A HISTORICAL DOCUMENT. 123 



When one examines the whole carefully with a glass, 

 one realises what a wonderful work it is. The labour 

 which must have been spent, first in rendering so large 

 a space absolutely smooth, and then in engraving the 

 gigantic inscription in Persian, Susian, and Assyrian on 

 the hard surface of the rock, must have been enormous. 

 A coating of some sort of varnish seems to have been 

 placed over the whole, which is doubtless responsible 

 for the extraordinary state of preservation of the writ- 

 ing to this day. After seeing this strange writing on 

 the rock and learning the great story which it tells, it 

 is easy to agree with the remark of Lord Curzon that 

 here stands " the most important historical document, 

 albeit in stone, next to the Damietta stone, that has 

 been discovered and deciphered " in the past century.^ 



A good deal of perplexity has arisen over the ques- 

 tion of names and identities. Bisitun is said to mean 

 " without pillars," and has also been supposed to be a 

 contraction of the ancient Bagistan. I may mention 

 that eight or nine miles to the south I noticed remains 

 of stone pillars and capitals at a village called Hadgia- 

 bad, which might w^ell mark the site of Bagistan of the 

 ancients, since the distance of Hadgiabad from Bisitun 

 agrees with the distance given by ancient writers of 

 Bagistan from the inscriptions. 



To the right altogether of the famous inscriptions is 

 another tablet containing some rude and hardly recog- 

 nisable equestrian figures, with an inscription declaring 

 it to be the work of Gotarzes, the Parthian king (about 

 50 A.D.) ; and in the centre of this a space has been 

 smoothed at a later date, and an Arabic inscription 

 inserted, setting forth the terms on which the revenue 

 of the two villages has been assigned to the upkeep of 

 the caravanserai. If one may judge by the state of 



1 Persia, vol. i. p. 52. 



