The Behistun Inscription is to cuneiform what the Rosetta Stone is to
Egyptian hieroglyphs: the document most crucial in the decipherment of
a previously lost script. The inscription is approximately 15 metres
high by 25 metres wide, and 100 metres up a cliff from an ancient road
connecting the capitals of Babylonia and Media (Babylon and Ecbatana).
It is extremely inaccessible as the mountainside was removed to make
the inscription more visible after its completion. The text itself is a
statement by Darius I of Persia, written three times in three different
scripts and languages: two languages side by side, Old Persian and
Elamite, and Akkadian above them.
Read the rest of this article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behistun_Inscription
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Today's selected anniversaries:
* 1189 - Richard I of England was crowned in Westminster.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_I_of_England)
* 1783 - Signing of the Treaty of Paris ended the American Revolutionary War.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Paris_%281783%29)
* 1878 - The passenger steamship Princess Alice sunk in the Thames,
over 600 died.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Princess_Alice)
* 1967 - Dagen H in Sweden: traffic changed from driving on the left
to driving on the right.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dagen_H)
* 1976 - The Viking 2 spacecraft landed on Mars and took the first
close-up, color photos of the planet's surface.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viking_2)
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Wikiquote of the day:
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one
persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all
progress depends on the unreasonable man." - George Bernard Shaw
(
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/George_Bernard_Shaw)