Behistun Inscription

The Behistun Inscription (also Bisitun or Bisutun, بیستون in modern Persian) is to cuneiform what the Rosetta Stone is to Egyptian hieroglyphs: the document most crucial in the decipherment of a previously lost script. It is located in the Kermanshah Province of Iran. The inscription includes three versions of the same text, written in three different scripts and languages: Old Persian, Elamite, and Babylonian. A British army officer, Sir Henry Rawlinson, had the inscription transcribed in two parts, in 1835 ...

Including:

• Behistun Inscription - The inscription
• Behistun Inscription - In ancient history
• Behistun Inscription - Discovery and translation
• Behistun Inscription - After Rawlinson

Read more here: » Behistun Inscription: Encyclopedia - Behistun Inscription

The inscription was noted by an Arab traveller, Ibn Hauqal, in the mid-900s, who interpreted the figures as a teacher punishing his pupils. It was not until 1598, when the Englishman Robert Sherley saw the inscription during a diplomatic mission to Persia on behalf of Austria, that the inscription first came to the attention of western European scholars. His party came to the conclusion that it was ...

See also:

Behistun Inscription, Behistun Inscription - The inscription, Behistun Inscription - In ancient history, Behistun Inscription - Discovery and translation, Behistun Inscription - After Rawlinson

Read more here: » Behistun Inscription: Encyclopedia II - Behistun Inscription - Discovery and translation

The Cuneiform script is one of the earliest known forms of written expression. Created by the Sumerians in the late 4th millennium BC, cuneiform writing began as a system of pictographs. Over time, the pictorial representations became simplified and more abstract. Cuneiforms were written on clay tablets, on which symbols were drawn with a blunt reed called a stylus. The impressions left by the stylus were wedge shaped, ...

Including:

• Cuneiform script - Development
• Cuneiform script - Decipherment
• Cuneiform script - Transliteration
• Cuneiform script - Unicode

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Cuneiform pictograms were drawn on clay tablets in vertical columns with a pen made from a sharpened reed stylus. Then two developments made the process quicker and easier: People began to write from left to right in horizontal rows (rotating counter-clockwise all of the pictograms 90° in the process), and a new wedge-tipped stylus was used which was pushed into the clay, producing wedge-shaped ("cuneiform") signs. By adjusting the relative position of the tablet to the stylus, the writer could use a single tool to make a variety of impressions. The word "cuneiform" comes fro ...

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Cuneiform script, Cuneiform script - Development, Cuneiform script - Decipherment, Cuneiform script - Transliteration, Cuneiform script - Unicode

Read more here: » Cuneiform script: Encyclopedia II - Cuneiform script - Development

Multiple copies of the stones, were erected in multiple temple courtyards, as specified in the text of the decrees. 239 BCE Decree of Canopus (Ptolemy III), (247-221 BCE) stone 1: "Stele of Canopus", (no. 1), found 1866, 37 lines hieroglyphs, 74 lines Demotic(right side), 76 Greek 'capitals', fine limestone. stone 2: Stele of Canopus, no. 2, found 1881, 26 lines hieroglyphs, 20 lines Demotic, 64 lines Greek capitals, < ...

See also:

Rosetta Stone, Rosetta Stone - Condensed listing the three decrees the three-stone series, Rosetta Stone - History of the stone, Rosetta Stone - Use as metaphor

Read more here: » Rosetta Stone: Encyclopedia II - Rosetta Stone - Condensed listing the three decrees the three-stone series

Old Persian was written from left to right in a kind of Cuneiform script. Old Persian cuneiform contains 36 signs which represent consonants, vowels, or sequences of single consonants plus vowels, a set of three numbers (1, 10, 100), one word divider, and eight ideograms. It is essentially alphabetic in nature. While the letters may look like Sumero-Akkadian cuneiform, only one, L, derives from that script. (L didn't occur in native Old Persian words, but was found in Akkadian borrowings.) Scholars today mostly agree that the Old Persian script was invented by about 525 BC to provide monumental insc ...

See also:

Old Persian language, Old Persian language - Script, Old Persian language - Further information

Read more here: » Old Persian language: Encyclopedia II - Old Persian language - Script

Christian Lassen (October 22, 1800 - May 8, 1876) was a Norwegian- German orientalist. He was born at Bergen, Norway. Having received a university education at Oslo, he went to Germany and continued his studies at the University of Heidelberg and the University of Bonn. In Bonn, Lassen acquired a sound knowledge of Sanskrit. He spent three years in Paris and London, engaged in copying and collating manuscripts, and collecting materials for future research, especially with reference to Hindu drama and philosophy. During this period he published, jointly with Eugène Burnouf, ...

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Cyrus II of Persia, also known as Cyrus the Great or Cyrus the Elder, (ca. 576 or 590 – July 529 BC), founded the Persian Empire under the Achaemenid Dynasty of Anshan by unifying two Iranian tribes: the Medes and the Persians. In two historical documents discovered in Babylon and Ur Cyrus identifies himself as the "King of Iran". Cyrus is the first king whose name was suffixed with the word "Great" (or Vazraka in Old Persian), a title adopted by his Acheamenid successors as well as by the overthrower of ...

Including:

• Cyrus the Great - Background
• Cyrus the Great - The king of Persia
• Cyrus the Great - Cyrus' wars
• Cyrus the Great - Administration of the Empire
• Cyrus the Great - The Cyrus Cylinder
• Cyrus the Great - Death of Cyrus
• Cyrus the Great - Legacy
• Cyrus the Great - Sources

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Cambyses II (Persian Kambujiya (کمبوجیه), d. 521 BC) was the son of Cyrus the Great. When Cyrus conquered Babylon in 539 BC he was employed in leading religious ceremonies (Chronicle of Nabonidus), and in the cylinder which contains Cyrus's proclamation to the Babylonians his name is joined to that of his father in the prayers to Marduk. On a tablet dated from the first year of Cyrus, Cambyses is called king of Babel. But his authority seems to have been quite ephemeral; it was only in 530 BC, when Cyrus set out o ...

Including:

• Cambyses II of Persia - The traditions of Cambyses
• Cambyses II of Persia - Darius' recount
• Cambyses II of Persia - Conquest of Egypt
• Cambyses II of Persia - Attempts to conquer south and west of Egypt
• Cambyses II of Persia - The death of Cambyses
• Cambyses II of Persia - The Lost Army Of Cambyses

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Philology is the study of ancient texts and languages. The term originally meant a love (Greek philo-) of learning and literature (Greek -logia). In the academic traditions of several nations, a wide sense of the term "philology" describes the study of a language together with its literature and the historical and cultural contexts which are indispensable for an understanding of the literary works and other culturally significant texts. Philology thus comprises the study of the grammar, rhetoric, history, interpretation ...

Including:

• Philology - Branches of philology
• Philology - Comparative philology
• Philology - Radical philology
• Philology - Text reconstruction
• Philology - Deciphering ancient texts

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Darius the Great (ca. 549 BC– 485/486 BC; Old Persian 𐎭𐎠𐎼𐎹𐎺𐎢𐏁 Dārayawuš: "He Who Holds Firm the Good"), was the son of Hystaspes and Persian Emperor from 521 BC to 485/486 BC. His name in Modern Persian is داریوش (Dâriûsh), and the ancient Greek sources call him Δαρεῖος (Dareîos). Darius I of Persia - Rise to power. Darius belonged to a cadet branch of the Achaemenid dynasty. A relative of ...

Including:

• Darius I of Persia - Rise to power
• Darius I of Persia - The empire under Darius
• Darius I of Persia - Governance
• Darius I of Persia - Building projects
• Darius I of Persia - Economy diplomacy and trade
• Darius I of Persia - European and North African campaigns
• Darius I of Persia - External link

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The Republic of Armenia, or Armenia (Armenian: Հայաստան, Hayastan, Հայք, Hayq), is a landlocked country in the southern Caucasus, between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, bordered by Turkey to the west, Georgia to the north, Azerbaijan to the east and Iran (Persia) and the Nakhichevan exclave of Azerbaijan to the south. Armenia is a member of the Council of Europe and the Commonwe ...

Including:

• Armenia - Origin of the name
• Armenia - History
• Armenia - Politics
• Armenia - Administrative Provinces
• Armenia - Geography
• Armenia - Economy
• Armenia - Demographics
• Armenia - Culture
• Armenia - Miscellaneous topics

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Knowledge of cuneiform was lost until 1835 when Henry Rawlinson, a British army officer, found some of the Behistun inscriptions on a cliff at Behistun in Persia. Carved in the reign of King Darius of Persia (522 BC–486 BC), they consisted of identical texts in the three official languages of the empire: Old Persian, Babylonian, and Elamite. The Behistun inscription was to the decipherment of cuneiform what the Rosetta Stone ...

See also:

Cuneiform script, Cuneiform script - Development, Cuneiform script - Decipherment, Cuneiform script - Transliteration, Cuneiform script - Unicode

Read more here: » Cuneiform script: Encyclopedia II - Cuneiform script - Decipherment

Inscriptions are words or letters written, engraved, painted, or otherwise traced on a surface and can appear in contexts both small and monumental. Coin texts and monumental carvings on buildings are both included by historians as types of inscriptions. The study of inscriptions is epigraphy. Inscription - Types of inscription. Abecedarium Chronogram Epitaph on a headstone Epigraph Ex libris Memento mori Monumental inscription ...

Including:

• Inscription - Types of inscription
• Inscription - Notable inscriptions

Read more here: » Inscription: Encyclopedia - Inscription

"Rosetta Stone" is also used as a metaphor to refer to anything that is a critical key to a process of decryption, translation, or a difficult problem, e.g., "the Rosetta stone of immunology", "thalamocortical rhythms, the Rosetta Stone of a subset of neurological disorders", "Arabidopsis, a Rosetta stone of Botany and plant genomics". Using this metaphor for its marketing appeal, a popular commercial foreign language instructional software package is called Rosetta Stone, and a gene- and drug dis ...

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Rosetta Stone, Rosetta Stone - Condensed listing the three decrees the three-stone series, Rosetta Stone - History of the stone, Rosetta Stone - Use as metaphor

Read more here: » Rosetta Stone: Encyclopedia II - Rosetta Stone - Use as metaphor

French Captain Pierre-François Bouchard (1772-1832) discovered the stone in the Egyptian port city of Rosetta (present-day Rashid) on July 15, 1799. Some scientists [1] accompanied Napoleon's French campaign in Egypt (1798-1801). After Napoleon Bonaparte founded the Institut de l'Égypte in Cairo in 1798 some 50 became members of it. Bouchard found a black stone when guiding construction works in the Fort Julien near the city of Rosetta. He immediately understood the importance of the stone and showed it to General Abdallah Jacques de Menou who decided that it should be broug ...

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Rosetta Stone, Rosetta Stone - Condensed listing the three decrees the three-stone series, Rosetta Stone - History of the stone, Rosetta Stone - Use as metaphor

Read more here: » Rosetta Stone: Encyclopedia II - Rosetta Stone - History of the stone

Sogdiana ("Sug`ud","Sug`diyona" -Uzbek, Sughd - Tajik, Sugdiane, Old Persian Sughuda, Persian:سغد, Chinese: Kang-Kü) ancient civilization of Iranian peoples, then was a province of the Achaemenian Empire, the eighteenth in the list in the Behistun Inscription of Darius the Great (i. 16). Sogdiana at different periods of time included territories around Samarkand, Bukhar ...

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The Cuneiform script has been accepted for inclusion in a future version of Unicode: 12000–12373 (883 characters) "Sumero-Akkadian Cuneiform" 12400–12473 (103 characters) "Cuneiform Numbers" The status of the Unicode Cuneiform range can be seen in the Unicode pipeline. ...

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Cuneiform script, Cuneiform script - Development, Cuneiform script - Decipherment, Cuneiform script - Transliteration, Cuneiform script - Unicode

Read more here: » Cuneiform script: Encyclopedia II - Cuneiform script - Unicode

The original Armenian name for the country was Hayq, later Hayastan, translated as the land of Haik, and consisting of the name Haik and the Persian suffix '-stan' (land). According to legend, Haik was a great-great-grandson of Noah (son of Togarmah, who was a son of Gomer, a son of Noah's son, Japheth), and according to an ancient Armenian tradition, a forefather of all Armenians. He is said to have settled below Mount Ararat, travelled to assist in building the Tower of Babel, and, after his return, defeated the Babylo ...

See also:

Armenia, Armenia - Origin of the name, Armenia - History, Armenia - Politics, Armenia - Administrative Provinces, Armenia - Geography, Armenia - Economy, Armenia - Demographics, Armenia - Culture, Armenia - Miscellaneous topics

Read more here: » Armenia: Encyclopedia II - Armenia - Origin of the name

The legends ran as follows: Semiramis was the daughter of the fish-goddess Atargatis of Ascalon in Syria, and was miraculously preserved by doves, who fed her until she was found and brought up by Simmas, the royal shepherd. Afterwards she married Onnes or Menones, one of the generals of Ninus, who was so struck by her bravery at the capture of Bactra that he married her, after Onnes had committed suicide. The Jewish historian Josephus relates Ninus to the Biblical hunter-king Nimrod. After Ninus's death she reigned ...

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Semiramis, Semiramis - Her traditional biography, Semiramis - The Historical Semiramis?, Semiramis - In later literature

Read more here: » Semiramis: Encyclopedia II - Semiramis - Her traditional biography