surrounding seas and deserts, it conveys a more sub- lime conception than if limited to the, crocodile, an an- imal familiar to every Egyptian, and well known even in Palestine." — Kitto, s. v. See Hippopotamus.
Behistun or Bisuttm (Lat. Bagistanus; Persian, Baghistdn, Place of Gardens), a ruined town of the Persian province of Irak-Ajemi, 21 miles east of Kir- manshah, lat. 34° 18' N., long. 47° 30" E. Behistun is chiefly celebrated for a remarkable mountain, which on , one side rises almost perpendicularly to the height of 1700 feet, and which was in ancient times sacred to Jupiter or to Ormuzd. According to Diodorus, Sem- iramis, on her march from Babylon to Ecbatana, in Media Magna, encamped near this rock, and, having cut away and polished the lower part of it, had her own likeness and those of a hundred of her guards en- graved on it. She further, according to the same his- torian, caused the following inscription in Assyrian letters to be cut in the rock : " Semiramis having piled up one upon the other the trappings of the beasts of burden which accompanied her, ascended b_y these means from the plain to the top of the rock." No trace of these inscriptions is now to be found, and Sir Henry Rawlinson accounts for their absence by the supposi- tion that they were destroyed " by Khusrau Parvis when he was preparing to form of this long scarped surface the back wall of his palace." Diodorus also mentions that Alexander the Great, on his way to Ecbatana from Susa, visited Behistun. But the rock is especially interesting for its cuneiform inscriptions (q. v.), which within recent years have been successfully deciphered by Sir H. Rawlinson. The principal in- scription of Behistun, executed by the command of Darius, is on the north extremity of the rock, at an elevation of 300 feet from the ground, where it could not have been engraved without the aid of scaffolding, and can now only be reached by the adventurous an- tiquary at considerable risk to his life. The labor of polishing the face of the rock, so as to fit it to receive the inscriptions, must have been very great. In places wdiere the stone was defective, pieces were fitted in and fastened with molten lead with such extreme nicety that only a careful scrutiny can detect the arti- fice. " But the real wonder of the work," says Sir H. Rawlinson, " consists in the inscriptions. For extent, for beauty of execution, for uniformity and correctness, they are perhaps unequalled in the world. After the engraving of the rock had been accomplished, a coat- ing of silicious varnish had been laid on, to give a
Book Inscriptions at L$ hi.-itun (Chambers' Cyclop, s. v.).
BEHMEN"
729
BELA
clearness of outline to each individual letter, and to ] more justly observes that Ilera is the female counter- protect the surface against the action of the elements. ! part to Zeus-Bel, that she is called so solely because it This varnish is of infinitely greater hardness than the i was the name of the chief Greek goddess, and that she limestone rock beneath it." Washed down in some and Bel are the moon and sun. He refers for con- places by the rain of twenty-three centuries, it lies in j firmation to Berosus (p. 50, ed. Richtcr), who states consistent flakes like thin layers of lava on the foot- ! that the wife of Bel was called Omorca, which means ledge; in others, where time has honey-combed the moon; and to Aminian. Marcell, xxiii, '.\, for a state- rock beneath, it adheres to the broken surface, still ment that the moon was, in later times, zealously showing with sufficient distinctness the forms of the I worshipped in Mesopotamia. The classical writers characters. The inscriptions — which are in the three generally call this Babylonian deity by their names, forms of cuneiform writing, Persian, Babylonian, and Zeus and Jupiter (Herod, and Diod. 1. c. ; Plin. Hist. Median — set forth the hereditary right of Darius to I Nat. vi, 30), by which the}' assuredly did not mean the throne of Persia, tracing his genealogy, through I the planet of that name, but merety the chief god of eight generations, up to the Achoemenes ; they then their religious system. Cicero, however (Be A 'at. Dear.
enumerate the provinces of his empire, and recount his triumphs over the various rebels who rose against him during the first four years of his reign. The monarch himself is represented on the tablet with a bow in hand, and his foot upon the prostrate figure of a man, while nine rebels, chained together by the neck, stand humbly before him ; behind him are two of his own warriors, and above him, another figure [see cut]. The Persian inscriptions which Sir II. Kawlinson has translated are contained in the five main columns numbered in cut 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. The first column con- tains 19 paragraphs, and 96 lines. Each paragraph after the first, which commences, " I am Darius the Great King," begins with, ''Says Darius the King." The second column has the same number of lines in 16 paragraphs ; the third, 92 lines and 14 paragraphs ; the fourth has also 92 lines and 18 paragraphs ; and the fifth, which appears to be a supplementary column, ?>5 lines. A transcription, in Roman characters, of the Persian part, with a translation in English, is given in Rawlinson's Herodotus, ii, 490 sq. The second, fourth, and fifth columns are much injured. Sir H. Kawlinson fixes the epoch of the sculpture at 515 B.C. See Jour, of Asiatic Society, vol. x ; Norris, Bekistun Inscription.