Editing Behistun Inscription (section)

==Translation efforts==
[[File:Behistun DB1 1-15.jpg|thumb|Column 1 (DB I 1–15), sketch by [[Friedrich von Spiegel]] (1881).]]
[[File:Aramaic translation of the behistun inscripton.png|thumb|[[Behistun papyrus]] with an [[Aramaic language|Aramaic]] translation of the Behistun inscription's text, known as [[Textbook of Aramaic Documents from Ancient Egypt|TAD]] C2.1.]]
{{see also|Decipherment of cuneiform}}

German surveyor [[Carsten Niebuhr]] visited in around 1764 for [[Frederick V of Denmark]], publishing a copy of the inscription in the account of his journeys in 1778.<ref>Carsten Niebuhr, Reisebeschreibung von Arabien und anderen umliegenden Ländern, 2 volumes, 1774 and 1778</ref> Niebuhr's transcriptions were used by [[Georg Friedrich Grotefend]] and others in their efforts to decipher the [[Old Persian cuneiform]] script. Grotefend had deciphered ten of the 37 symbols of Old Persian by 1802, after realizing that unlike the Semitic cuneiform scripts, Old Persian text is alphabetic and each word is separated by a vertical slanted symbol.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.ancientscripts.com/oldpersian.html |title=Old Persian |publisher=Ancient Scripts |access-date=2010-04-23| archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20100418053701/http://www.ancientscripts.com/oldpersian.html| archive-date= 18 April 2010 | url-status= live}}</ref>

In 1835, [[Sir Henry Rawlinson, 1st Baronet|Sir Henry Rawlinson]], an officer of the [[East India Company|British East India Company]] army assigned to the forces of the [[Shah]] of Iran, began studying the inscription in earnest. As the town of Bisotun's name was anglicized as "Behistun" at this time, the monument became known as the "Behistun Inscription". Despite its relative inaccessibility, Rawlinson was able to scale the cliff with the help of a local boy and copy the Old Persian inscription. The Elamite was across a chasm, and the Babylonian four meters above; both were beyond easy reach and were left for later. In 1847, he was able to send a full and accurate copy to Europe.<ref name=Hariri2015>{{cite book | last=Harari | first=Y.N. | title=Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind | publisher=HarperCollins | year=2015 | isbn=978-0-06-231610-3 | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=FmyBAwAAQBAJ | chapter=15. The Marriage of Science and Empire<!-- in subsection "Rare Spiders and Forgotten Scripts" -- pageno unknown -- info is from the e-book-->}}</ref>