X—Notes on some Paper Casts of Cuneiform Inscriptions upon the sculptured Rock at Behistun exhibited to the Society of Antiquaries. By Lieut.-Col. H. Rawlinson, C.B., F.R.S., and D.C.L.

Extract

The small paper Casts which are lying on the table are impressions of the epigraphs that are attached to the line of captive figures sculptured on the great triumphal Tablet of Behistun; and the two large sheets which are suspended against the side wall of the room are from the same locality. This rock of Behistun is a very remarkable natural object on the high road between Ecbatana and Babylon. It was probably in the very earliest times invested with a holy character; for the Greek physician, Ctesias, who must have visited this spot in the fourth century before Christ, ascribes the most remarkable of the antiquities that were to be found there to the Assyrian queen Semiramis; and Isidore of Charax confirms this tradition of the country in his notice of the column and figure of Semiramis, at the city of Baptana, in the district of Cambadene. Now I believe Semiramis to have been altogether a mythic personage. In the historical inscriptions of Nineveh there is no trace either of Ninus or Semiramis; but both the names are probably to be recognised in the Pantheon. A very remarkable bas-relief at Behistun, which contains the full face of a colossal female figure, and which is evidently far more ancient than the tablet of Darius Hystaspes, represents, I think, the object mentioned by Isidore; and in front of the bas-relief are the remains, now barely distinguishable from the masses of rock by which they are surrounded, of the enormous pillar which stood contiguous to the shrine of the goddess, and which was doubtless an object of worship.