Page:Discovery and Decipherment of the Trilingual Cuneiform Inscriptions.djvu/131

 progress of cuneiform studies had deprived them of much of their importance.

Soon after the publication of Rich's book, in 1839, the Danish scholar Westergaard visited Persepolis, and completed the transcription of the whole of the inscriptions. He was, as we shall see, fully qualified for the task by his technical knowledge of the subject. Only two new inscriptions, however, remained for him to copy: the one on the Porch that Rich was unable to reach (Inscr. D), and the great inscription on the tomb at Naksh-i-Rustam, which proved it to have been the sepulchre of Darius (Inser. NR).

Only one Persian inscription of first-rate importance now remained to reward the zeal of the copyist. This was the famous one engraved in an almost inaccessible position upon the rock of Behistun. It is situated on the road from Hamadan to Kermanshah, about twenty miles before reaching the latter place. The rock forms an abrupt termination to a long range of barren hills, and presents a most remarkable appearance, rising in perpendicular form to the height of 1,700 feet. As it lies on the direct route to Media by the Holwan Pass, it was well known from the earliest times. According to Greek legend the hill was dedicated to Zeus; and Semiramis, on the occasion of an expedition against the Medes, caused a portion of the face of the rock to be polished and her own effigy to be carved upon it, surrounded by a hundred of her guards. She added an inscription in Assyrian characters, commemorating her triumphant march. Whether any inscription of the kind ever existed is doubtful, but if so, all traces of it have disappeared. The inscription that has been recovered appears to have been executed in the fifth or sixth year of the reign of Darius; and it gives a lengthy