Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Bisotunنوتسیب
0832 / ELEV 1690M
Awesome dry cliffs line the north flank of the busy, partly industrialised Kermanshah-Ha-
madan road, looking especially majestic when approaching Bisotun from Sahneh.
BAS-RELIEF CARVINGS
At Bisotun the cliffs are inscribed with a series of world-famous
bas-relief carvings
dat-
ing from 521 BC. They were awarded Unesco recognition in 2006. The key feature is a
well-preserved Darius receiving chained supplicants while a
farohar
(winged Zoroastrian
'angel' denoting purity) hovers overhead. Though hard to make out from ground level, the
scene is surrounded by cuneiform inscriptions expounding upon Darius' greatness in three
'lost' languages (Elamite, Akkadian and Old Persian).
In 1835, eccentric British army officer Henry Rawlinson bemused locals by dangling
for months over the abyss to make papier-mâché casts of these texts. It's hard to know
how his superiors gave him the time off to attempt so life-threatening an eccentricity, nor
why Rawlinson didn't just tootle up to Ganjnameh (
Click here
) and copy those inscrip-
tions instead. Nonetheless, his transcriptions later allowed the deciphering of the cunei-
form scripts, a thrilling breakthrough that renders Bisotun as significant to Persia-philes as
the Rosetta Stone is to Egyptologists.
To reach the carvings, jump out of a savari from Kermanshah where the road entering
Bisotun's swings 90 degrees right (east). Then walk through a large car park following the
mighty cliffs west. You'll pass a club-wielding little
Hercules statue
from 148 BC (albeit
with recently replaced head) sitting on a rocky ledge. A little further is a very eroded
Parthian relief of Mithrades II
, partly overwritten by a 17th-century Arabic inscription
by Sheikh Alikhan. The main reliefs face east, high above this, requiring a good zoom
lens and early-morning sunlight for decent photos.
FARHAD TARASH
Some 200m beyond the main bas-relief site is the huge, smooth
Farhad Tarash
rock face,
popular with climbers who consider it among Iran's greatest challenges. In fact it was arti-
ficially smoothed in the 7th century AD for an inscription that Khosrow II never got
around to scribbling. Walk 10 minutes' further west, crossing some lumpy archaeological
diggings, to find a well-restored but unused 1685
caravanserai
.
