Behistun Rock

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Cuneiform writings, the form of writings of the Sumerians, were discovered in a small village in Behistun. It was called Behistun Rock. According to historians, the said writings were ordered by King Darius the Great for everybody to see the punishment for people who rebel against him so that others will not follow. It was written in the language of Old Persians, Elamite and Babylonian. The Behistun Rock in Persian language was discovered by the Italian Pietro della Valle and was deciphered by the English, Henry Creawicke Rawlinson in 1846. It became the basis of succeeding scholars in reading the two other languages written on it.

Rosetta Stone

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Rosetta Stone was instrumental in advancing modern understanding of hieroglyphic writing. Hieroglyphic writings left by the Egyptians were puzzles to modern scholars because no one knows how to read them. But in 1798, a piece of stone was found by a leader of the forces of Napoleon Bonaparte in Rosetta, near the Nile Delta area. Three kinds of writings were engraved on it- hieroglyphic, demotic and Greek. The text of the Rosetta Stone is a decree from Ptolemy V, a Greek who reigned in Egypt in 196 BCE, describing the repealing of various taxes and instructions to erect statues in temples.

It was deciphered by a French scholar named Jean Francois Champollion. He started researching by reading Greek writings, a language he already knew. He based here what was written on the Rosetta stone, and through this, he was able to successfully read hieroglyphics.

Dead Sea Scroll

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One of the greatest finds with great historical and Biblical significant is the Dead Sea Scrolls. It consist more or less 1,000 documents, including texts from the Hebrew Bible., These scrolls were discovered between 1947 and 1979 in eleven caves in and around the Wadi Qumran (near the ruins of the ancient settlement of Khirbet Qumran, on the northwest shore of the Dead Sea) in the West bank. The texts are of great religious and historical significance, as they include practically the only known surviving copies of Biblical documents made before 100 AD, and preserve evidence of considerable diversity of belief and practice within late Second Temple Judaism. They are written in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek, mostly on parchment, but with some written on papyrus.

These archeological finds are three of the most important findings that have provided mankind a better knowledge and understanding of the past. Lots of things about the past could have remained mystery if these things were not discovered.

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