sexta-feira, outubro 21, 2011
Da Democracia (5)
Inscrição de Beshistun
Rochedo de Behistun: "situado a cerca de trinta quilómetros da actual região de Kermanshch, no Curdistão. Escrita em alfabeto cuneiforme, em persa antigo, neo-babilónico e elamita, data provavelmente de 519-518 a.C. (…) monumento heróico, glorifica o estatuto do rei Dario e a sua relação com o deus nacional dos Persas. Apresenta-se como um texto histórico, que relata os acontecimentos entre 522 e 520 a.C., desde os motivos que levaram à ascensão de Dario ao trono, até ao fim do primeiro ano do seu reinado.”
Two of the most important events in the advancement of historical knowledge have been the discovery of the key to the Egyptian hieroglyphics on the Rosetta Stone and the deciphering of the cuneiform inscriptions on the Rock of Behistun. The former opened the door to the Wonderland of Egyptian history, and the latter brought daylight into the dark places of antiquity in the Middle East, revealing to the modern world the vanished civilizations of Mesopotamia in all the truth of contemporary record.
In 1835 Henry Rawlinson, a young English soldier, twenty-five years old, was sent as Assistant to the Governor of Kermanshah. His attention was turned to the cuneiform inscriptions at Elwend near Ecbatana, and, as a soldier whose scholarly side ill brooked long periods of boredom, he set himself to decipher the strange unknown tongue in which they were written. In his "Memoir" he says that he was aware that a German professor, Grotefend, about the beginning of the century, had deciphered some of the names of the early sovereigns of the house of Achaemenes, but in his isolated position at Kermanshah he could neither obtain a copy of the German's alphabet, nor discover which were the inscriptions that he (Page 764) had used. Actually Grotefend had made out the names of Hystaspes, Darius, and Xerxes from two short inscriptions...
Citações em inglês in http://members.ozemail.com.au/~ancientpersia/srce_frm.html [11/10/11] by Dr Campbell Thompson (1937) who investigated the Rock of Behistun on behalf of the British Museum.
posted by Luís Miguel Dias sexta-feira, outubro 21, 2011