved as an important historical record by provincial governors and made known to the people in public readings or published copies. The copying of the official translation by scribes in the royal chancellery may have been inspired in this particular instance by special events during the reign of Darius II (see Greenfield and Porten, p. 3). The Aramaic text is composed in official or Imperial Aramaic and resembles the Babylonian version quite closely, though the exact relationship between this and the other versions, especially the Babylonian, has yet to be established. According to Greenfield and Porten 79 lines on five columns, of ca. 190 lines on eleven columns of the original papyrus scroll, have been partly preserved; there is no evidence that a second recension existed, as Cowley had assumed. The Aramaic version diverges from the Old Persian one in the passage between those sentences that correspond approximately to pars. 44 and 49 of the Babylonian and pars. 55, 60-61 of the Old Persian text (lines 64 and 71-73 respectively). As a matter of fact, a part of the final paragraph (ll. 50-60) of Darius I’s tomb inscription at Naqs-e Rostam (DNb) addressed to future kings has been incorporated into these sections of the Aramaic translation (see Sims-Williams), but we do not know when and how this took place.

Contents of the inscription. The great inscription on the rock at Bīsotūn is unique in scope and historical importance, for it is the only text of an Achaemenid king that contains a narrative of historical events. It must be interpreted as a genuine res gestae, whose author chose this medium for self-expression and self-justification. In the preamble to the inscription, Darius proclaims his title to the kingship as the legitimate successor of his relatives Cyrus II and Cambyses II, justifying his claim by the argument that only he was able to recover the power that the usurper Gaumāta had taken away from the Achaemenid dynasty. He recites his own ancestry and gives a list of the twenty-three lands (including Persia) that belonged to the empire when he became king in 522 b.c. (DB 1.12-17, par. 6); this is the oldest known list of provinces in Iranian literature. The subsequent part of the introduction presents an account of the events that had led to the killing of Gaumāta and to Darius’s accession to the throne on 29 September 522 b.c.

In the body of the text Darius then describes at great length (DB 1.71-4.32, pars. 15-53) the activities of his accession year and of the first year of his reign: The main narrative includes the series of struggles against the pretenders and rebels whom Darius had to defeat in order to secure the crown. In contrast to the relief, in which these nine so-called “Liar-Kings” are pictured in chronological order according to the date of their overthrow, the inscription describes the campaigns in a general geographical sequence. The order on the relief is as follows: 1. Gaumāta, the first “false Smerdis” (slain on 29 September 522); 2. Āçina (delivered up to Darius perhaps in mid-December, 522, though no date is given); 3. Nadintabaira/Nidintu-Bēl (taken prisoner shortly after 18 December 522); 4. Fravartiš (taken prisoner and impaled shortly after 8 May 521); 5. Martiya (no date given); 6. Čiçantaxma/Tritantaikhmes (seized on 15 July 521, according to the Babylonian version, as interpreted by Borger, pp. 24f.); 7. Vahyazdāta, the second “false Smerdis” (taken prisoner on the same day); 8. Araxa (seized on 27 November 521 and impaled shortly afterward); 9. Frāda (defeated and, as expressly stated by the Babylonian version [1.70], executed on 28 December 521). In contrast to this, the order given in the main part of the inscription and in the short summary of par. 52 (DB 4.2-31) is the following: 1. Gaumāta; 2. Āçina; 3. Nadintabaira; 4. Martiya; 5. Fravartiš; 6. Čiçantaxma; 7. Frāda; 8. Vahyazdāta; 9. Araxa. Five times Darius boasts that he accomplished all these things in one and the same year, and that this boast may be true (as sworn by Darius himself in DB 4.43-45, par. 57) has recently been argued in a cogent and compelling manner by Borger, pp. 20ff.: If the murder of Gaumāta is eliminated from this “one year,” all the events from the first victory over the Babylonians on 13 December 522 (the twenty-sixth day of the ninth month) until the overthrow of Frāda on 28 December 521 (the twenty-third day of the same month in the following year) did indeed happen in one year, for the accession year of Darius I had, as we know from other evidence, an intercalary month and thus lasted from 27 March 522 to 13 April 521 b.c. (see Parker and Dubberstein, pp. 7, 30). In the fifth column of the Old Persian version (not in the others) there is a short postscript recording the operations finished in the second and third years, namely, the campaigns against the Elamites under Atamaita and the Scythians with the pointed caps led by Skunkha.

The inscription may be summarized as follows (based chiefly on the German translation by Borger and Hinz):

I (OPers. 1.1-26 pars. 1-9): the king’s name, titles, and ancestral line; the sphere and mode of his government.

II (1.26-71 pars. 10-14): the murder of Smerdis by Cambyses; Gaumāta’s rebellion; the death of Cambyses; the assassination of Gaumāta; Darius’s accession to the throne.

III (1.71-2.5 pars. 15-20): the rebellions of Āçina in Elam and of Nadintabaira in Babylon; their execution.

IV A (2.5-8 par. 21): list of the nine provinces that became rebellious during Darius’s stay in Babylon.

IV B (2.8-13 pars. 22-23): the rebellion of Martiya in Elam and his execution.

IV C (2.13-92 pars. 24-34): the rebellion of Fravartiš in Media and his execution in Ecbatana; several victories gained during the same period by the king’s generals (the text is quite vague in some respects) over rebellious Armenians; the rebellion of Čiçantaxma in Sagartia and his execution.

IV D (2.92-3.10 pars. 35-37): Parthia and Hyrcania, having joined the rebellious Fravartiš, are defeated by Darius’s father, Hystaspes.

IV E (3.10-21 pars. 38-39): the rebellion of Frāda in Marv and his overthrow by Dādṛšiš.

IV F (3.21-53 pars. 40-44): the rebellion of Vahyazdāta in Persia and his execution.

IV G (3.54-76 pars. 45-48): the events provoked by a follower of Vahyazdāta in Arachosia and brought to an end by the satrap Vivāna.

V (3.76-4.2 pars. 49-51): the rebellion of the Armenian Araxa in Babylon and his execution.

VI A (4.2-32 pars. 52-53): summary of the nine pretenders to the throne and the nineteen battles fought with them.

VI B (4.33-36 par. 54): the reasons for the rise and suppression of these rebellions: the “Lie” (drauga) and Ahura Mazdā respectively.

VI C (4.36-40 par. 55): warning against the “Lie.”

VI D (4.40-50 pars. 56-58): the king solemnly reiterates his love of truth (hašiya).

VI E (4.50-52 par. 59): the uniqueness of Darius’s achievements.

VI F (4.52-59 pars. 60-61): the king’s appeal to future people to disseminate the text.

VI G (4.59-67 par. 62-63): Ahura Mazdā’s assistance to Darius.

VI H (4.67-80 pars. 64-67): the king appeals to future kings and those who will see the Bīsotūn monument.

VII (4.80-88 pars. 68-69): the six followers assisting Darius against Gaumāta; an admonition to future kings to uphold the descendants of those followers [end of the original text].

VIII (4.88-92 par. 70): the introduction of the new writing and the spread of the text (see above).

IX A (5.1-20 pars. 71-73): the rebellion of Atamaita in Elam and its overthrow by Gobryas.

IX B (5.20-36 pars. 74-76): Darius’s victory over the Scythians under Skunkha.

Comparison of the three versions. It is quite clear that there is a close resemblance between the Aramaic and Babylonian versions, on one hand, and between the Elamite and Old Persian ones, on the other, but the particulars are rather complex. It has been repeatedly supposed that the Bīsotūn text was originally written in both Aramaic and Elamite (see, e.g., Dandamaev and Wiesehöfer) or in Aramaic alone (Borger, p. 28, who alleged that only the Aramaic text seems actually to describe nineteen battles), but the evidence for these assumptions is inconclusive.

The introductory formula that divides the Old Persian text into seventy-six “paragraphs” (“says Darius the king”) is also attested in the Elamite and Babylonian versions, but in considerably fewer instances, distinguishing only fifty-four and fifty-five paragraphs respectively, instead of sixty-nine. The subdivision of these two versions is identical, except that the division corresponding to par. 69 in the Old Persian version is missing in Elamite. Of other discrepancies and similarities to be found among the three versions of the Bīsotūn text the following may be mentioned (see, recently, Schmitt, pp. 107ff.). A peculiarity of the Babylonian and Aramaic versions is the inclusion of the numbers of enemies killed or captured. These two versions also agree on month names and various other, especially geographical names, including those of Iranian origin. (In contrast to the Elamite forms, the Babylonian and Aramaic ones do not show the dialectological features of Old Persian.) The Babylonian version also contains additions relevant only to Babylonian readers, not found in the Aramaic version.

Evaluation. The value of the inscription as an historical source and the truth of its statements can be judged in particular by a number of correspondences in detail with the histories of Herodotus. These passages include the accounts of the death of Smerdis and the revolt of Gaumāta the Magian, the list of Darius’s six fellow conspirators (Herodotus, 3.70.1-2, and DB 4.80-86 par. 68), as well as individual statements like the claim that Smerdis had the same father and mother as Cambyses (Herodotus, 3.30.1, and DB 1.29ff.).

The Bīsotūn inscription is also a valuable piece of literature. Among its prototypes are certainly the Assyrian Royal Annals, chiefly those from the time of Assurbanipal (see Harmatta). In contrast to such texts, however, DB reflects the narrative models and repetitive style that are so characteristic of oral poetry. For example, each paragraph of the text begins with the formula “Says Darius the King” and thus purports to be in the words of Darius himself. As the ensuing declarations are expressed in the first, rather than the third, person, however, the entire text is technically complex: Within the paragraphs, the direct speech of the king is always introduced as a quotation, so that the text as a whole appears to be in the words of a narrator.

The Old Persian text, the one that Darius himself considered standard, is characterized by its brief, lapidary style and its rather variegated language lacking in bombast. The recurring acknowledgment that Darius owes his power to the will and aid of Ahura Mazdā functions as a kind of topos. Although the sentences sometimes seem a little awkward, the diction must be recognized as elevated, even impressive. The simple, matter-of-fact tone continually reveals the care with which Darius weighed his words. In his inscription the king appeals to the readers of the inscription and to his successors to keep the relief and the inscriptions in good repair and to pass on its account of the king’s achievements and his aspirations to the future (pars. 55-69), and the copies of the king’s utterances must have been dispatched to his subjects throughout the empire for the same reason. The text was thus created expressly for historical instruction, though it was of less consequence to Darius from what source people should receive it, whether from the inscription on the rock at Bīsotūn itself or from one of the copies.