That these Magi practised a religion different from that taught in the Avestic literature is plain enough. The romantic story told by Herodotus of the Magian who seized the throne of Persia during Cambyses’ absence in Egypt on the pretence that he was the king’s brother whom Cambyses had privily put to death[803], is fully confirmed by Darius’ trilingual inscription on the Rock of Behistun, first copied and deciphered by Sir Henry Rawlinson and lately published in elaborate form by the British Museum[804]. Darius here narrates how “a certain man, a Magian, Gaumata by name ... lied unto the people (saying) ‘I am Smerdis, the son of Cyrus, the brother of Cambyses.’ Then all the people revolted from Cambyses and went over to him, even Persia and Media and the other provinces.” Darius goes on to record that “thereupon Cambyses died by his own hand[805],” that the seven Persian nobles overthrew the pretender much in the way described by Herodotus, and that “I rebuilt the temples of the gods, which that Gaumata, the Magian, had destroyed. I restored that which had been taken away as it was in the days of old[806].” This he tells us he did “by the grace of Ahura Mazda,” and that by this grace he always acted. The memory of these events was kept up by the festival of the Magophonia or Massacre of the Magi which was yearly celebrated in Persia and during which no Magus dared show himself in the streets[807]. Darius’ words show that there was a religious as well as a dynastic side to the Magian revolt, though whether the false Smerdis restored the old worship of the land, which he found in danger of being supplanted by Zoroastrianism or the worship of Ahura Mazda, may still be doubtful. In any event, the reformation or counter-reformation made by Darius did not succeed in entirely uprooting the old Magian faith, for Herodotus speaks of the Magi as still being in his time the priestly caste among the Persians, and as acting as diviners and sacrificers to the Achaemenian kings who ruled Persia up to Alexander’s Conquest[808].