The so-called Cyrus Cylinder, a 2,600-year-old inscribed clay barrel-shaped object, has evoked strong debate about its significance ever since it was unearthed in 1879 in the ruins of Babylon in what is now Iraq.
It’s been on display in the British Museum for the last 134 years and has only traveled outside the UK on three other occasions. This is the first time it has been displayed in the United States.
Created by the Persian leader to mark the conquest of the ancient city, the Cylinder and 16 related works in the exhibit reflect the innovations initiated by Persia rulers between 550 BC and 331 BC, according to the museum.
Whatever its meaning, the cylinder is clearly a political document.
Surprisingly, it still has political relevance today, because of the role the it played in the government of Iranian Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, the last “King of Persia.”
Critics say the Shah was less interested in ancient history and more focused on trying to legitimize his own reign as King. The United States and Britain imposed the Shah as absolute ruler of Iran following the overthrow of leftist Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in a U.S. backed coup.
The Shah tied his rule directly back to Cyrus’s reign and ardently believed Cyrus was the first ruler in history to give his subjects “freedom of opinion and other basic rights.” That meshed with his own desire to modernize and secularize Iran, which has a mostly Muslim population.
In 1971, he adopted the Cyrus Cylinder as a symbol of a “grand commemoration” of 2,500 years of uninterrupted rule by Persian kings. The United Nations still promotes the cylinder as “an ancient declaration of human rights,” according to Der Spiegel, the German newsweekly.
The cylinder, inscribed in Babylonian cuneiform, describes Cyrus as a liberator, not a conqueror, and details his plans to return lands, temples and gods to people displaced by the previous king, Nabonidus, who was described as evil and corrupt.
Despite the political drama, historians say the cylinder was less a universal declaration of human rights and more a political document designed to pacify the conquered Babylonians. Such declarations were found to have been made by earlier kings who conquered Babylon and other ancient cities in the region.
That point of view holds that while conciliatory, the cylinder’s declaration was driven by the needs of the Persian Empire and was not an expression of personal tolerance.
The exhibit “The Cyrus Cylinder and Ancient Persia: Charting a New Empire,” will be on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art beginning June 20.
Keith Girard has four decades of experience as an award-winning reporter, editor-in-chief, and senior media executive. Keith’s career began in Washington, D.C., where he was a reporter for The Washington Post and a contributing editor for Regardie’s and Washingtonian magazines. He also worked as a writer/producer in CNN’s Washington Bureau and has written non-fiction books on the U.S. Marines in the Gulf War and Donald Trump and two novels, “The Heidelberg Conundrum” and “The Curse of Northam Bay.”
After the closet Neo-Nazi Matthias Schulz’s malicious article
came out in the German magazine Der Speigel, it was just a matter of time that
some others out of ignorance, malice or jealousy try to discredit Cyrus the
great. Some people can’t stand the idea that Cyrus the great a Persian
king liberated the Jews and supported them to build back their temple. Here is the response by Dr. Kaveh Farrokhzad
to Matthias Schulz’s article. https://www.kavehfarrokh.com/articles/nordicism/response-to-spiegel-magazine-2/