Sculpted in 521 BCE, the Behistun relief in Iran is a massive carving with more than 400 lines of inscription and huge figurines. Its size, location and visibility suggest it was used for propaganda.
"Whether pelted by sleet in spring or slapped by a harsh summer sun, groups of graduate and post-doctoral students have clambered, undaunted, through the rocky Zagros Mountains near Iraq’s border with Iran. Their feet slipping in the mud and skittering through ravines, they have lugged tripods and long-lens, high-resolution digital cameras to document reliefs that artists carved into the limestone mountainside more than 3,000 years ago. This spring marks the seventh expedition that Zainab Bahrani, chair of Columbia University’s Department of Art History and Archaeology, has conducted in northern Iraq and southwestern Turkey since establishing the Mapping Mesopotamian Monuments project in 2012. ..."
A centuries-older stone staircase and rock reliefs, paying equal attention to the site’s Islamic and pre-Islamic elements.
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