We enjoyed a happy meeting, admitting three new members as Knights of the Sword and Knights of the East, and electing Officers to be installed at our next regular meeting on 20 March 2010.
Afterwards we joined family members for lunch.
The photograph is of the Safavid bridge at Behistun, on the road between Babylon and Ecbatana (in the present day, Hamadan in Iran).
Behistun (or Bisotun) is a small village at the foot of a precipitous rock, 1700 ft. high, in the centre of the Zagros range in Iran on the right bank of the Samas-Ab, the principal tributary of the Kerkha (Choaspes). On the steep face of the rock, some 80 metres above the plain, Darius I, king of Persia, caused to be engraved a great cuneiform inscription 12 ft. high, which recounts the way in which, after the death of Cambyses, he killed the usurper Gaumata, defeated numerous rebels, and restored the kingdom of the Achaemenidae. Above the inscription the image of Darius is graven.
Behistun/Bisotun is a UNESCO World Heritage site.
