CHAPTER XIV THE GREAT BEHISTAN ROCK AND AN ASCENT TO READ THE CUNEIFORM RECORDS OF DARIUS1 'I wol yow all thys shap devyse and site, and all the wyse How I gan to this place aproche But up I clomb with allė payne.' – CHAUCER, House of Fame, 3. 23-28. EASTER MONDAY, April 13, 1903, will remain for me a memorable date in the calendar, for on that morning, after four days on horseback from Hamadan, I caught my first glimpse of the mountain of Behistan and the great inscription of Darius. For miles before one reaches it the huge mass of rock is constantly in sight, lifting its giant head seventeen hundred feet above the plain; and several times in the distance my eager eyes were mistaken in fancying I could see from afar the smoothed surface where the Great King's edict is inscribed. This was an error, for in approaching by the Hamadan road one must round the northeast corner of the mountain before the inscription can be seen. It was shortly before noon, or, to be more accurate, 11.25 A.M., when my caravan halted at the base of Bisitun, as the Persians call it, and far above I could see the inscription and the sculptured figures which the natives term the Nine Dervishes.' 1 Reprinted with some additions and minor corrections from my report in JAOS. 24. 77-95. The additions are: 1. 51, patiyāvahyaiy; 2. 61, Oauravā harahya; the notice of the Gotarzes sculpture; and the account of the monolith at the close of the chapter. FIRST VIEW OF THE GREAT ROCK 187 With all I had read about Behistan, with all I had heard about it, and with all I had thought about it beforehand, I had not the faintest conception of the Gibraltar-like impressiveness of this rugged crag until I came into its Titan presence and felt the grandeur of its sombre shadow and towering frame. Snow and clouds capped its peaks at the time, and birds innumerable were soaring around it aloft or hovering near the place where the inscriptions are hewn into the rock. There as I looked upward, I could see, more than three hundred feet above the ground, the bas-relief of the great king, Darius. Prone at his feet lay Gaumata, the Magian usurper, who had seized the throne on the death of Cambyses. In front of Darius stood the row of captive kings, and above the head of each I could discern a faint trace of the tablet with the 'lie' which each had uttered in his false claims to the throne, although the letters were not legible at such a distance. My memory recalled the story of each of these rebel lords, and I could picture the torture and agonized death that each suffered at the hands of the king. From the descriptions I had read, or perhaps from the mental picture I had previously formed of the scene, I had always fancied that the inscriptions and the sculptures were carved nearer the middle of the mountain, whose general contour on this side runs from northeast to southwest. Not so. They are cut high up in the side of a steep gorge or craggy gully that makes a deep gash in the face of the rock and extends three hundred feet downward to the plain beneath. But before proceeding further with the description, it may be well to turn to the middle part of the mountain front itself and examine its appearance. As one faces the great Behistan rock, the striking feature that catches the eye is a huge space carved near the middle of the base, but left entirely bare of an inscription. Even Ker Porter in his description seems to have given less attention than it deserves to this magnificent tabula rasa, the more 1 conspicuous because of its vacant, wall-like stare. It must have been prepared with an especial design of recording some historic event, as I felt certain after devoting part of an afternoon to a study of it. A space of nearly five hundred feet in length I paced it off — and over a hundred feet in height has been cut out of the mountain front to form a rocky canvas for commemorating some record of importance. The idea that it is due to mere quarrying vanishes at once when one studies the appearance of it and observes the evident design. Two rocky ledges, one somewhat higher than the other, are cut on either side to furnish a means of nearer access to the mammoth screen, while the overhanging canopy of rock forms a framework above, and a terrace of earth and stones offers an approach to the place from below. Such is the general scheme of arrangement. The question naturally arises, and is always asked by those who have seen the great blank space: When and by whom was it cut, what was its purpose, and why is it without a trace of the cuneiform chronicler's chisel?' To this inquiry the natives respond by saying 'it is the work of Farhad.' The sentiment of such an explanation will appeal to every reader of Nizami's romantic epopée; he will recall the tragic story of the enamored sculptor and the lovely Shirin, and he will trace in fancy the marks of the ambitious wooer's steel or hear the ring of the mallet as the rock yielded to his herculean blows. But the 1 See Ker Porter, Travels, 2. 149162. 2 When I gained access to my library I found that M. de Morgan (Mission Scientifique, 4. 286–289) has given an elaborate description of the probable manner in which the vast surface was prepared by the stone-cutters, and he shows how the markings on the stones which have been thrown down may have been made. He is of the opinion that the surface was prepared to receive an inscription, qui, peut-être, devait relater tous les faits de l'histoire perse' (op. cit. p. 287). Mr. E. L. Mitford (From England to Ceylon Forty Years Ago, London, 1884) believed that it was designed apparently for the back wall of some extensive building,' and he adds that the only sculpture on the scarp was a single female mask.' If this still exists, I failed to see it, and I am inclined to think that the signs in the fallen stones which are scattered about are mason's marks rather than characters of an alphabet. But I may be wrong. See p. 226, below. |