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| [Note Guidelines] Photographer's Note |
In Antiquity, Bagastāna, which means 'place where the gods dwell', was the name of a village and a remarkable, isolated rock along the road that connected the capitals of Babylonia and Media, Babylon and Ecbatana (modern Hamadan). Many travellers passed along this place, so it was the logical place for the Persian king Darius I the Great (522-486) to proclaim his military victories.
The famous Behistun inscription was engraved on a cliff about 100 meters off the ground. Darius tells us how the supreme god Ahuramazda choose him to dethrone an usurper named Gaumāta, how he set out to quell several revolts, and how he defeated his foreign enemies.
The monument consists of four parts.
A large relief (5½ x 3 meters) depicting king Darius, his bow carrier Intaphrenes and his lance carrier Gobryas. Darius overlooks nine representatives of conquered peoples, their necks tied. A tenth figure, badly damaged, is laying under the king's feet. Above these thirteen people is a representation of the supreme god Ahuramazda.
Underneath is a panel with a cuneiform text in Old Persian, telling the story of the king's conquests (translated below). The text consists of four columns (#1, #2, #3, #4) and an appendix (#5) and has a total length of about 515 lines.
Another panel telling more or less the same story in Babylonian. The appendix ("column five") is missing.
A third panel with the same text in Elamite (the language of the administration of the Achaemenid empire). This translation of the Persian text has a length of 650 lines. Again, the appendix is missing.
In the text Darius describes how the god Ahuramazda choose him to dethrone the usurper Gaumāta (522 BCE). After this event, king Darius set out to quell several revolts. This is also depicted above the text, where we see the god and the king, the slain usurper, and seven men representing seven rebellious people. While artists were making this monument, Darius defeated foreign enemies (520-519 BCE); these victories were duly celebrated by a change in the initial design, adding two new figures to the right.
When the carvings were completed, the ledge below the inscription was removed so that nobody could tamper with the inscriptions. This allowed the monument to survive (and made it impossible for humans to read the texts).
Alexander the Great is known to have visited Behistun but we do not know more than that he heard that Bagastāna meant 'place where the gods dwell'. (The incident is recorded by Diodorus of Sicily.) After his death in 323 BCE, his empire disintegrated and the eastern satrapies fell to one of his officers, Seleucus I Nicator, who founded the Seleucid Empire. Behistun, situated along a main road that was just as crowded with travelers as it had always been, remained a monumental site.
From this age, we have a nice statue of a reclining Heracles that dates back to 148 BCE, i.e., the final years of Seleucid control of the satrapy of Media. The demigod is shown quietly resting and drinking from a bowl, after performing one of his labors. (According to the Greek orator Libanius, Heracles was considered to be the ancestor of the Seleucid dynasty.)
A few years after this statue had been made, Seleucid rule in this part of the empire collapsed. For almost four centuries, the Parthians were in control. They also left monuments at Behistun, like the reliefs on this photo. They are both very damaged, not in the least because a seventeenth-century inscription was added in something resembling a mihrab. (On this photo, to the left, one can see the relief that was made by Darius the Great.)
The Parthians, weakened by the military campaigns of the Roman emperor Septimius Severus, were overthrown by the Persian dynasty of the Sassanids. The built a bridge at Behistun, but it has been rebuilt several times, and only the foundations may be called Sassanid. Still, it shows that Behistun was still an important place, where the Sassanid rulers wanted to show themselves. It is no coincidence that the scene of the sad story about the star-cross'd lovers Shirin and Fahrad and Shirin's husband, the Sassanid king Khusrau II (590-628), is laid at Behistun.
Khusrau is also connected to the last known monument at Behistun: the unfinished relief. His armies had ravaged the cities of Syria, sacked Jerusalem in 614 (seizing the relic of the True Cross), invaded Egypt and even reached Constantinople. It seemed as if the Achaemenid empire was restored, and Khusrau ordered the making of brilliant rock reliefs at Taq-e Bostan and Behistun. The monument at Taq-e Bostan was finished, but the Behistun relief was not: all that is visible is a piece of rock that was cleared. In 627, the Byzantine emperor Heraclius the Sassanid empire and had been very successful; the Persian army mutinied and Khusrau was murdered (628). His successor Ardair III made peace and the relic of the True Cross was restored to Jerusalem.
After this, the two empires were an easy target for the rise of Islam. In 641, the Arabs invaded Iran and defeated the Sassanids at Nehavand. On their march to the east, they had taken the main road along Behistun.
I will post another shots of this place. |
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