Identifier: ninevehpersepoli00vaux (find matches)
Title: Nineveh and Persepolis: an historical sketch of ancient Assyria and Persia, with an account of the recent researches in those countries
Year: 1850 (1850s)
Authors: Vaux, W. S. W. (William Sandys Wright), 1818-1885
Subjects:
Publisher: London : A. Hall, Virtue & co.
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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unaccom-panied by the usual transcripts, and asserting most triumphantlythe domination of the Persian race, and representing the feudatoryprovinces of the empire, or the victims of Persian prowess. Itmay be that the exclusivencss of the record was in this instancethe result rather of policy than of accident. The position of Behistun, says )\Iajor liawlinson, hasin all ages been well known; on the high road from Babylonia tothe eastward, it nuist have always attracted the attention oftravellers. Its imposing aspect, too, an almost perpendicularrock, rising abruptly from the plain to the height of 1700 feet,and its aptitude for holy purposes, would not be neglected by arace who made Their aU.irs llic high place?, nnd the peaksOf tlarth-ucrgniing niouutain». NINEVEH AND PERSEPOLIS. (chap. X. It was known to the Greeks by tlie name of jBayCa-Tavov opo<i,a name derived from the old Persian, Baghistan ; it was sacred toJupiter, whose temple stood on the top of it, or, as Major Rawlinson
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Mountain of Behistun. has suggested, to Hoi*mazd, as the chief of the Bagas or supremedeity; and the description which Diodorus Siculus has given usfrom Ctesias resembles so remarkably the actual existing state ofBehistun, that we can have no doubt of its identity. According tohis account. Queen Semiramis marched a large army into Bagliistan,and encamped near the mountain of Baghistan. On the plain belowthe hill she laid out a paradise or park, twelve stadia in circuit,which was watered by a copious stream. The lower part of the pre-cipitous rock she scarped, and caused her own image and those ofa hundred of her guards to be sculptured on its face, with an in-scription in Syrian chai-actere.* The precipitous rock, saysMajor Rawlinson, in Journ. of Roy. Geog. Soc. vol. ix., seven-teen stadia high, facing the garden, the large spi-ing gushing outfrom the foot of the precipice and watering the adjoining plain,and the smoothing of the lower part of the rock, all convey anaccurate idea of

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