A Crux of the Behistun Inscription
Iranica Antiqua, vol. XXXIII, 1998
BABYLON OR PERSIS? A CRUX OF THE BEHISTUN INSCRIPTION
BY A.D.H. BIVAR
One of the episodes narrated in the Behistun inscription of Darius the Great of Persia (521-485 B.C.) is the rising in Persis (Pars) of a rebel named Vahyazdata. Though for a time supported by Persian military forces in an uncertain location, this rebel was eventually defeated and captured by a general of Darius, Artavardiya. A group of the rebel’s followers, however, had embarked on an expedition to Arachosia — the province of Kandahar (Qandahar) in present-day Afghanistan. Here they continued to resist the generals of Darius for some time, pressing eastwards as far as Sattagydia, the remote eastern province which commentators have placed in Pak- istan’s N.-W. Frontier region1. With regard to the details of Vahyazdata’s support, however, the several versions of the inscription — Old Persian, Babylonian, Elamite and Aramaic — differ markedly. I offer this small contribution on an Aramaic reading in tribute to David Stronach, a sou- venir of fruitful years spent by us both on fieldwork in the Iran of the 1960s and 1970s, of his tireless help in those days to visiting British aspirants, and his own massive achievements in the archaeology of the Achaemenids. We shall see that a widely accepted interpretation of the inscription associates the success of the forces of Darius in Pars with the intervention of reinforcements from Babylon. Yet consideration of the military situa- tion involved suggests that a version naming Babylon at this point is not a likely one. The place where Vahyazdata staged his revolt, Tarma (Baby- lonian) or Tarava (OP), is identified with the present-day ™arum in south Persia, more than 200 miles south-east of Shiraz, and close to the present- day highway from Kirman to Bandar Abbas. The place was remote even from the local Achaemenid centres at Persepolis and Pasargadae, and
1 David Fleming, “Achaemenid Sattagydia and the geography of Vivana’s campaigns (DB III, 54-75)”, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1982, p. 105. 188 A.D.H. BIVAR accessible from Babylon only by a long and painful march of several weeks. It is difficult to understand what effect on events at ™arum could have been exercised by any change of allegiance amongst Persian troops at Babylon, a place that remained anyway firmly under Darius’s control. Nor could troops at Babylon readily have become aware of Vahyazdata’s revolt. Although, as will appear, this reading in the Babylonian text is substantiated by the reliable authority of Dr. Von Voigtlander, and was no doubt that accepted by the Babylonian scribe, any critical survey of the military situation will lead to the conclusion that the Babylonian text must here be astray. Inspection of the Aramaic version will suggest how the mistake may have arisen. The Babylonian text of the inscription, as translated by E. Von Voigt- lander2, gives the following version.
“King Darius states: there was a certain man, Vahyazdata, by name, a Persian, residing in Tarma (OP Tarava) in the territory of Yautiya, by name, in Persia. He arose in Persia, saying to the people, ‘I am Barziya, the son of Cyrus, king of lands’. Then all the Persian troops who had previously come to me to the palace of Babylon from Anshan (my italics) revolted from me, and went over to Vahyazdata. He became king in Persia.
That the Babylonian text contains at this point the name of Babylon was here determined for the first time. The earlier edition by King and Thompson3 did not attempt a reading of the corresponding words from the Bisitun (Behistun) rock. These editors however supplemented the gap in their text here by adopting the reading from a duplicate Babylonian version in Berlin4, which again presents difficulties, and will be considered later. To quote the rendering of the Assyrian Dictionary5:
“The Persian people [mala] ina al-lu-ka-’ sa URU I-[ù-ti-ia] ‘as many as were in the al-lu-ka of GN (rebelled against me)’”.
2 The Bisitun inscription of Darius the Great, Babylonian version, London, 1978, p. 58-9. 3 L.W. King and R.C. Thompson, The sculptures and inscriptions of Darius the Great on the rock of Behistun in Persia, London, 1907, p. 187. 4 Cf. Von Voigtlander, p. 64. 5 The Assyrian Dictionary I (A pt.1), i, 360, s.v. alluka; King and Thompson, p. 188. BABYLON OR PERSIS? A CRUX OF THE BEHISTUN INSCRIPTION 189
Here GN is the lexicographer’s abbreviation for a “geographical name”, in this case of the province in south Persia designated Yautiya- in Old Per- sian. The Assyrian Dictionary explains that alluka is a word of unknown meaning, which may be taken from Aramaic. Indeed, in the dictionary of Semitic inscriptions6 the word ’lwk is listed, and there explained as “voisi- nage [neighbourhood]?” However, the word occurs only in the present obscure text, and the interpretation here is largely guesswork7. We shall return to this question shortly. Babylon indeed is mentioned several times in the earlier part of the Behis- tun inscription in descriptions of military operations by Darius. Nevertheless, there is still reason to doubt, despite E. Von Voigtlander’s determination of its appearance in the text of the rock-inscription, that the reading “Baby- lon” could give an appropriate meaning here. The Old Persian rendering of this text (though there is discussion about its correct reading, and meaning, here), apparently makes no mention of Babylon. The version adopted by Kent8 reads in DB III, 26-8:
pasava: kara: Parsa: hya: viqapatiy: haca: Yadaya: frataram: ha- uv: hacama: hamiçiya: abava: abiy: avam: Vahyazdatam: asiyava: hauv: xsayaqiya: abava: Parsaiy “Thereupon the Persian army which was in the palace (having come) from Anshan previously — it became rebellious from me, went over to that Vahyazdata. He became king in Persia”.
Kent considered Yadaya to represent the Old Persian rendering of the geo- graphical name Anshan, the Elamite equivalent of “Persia” — though such a usage is not attested elsewhere. In his understanding, therefore, the military operations were confined to Pars (and subsequently to the lands further to the east).
6 Charles-F. Jean and Jacob Hoftijzer, Dictionnaire des Inscriptions Sémitiques de l’Ouest, Leiden, 1965, p. 15. 7 A draft of the present article was most kindly read by the late Professor Jonas Green- field some months before his death, and I have had the benefit of several modifications and suggestions made by him at that time. On this word he commented “I could regard al- lu-ka here as a biform of Akkadian taluku”way, path“(cf. von Soden, AHw 1312) which can have double -ll-:ta(-al-)lu-ka-, and I would regard the Berlin text as a form ina
M. Brandenstein and M. Mayrhofer9 understand yadaya as meaning simply “from where”, which of course gives a sense that is vague and incomplete. It raises little doubt, however, that the military operations took place entirely in Pars (“Persia”). Perhaps it is pointless to seek a reading that could give a satisfying meaning for the Old Persian. The possibility exists that this text is no more than a translator’s attempt to make sense of a version in another language, itself already faulty or defective. Nor has the Elamite version offered a more satisfactory reading. According to Cameron10 it provides the rendering: “Afterward the Persian army which to the palace had previously been sent from Anzan (revolted)”, where once more the exact location of the event is omitted. On the other hand, the Babylonian and the Aramaic versions seem to provide a fuller text. Yet it never seems to have been established which version of the inscription was the master copy, and what must have been the exact military situation originally described. The present note is intended to thrown some light on the problem, or at any rate to provoke its more critical discussion. The publication in 1982 by Jonas C. Greenfield and Bezalel Porten11 of an improved text of the Aramaic version of the Behistun inscription has made it possible for the first time to read the Aramaic rendering as a sub- stantially continuous text. This appears to give yet a different version:
’Ìr Ì[y]l’ z[y prs] kmst zy bbty’ b’lwk zy b’anz [mn qdmy mrdw ‘l]why ‘zlw hw m[lk]’ bprs hwh “Then the [Persian] tr[oo]ps, as many as (were) in the palaces in ’lwk, which is/are in Anshan, [rebelled against me] (and) went over to him. He became k[ing in Persia]”.
The text and translation here, which are those of Greenfield and Porten, introduce the unexplained name or word ’lwk, which, though the following words are not entirely clear, is apparently situated in Persia. This reading
9 Handbuch der Altpersisch, Wiesbaden, 1964, p. 155. 10 George C. Cameron, “The Elamite version of the Bisitun inscriptions”, Journal of Cuneiform Studies, 14 (1960) 58-68, especially p. 65. 11 The Bisitun inscription of Darius the Great, Aramaic version, (Corpus Inscriptio- num Iranicarum), London, 1982, p. 36. I am grateful to Bezalel Porten for calling my attention to the present problem when preparing his edition, and for helpful discussions which served to crystallize my thinking on these questions. BABYLON OR PERSIS? A CRUX OF THE BEHISTUN INSCRIPTION 191 has indeed some independent support, since, as previously noted, there exists the duplicate fragment of the Behistun inscription on a stone tablet found at Babylon, and now in Berlin (BE 3627 = Berlin VA Bab. 1502), where the word al-lu-ka also occurs at this point. In the Babylonian there, the word in question is not rendered with the Babylonian determinative of place-names, implying that the scribe did not understand it as the name of a place, but as an ordinary noun. It is clear, however, that a difficulty exists in the text here. Since the reading with ’lwk is less obvious than the version which refers to Babylon, the principal that more difficult readings are to be preferred supports it here. This reading of the Aramaic, supported though it is by the Babylonian fragment — and therefore presumably ancient — would have presented as much difficulty to the ancient scribe as to the modern commentator. As we have seen, the critical words run:
’Ìr Ì[y]l’ z[y prs] kmst zy bbty’ b’lwk zy b’anz [mn qdmy mrdw] “Then the [Persian] tr[oo]ps, as many as were in the palaces in ’lwk which is in Anshan, rebelled against me”.
It is easy to see that the Babylonian scribe, for whom, as for us, everything after the words bbty’ “at the palaces” seems meaningless, and whose thoughts were naturally centered on the events at Babylon mentioned ear- lier in the inscription, might have attempted a very simple emendation. The insertion of a single bet, after the word bty’, produces the Aramaic spelling of the name of Babylon, bb’l. By altering the word-division, seldom unambiguous in Aramaic writing, the text would then continue zy bbty’ bb’l w kzy b’anz mn qdmy mrdw “In the palaces of Babylon, and when in Persia they rebelled against me…”. This emendation produces a text which is more or less coherent, though not very specific. Strict grammar would perhaps require the insertion of a second letter bet to be added, to read: bbty’ bbb’l w kzy b’nz mn qdmy mrdw “… in the palaces at Baby- lon. And when they rebelled against me in Anshan…”. In this version, the cluster of three bets looks distinctly peculiar, and might therefore have been rejected by the Babylonian scribe. Since, like ourselves, the Baby- lonian scribe of the Berlin fragment did not recognize ’lwk of the Aramaic text as a place-name, he did not include the determinative of place-names in his cuneiform Babylonian translation, and so compounds the problem further for the modern interpreter. 192 A.D.H. BIVAR
The above interpretation provides a decidedly plausible explanation for the name of Babylon having appeared, quite irrationally, in the Baby- lonian text of the Behistun rock. A corruption of this kind could only have occurred in an Aramaic original, so the conclusion follows that the master-copy of the Behistun inscription, or at any rate of its Babylonian version, was actually in Aramaic. This conclusion does not seem to have been stated before, but is by no means unlikely. It is well known that the central and inter-provincial correspondence of the Achaemenid chancery was regularly conducted in Aramaic, though within the various provin- ces of the empire, regional scripts were also used. Elamite was indeed additionally employed for purposes of accountancy. Old Persian was presumably the spoken language of court circles, but its written form in Old Persian cuneiform seems, from the surviving evidence, to have been very sparingly used. That Darius’s official text of the Behistun inscrip- tion was originally circulated in Aramaic (and the other versions trans- lated from that) is thus a credible theory. This corruption of the text relating to events in Persia provides evidence that such was indeed the case. One more, extremely tentative, suggestion might be offered concerning the mysterious place which appears as ’lwk or al-lu-ka in the different ver- sions. We do not know of any place by this name which might have been the site of an Achaemenid palace in the early years of Darius. Of course, little enough is known of the geography of Persis (Pars) at this time, and there must have been various palaces unknown to us. However, there is evidence of an Achaemenid palace at a place apparently written with the same two final letters -wk. This was the site, some 15 miles inland from Bushire, spelt in the medieval period as Tawwaj, or, in the Greek script of Arrian’s Indica12, Ch. 39, as Taókj (Taoke). Here Arrian tells us that there existed a Persian royal palace, information confirmed by the discovery in recent years of the remains of such a palace, using the alternating black and white stone masonry found also at Pasargadae. This was near Borazjan, in the close neighbourhood of the ancient Tawwaj13. In its Elamite form, Tammukan, the site is frequently mentioned in the Fortification Tablets
12 Pierre Chantraine (ed. and tr.), Arrien: l’Inde, Paris, 1927, p. 76. 13 cf. David B. Stronach, Pasargadae, p. 80, citing A.A. Sarfaraz, “Un pavilion de l’époque de Cyrus le Grand” in Bastan Chenasi va Hunar-e Iran, 7-8 (1971) 22ff; A.A. Sar- faraz, “Borazjan”, Iran, 11 (1973) 188-9. BABYLON OR PERSIS? A CRUX OF THE BEHISTUN INSCRIPTION 193 from Persepolis14. The Aramaic spelling of this name seems so far unat- tested, but is likely to have been twk or twky. It should be noted that the script outlines of the two spellings in Aramaic, twk, as against ‘lwk are sufficiently similar to admit of confusion in carelessly written Aramaic copy. For if one assumes the Anatolian forms of the characters had been used, as in the diagram, and the tau widely separated from its right-hand curve, then the lower part damaged, it could be confused with alep plus lamed, supposing the latter to have been written too low. That the text of the Behistun inscription, in all of its versions, was defective at this point, seems sufficiently clear. The foregoing discussion suggests that the master copy of this document, from which the cuneiform versions must ultimately have been made, was in Aramaic, and that this Aramaic version presented obscurities here. The Aramaic text may have had damage at this point, so that it could be that it once contained the name twk, the medieval Tawwaj, and that some details were defaced, so that the translators of the other versions understood it as ‘lwk. Aramaic, of course, uses no determinatives, and it may be that the trans- lator of the Babylonian version failed to recognize it as a place-name, and so omitted the determinative appropriate in his version. It is true that the Achaemenid palace at Tawwaj stood at some distance, perhaps as much as 200 miles, from the seat of Vahyazdata’s insurrection at ™arum, but that was certainly closer and more relevant than the vastly more distant Baby- lon. It is true that there are likely to have been more palaces in the ancient Persis than are known from presently available records, and the name Aluk may ultimately be confirmed as a true reading. In any event, it can be seen that these lines in the Babylonian version of Behistun are definitely cor- rupt. The theory that they were originally drafted in Aramaic explains one (if not both) of the corruptions, that by which the name of Babylon came to be introduced into the narrative here.
14 Richard T. Hallock, Persepolis Fortification Tablets (Oriental Institute Publications, Vol. XCII), Chicago, 1969, p. 760 (= index, s.v.).