The Cyrus Cylinder

The Cyrus Cylinder is a barrel-shaped clay object about 22.5 cm long, inscribed in Babylonian cuneiform soon after Cyrus the Great captured Babylon in 539 BCE. Found at Babylon in 1879 and now in the British Museum, it presents Cyrus as the king chosen by the god Marduk to replace the impious Nabonidus, and records that he restored temples and sent deported gods and peoples home. It is often called the first charter of human rights; most historians read it instead as a traditional Mesopotamian royal inscription, which makes it no less valuable as evidence of how Cyrus wanted to be seen.

How it was found and pieced together

The cylinder was dug up in March 1879 by Hormuzd Rassam, a Mosul-born archaeologist excavating for the British Museum. His own accounts of the exact findspot differ, but it came from Babylon, from the foundations around the temple of Marduk. Henry Rawlinson announced the find later that year, at first mistakenly placing it at Borsippa.

The cylinder was incomplete. A fragment bought by the American collector J. B. Nies ended up at Yale University and was published in 1920 without anyone recognising what it was. In 1970 the German scholar Paul-Richard Berger identified it as part of the Cyrus Cylinder, and the two pieces were reunited in 1972.

A second surprise came in January 2010, when the British Museum announced that Wilfred Lambert and Irving Finkel had identified two fragments of a clay tablet in its collections carrying the same text. They came from Dailem, near Babylon. The find showed that the text was copied and circulated, not only buried in a foundation.

What the text says

The inscription falls into two parts. The first is a narrative about the gods and Babylon; the second is spoken by Cyrus himself.

Part one: Marduk chooses a new king

The opening lines are badly damaged, but enough survives to follow the argument. Nabonidus is accused of corrupting the worship of Marduk, interrupting the daily offerings and forcing the people of Babylon into labour. Marduk, angered, searches all lands for a just ruler, calls Cyrus, king of Anshan, by name and makes the Gutians and the Medes bow before him. Marduk then orders him to march on Babylon and walks beside him “like a friend”, letting him enter the city without a battle.

Part two: Cyrus speaks

From line 20 the voice changes. “I am Cyrus, king of the universe, great king, mighty king,” the text begins, followed by the titles of Babylonian kingship and his genealogy back to Teispes. Cyrus says he entered Babylon in peace, relieved its people of their burdens and was blessed by Marduk; kings from the Upper Sea to the Lower Sea brought him tribute.

The best-known passage lists cities across the Tigris, including Ashur, Susa, Akkad, Eshnunna, Der and the land of the Gutians, whose sanctuaries had long been in ruins. Cyrus returned their gods to their temples, “gathered all their people and returned them to their settlements”, and restored to their shrines the gods Nabonidus had brought into Babylon. The text ends with a prayer for Cyrus and his son Cambyses and a record of repairs to Babylon’s wall. Cyrus notes that during the work he saw an inscription of Ashurbanipal, “a king who preceded me”.

A Babylonian document in a Babylonian tradition

Everything about the cylinder is Mesopotamian. It is written in Akkadian by Babylonian scribes, follows the pattern of earlier royal building inscriptions, praises Marduk rather than any Iranian god, and was meant to be placed in a foundation where the gods and future kings would read it. The reference to Ashurbanipal is a deliberate signal: Cyrus presents himself as the latest in a line of rightful kings of Babylon, and the bad king he replaced as the exception.

That is why historians speak of it as propaganda, a word that describes its purpose, not its truthfulness. The account of Nabonidus is one-sided and was probably written with the help of Marduk’s priests. The claim of a peaceful entry is true for the city of Babylon but silent about the bloody battle at Opis a few weeks before, described on Cyrus Takes Babylon (539 BCE). At the same time, the restoration of gods and the return of displaced communities match what other sources say Cyrus did, and Irving Finkel and others argue that the text reflects a real policy of restoring local cults.

What the cylinder does not say

Much of what is said about the cylinder online is not in it. The text does not:

• mention human rights, individual freedoms, or freedom of religion as a principle;
• abolish slavery or set wages, as some widely shared “translations” claim;
• mention Ahura Mazda; its god is Marduk;
• mention the Jews, Judah or Jerusalem. The return of exiles it describes concerns named cities in Mesopotamia and western Iran. The biblical account of the Jews’ return is a separate source, discussed on Cyrus and the Return of the Jews.

The invented versions often include lines such as Cyrus declaring that every country may decide for itself whether to accept his rule. These sentences have no basis in the cuneiform text. Scholars from Iran and abroad, including Irving Finkel of the British Museum, have repeatedly pointed this out.

A symbol in modern Iran

The cylinder became a national symbol in the twentieth century. During the 2,500-year celebration of the Persian monarchy in October 1971, Mohammad Reza Shah called it the world’s first charter of human rights, and it was lent to Iran and displayed in Tehran. On 14 October 1971 Princess Ashraf Pahlavi presented a replica to the United Nations Secretary-General, U Thant, and it is still kept at the UN headquarters in New York. The event is described on The 2,500-Year Celebration of the Persian Empire.

Its popularity did not depend on the monarchy. When the British Museum lent the cylinder to the National Museum of Iran from September 2010 to January 2011, about half a million people came to see it. In 2013 it toured five museums in the United States. Many Iranians, inside and outside the country, treat it as a symbol of tolerance and national pride, and an unofficial “Cyrus Day” is marked by some on 29 October (7 Aban), the anniversary of Cyrus’s entry into Babylon.

Historians generally accept the cylinder as a sign of a deliberate and comparatively tolerant Persian way of ruling conquered peoples. What most reject is reading it as a modern declaration of rights. The lasting reputation it helped create is part of The Legacy of the Achaemenid Empire, and the site’s main article on Cyrus the Great places it within his reign.