Decipherment of cuneiform (Behistun inscription)
Desciframiento de la escritura cuneiforme (inscripción de Behistún)
- Date
- 1802-1857 · confidence high
- Place
- Behistun (Bisotun), Kermanshah, Iran
- Credited to
- Georg Friedrich Grotefend (1802), Henry Rawlinson (copy of Behistun, 1835-47), Edward Hincks, Jules Oppert
- People
- 👤 Edward Hincks1792–1866👤 Georg Friedrich Grotefend1775–1853👤 Henry Rawlinson1810–1895👤 Julius Oppert1825–1905
- Field
- Cosmos & Earth
What was discovered
Hanging from a cliff face, Rawlinson copied the trilingual inscription of Darius I; together with Hincks and Oppert he deciphered Old Persian, Elamite and Akkadian. In 1857 the Royal Asiatic Society verified the decipherment with a blind test.
Coordinates of the rock inscription, the 'Rosetta Stone of cuneiform'.
What it led to
- Assyriology and the reading of Mesopotamian history
- Discovery of the Epic of Gilgamesh and its flood story (Smith, 1872)
- Recovery of Sumerian civilisation
Built on
- Rosetta Stone and the decipherment of hieroglyphs1799 / 1822
- Niebuhr's copies of Persepolis (1765)
Made possible
- Decipherment of Linear Elamite2020-2022
- Ancient Semitic philology
- Tablet editions