Most valuable light has been thrown on the history of Darius by the discovery of the great Behistun inscription. On the western frontier of the ancient Media there is a precipitous rock 1700 feet high, which forms a portion of the Zagros chain, separating the table-land of Iran from the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates. The inscription can only be reached with difficulty, as it is 300 feet from the base of the rock. It is in three languages,—old Persian, Babylonian, and Scythian,—executed, according to Sir H. Rawlinson, in the fifth year of Darius, B.C. 516. The wedge-shaped letters of the Persian copy were deciphered with infinite pains by this great archaeologist. Darius mentions in it, under the name of Gaumata, a Magian who personated Bardes[1] (as he calls him), the son of Cyrus, and says that he slew him by the help of Ormuzd, the Good Spirit, and thus recovered an empire that belonged to his own family, restoring to the Persians the religion which they had lost by the Magian intrusion. He also records that after this he was engaged in quelling a general revolt of the provinces. The main facts accord with those of Herodotus, though there is some difference in the nomenclature. The end of the inscription invokes a curse on any one who might injure it, and this has probably tended to preserve it; just as the curse on Shakespeare's monument, at Stratford-on-Avon, may have conduced
- ↑ The s, whether at the beginning or end of Persian names, is commonly only a Greek addition. So Bardy(a)—the vowel being pronounced though not written—is Smerdis, Gaumat(a) becomes Gomates, Yashtasp(a) Hystaspes, &c.—See Rawlinson, I. 27-29, note.
