The Cyrus Cylinder - Ancient Charter of Human Rights?
Cyrus the Great took Babylon in October 539 BC and had a clay cylinder buried in the foundations of its walls recording what he had done. It was found by Hormuzd Rassam in 1879, is about twenty-two centimetres long, and is written in Akkadian cuneiform. Its content follows a Mesopotamian formula that was already ancient. The god Marduk is angry with the reigning king Nabonidus for neglecting his worship, searches the world for a righteous ruler, chooses Cyrus, and delivers the city to him without a battle. Cyrus then restores the temples, returns the divine statues Nabonidus had brought to Babylon to their own cities, and repatriates the peoples who had been deported with them. The claim to have entered as a liberator was in Cyrus's interest to make, and the Babylonian priesthood had genuinely been estranged from Nabonidus, who had spent a decade in Arabia while the New Year festival went uncelebrated. The policy it describes is real and is attested elsewhere. Cyrus's empire let conquered peoples keep their laws, languages, religions and local administrations, which is why the books of Ezra and Isaiah call him God's anointed and credit him with permitting the return to Jerusalem. The cylinder does not mention Jews or Jerusalem. It has been called the first charter of human rights since the 1970s, when the Shah's government promoted that reading and gave the UN a replica. Scholars regard the description as an anachronism. What it records is an unusually intelligent conquest. A replica sits at the United Nations in New York.
- Year: 539 BCE
- Category: Political
