<< Our Photo Pages >> Bisitun - Ancient Village or Settlement in Iran
Submitted by DrewParsons on Sunday, 30 May 2010 Page Views: 11422
Multi-periodSite Name: Bisitun Alternative Name: Bistun, Behistun, Bisotun, Bisutun, Bīsotūn, Bagastana, بیستCountry: Iran
NOTE: This site is 12.617 km away from the location you searched for.
Type: Ancient Village or Settlement
Nearest Town: Kermanshah Nearest Village: Bisitun
Latitude: 34.390480N Longitude: 47.435960E
Condition:
5 | Perfect |
4 | Almost Perfect |
3 | Reasonable but with some damage |
2 | Ruined but still recognisable as an ancient site |
1 | Pretty much destroyed, possibly visible as crop marks |
0 | No data. |
-1 | Completely destroyed |
5 | Superb |
4 | Good |
3 | Ordinary |
2 | Not Good |
1 | Awful |
0 | No data. |
5 | Can be driven to, probably with disabled access |
4 | Short walk on a footpath |
3 | Requiring a bit more of a walk |
2 | A long walk |
1 | In the middle of nowhere, a nightmare to find |
0 | No data. |
5 | co-ordinates taken by GPS or official recorded co-ordinates |
4 | co-ordinates scaled from a detailed map |
3 | co-ordinates scaled from a bad map |
2 | co-ordinates of the nearest village |
1 | co-ordinates of the nearest town |
0 | no data |
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These include the Medians (728 BCE to 550 BCE), through the Achaemenids, Parthians and Sassanians to the Ilkhanate Empire founded by Genghis's grandson, Hulagu in the thirteenth century.
The most famous object at Bisitun is the bas-relief carving in the rock face above the valley describing the victories of the Achaemenid king Darius the Great who reigned from 522 - 486 BC. The carving was commenced in 520 BC and was written in three types of cuneiform script, not a language but a common writing system for hundreds of years in the Middle East. Modern discovery and translation of this rock script owes much to the efforts of a British army officer Henry Rawlinson who, hanging from scaffolding, copied most of the script in the summer of 1844, and then spent years working on breaking the cuneiform script's code and translating it. He was followed by other scholars who were then able to translate the Neo-Babylonian and Elamite texts giving us the key to understanding those languages too. This led to the translation of cuneiform texts across the Middle East. Effectively this rock was the equivalent of the Rosetta Stone in allowing historians to understand the history of this period once Rawlinson had translated the Old Persian version of the text.
The texts are 15 metres high and 25 metres wide, standing 100 metres up a limestone cliff above an ancient route which linked the capitals of Babylonia and Media. Illustrating the texts is a life sized carving of Darius holding a bow, a sign of kingship, with his left foot on a figure below him, interpreted as Gaumata, whilst servants and captives are set around him.
There are a number of other important sites at Bisitun including a 2nd century BC sculpture of Hercules, two heavily eroded Parthian bas-reliefs, the excavations of a Sassanian palace, and in 2009 the start of work on a newly discovered Parthian settlement.
For a comprehensive coverage of the story of the discovery and translation of the scripts see: Empires of the Plain - Henry Rawlinson and the Lost Languages of Babylon, by Lesley Adkins, Harper Perennial, London, 2004
More at:http://wapedia.mobi/en/Bisitun
Note: Archaeologists to study the World Heritage Site of Bistun, see comment
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