Nov 16

The day when the stone inscriptions of ancient Iran could be read

Sir Henry C. Rawlinson      This piece of history will be completely edited later          16 November 1846 is registered as the day when Sir Henry C. Rawlinson succeeded in reading the script on the stone inscription of Darius the Great, in Bisotoon, and translated it. This inscription, belonging to 519 BC (2525 years ago), shows the geographical borders of Iran and is considered as Iran’s ownership document, the only country in the world that has such a document. In the 1830s Rawlinson started his efforts to read the epigraph (cuneiform script) of ancient Iran. He, who was fluent in Farsi language, was previously the military attaché of England in Iran, and study of Iran’s history had raised in him the interest to know more about Iran. Before him, the German Grotenfend had started such an endeavor but had not succeeded in reading the scripts completely and had guessed the meaning of some of the words. Rawlinson realized that the inscription was written in three languages and had started with a more simple and shorter script. In      this script he came across words that were found in the cuneiform scripts of Takht-e Jamshid and other parts of Iran and had guessed that they were proper nouns and by discovering common letters in the names, like, Darius, Hystaspess (Darius’ father), Aryamazess, Xerxes, Parsua, Achameani, and … he succeeded in reading the inscriptions, and this reflected the pinnacle of the civilization, administration and science of ancient Iran to the world. The wish of Darius that Ahura Mazda (the great God) should protect Iran from untruth and drought, gained world fame. The description of the Satrapis (provinces) of Iran became a document for the armed revolt of the Tajiks (Persians) in Central Asia, against Stalin, in the 1930s, who wanted to join Iran and Afghanistan, and the father of Ahmad Shah Masoud was one of the leaders of this revolt. He later fled to Afghanistan. In the Bisotoon epigraph, Transoxiana is documented as Iranian satripi, and the      Tajiks who lived there, speak Persian upto this day and have preserved their Iranian culture. Rawlinson, who had spent many years of his life to discover the letters used in the inscriptions of ancient Iran, was born in Chadlington in 1810 and died in 1895.      Bisetoon      Bisetoon      Translation by Rowshan Lohrasbpour (AmordadNews writer)