BEHIST UN, BIIISETEN, or BISUTErN, the ancient Paghistan (Mons Baylstanus), a precipitous mountain or rock in Persia, remarkable for the extensive inscriptions of a very early date still preserved on some parts of its escarpment. It lies 27 miles E. of Kirmanshah, in the province of Trek Ajemi. The principal inscription is cuneiform, and relates to the victories of Darius Hystaspes, who is represented in a sculptured centre-piece as receiving the homage of a number of captives, upon one of whom he has planted his foot. The labour expended on the work must have been very great. The surface of the rock- has been carefully smoothed, and pieces have had every crevice or hollow filled up with lead ; the accuracy and regularity of the characters is almost unexampled, and the whole of the tablets have been carefully coated with a siliceous varnish to preserve them from the weather Of the other inscriptions the first is in Greek and the second in Arabic, but neither is of any great importance. It was not till 1846 that the Darius tablets were translated by Sir Henry Raw linson, who has given a complete account of his labours in the Journ. Roy. As. Soc. The principal notice of Behistun in the Greek or Roman writers is that of Diodorus Siculus, who tells how Semiramis visited the place on her march from Babylon to Ecbatana, and caused her own image to be sculptured on the rock. He interprets the name of the mountain by ALOs O'pos, the Hill of Jove, which is not very different from that proposed by modern scholars - " the dwelling of the gods." (See Journ. B. Geog. Soc., 1839 ; Journ. Roy. As. Soc., vols. x. and xii.; Ker Porter's Travels Benfey's KeilinschrOen, 1847.)