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Cyrus the Great’s Cylinder Challenges Iran’s Ayatollahs

Jan 19, 2020 8:00 am By Andrew Harrod

“Iranians have long been proud of their ancient history and culture,” Iranian journalist and Middle East analyst Saeid Jafari has written. The Achaemenid empire’s (559-330 BCE) founder, Cyrus the Great, looms particularly large in Iranian memory as a proud symbol of enlightened, tolerant rule, notwithstanding the scorn of modern Iran’s theocratic masters.

“Cyrus’s reign [559-529 BCE] is warmly remembered as the Persian equivalent of Camelot, the mythical English court ruled by King Arthur,” Moment writer Robert S. Greenberger has noted. Iranian expatriate students of ancient Persia have thus enthused online that Cyrus, whose name means “sun-like,” was the “father of the Iranian nation” and the first world leader called “the Great.” He is especially renowned for his eponymous Cyrus Cylinder, among the “most iconic objects of the ancient world,” as the Christian Science Monitor has observed.

This baked-clay cylinder marks Cyrus’ 539 BCE peaceful conquest of politically-divided Babylon with a proclamation by the “king of the universe,” as his Persian empire was the largest then known to the world. Upon entering Babylon, Cyrus proclaimed in an address his intention to “respect the traditions, customs and religions of the nations of my empire.” Thus the “first charter of human rights ever set to paper predates the Magna Carta by some 1,700 years,” Greenberger has written.

The cylinder’s cuneiform inscriptions express a similar message lauded by the Iranian expatriates. “Antedating the 1789 French Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen by more than two millennia,” the cylinder “can also be considered as a world treasure — and the first international declaration of human rights.” British Museum Director Neil MacGregor, who oversaw the cylinder’s current home since its discovery in 1879, has praised that “Cyrus invented a model of how to run a multilingual, multifaith, multicultural society” that “provided 200 years of stability,” albeit “held together by military force.” MacGregor noted that Cyrus was a “guiding light” to American Founding Fathers like Thomas Jefferson, who reportedly owned two copies of ancient Greek historian Xenophon’s Cyrus biography, Cyropaedia.

For Jews such as those at Moment magazine, it is particularly notable that the tolerant “Cyrus is also sometimes referred to as the world’s first Zionist,” as Greenberger has observed. Cyrus’ overthrow of Babylon “righted the wrong done by King Nebuchadnezzar II 58 years earlier when he captured Jerusalem and Judah, and exiled thousands of Jews.” Cyrus “offered the Jews the opportunity to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the Temple at Persian taxpayer expense. Many accepted,” Greenberger wrote.

The British Telegraph newspaper has correspondingly noted that “Cyrus and the cylinder are regarded with intense national pride” in Iran. “Iranians take a lot of pride in the old civilization started by Cyrus,” Iranian-American Jewish Federation Secretary General Sam Kermanian has stated. The Iranian expatriate students described online the cylinder’s “especial resonance for the Iranian peoples” and “integral part of Iran’s cultural heritage and national identity.”

Before the 1979 Islamic revolution overthrew Iran’s late shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, he capitalized in the 1960s on the cylinder’s popularity to promote his regime worldwide. The shah’s sister gave then United Nations (UN) Secretary General Sithu U Thant a cylinder replica in 1971, and it has hung next to the UN Security Council Chamber in UN headquarters in New York ever since. Dutch historian Jona Lendering has assessed that the “cylinder played an important role in the imperial propaganda” for a shah who “tried to prove that the secular Iran with religious freedom that he wanted to promote had existed before.”

Although wounding to Iranian pride, some historians like Lendering have dismissed the cylinder as, in Josef Wiesehöfer words, a “propaganda inscription,” as Cyrus the “real king was not more or less brutal than other ancient kings of the near east.” Historian Tom Holland denounced the cylinder as “absolute nonsense,” for the “ancient Persians were not some early form of Swedish Social Democrats.” He claimed that the UN, an organization “so Western in its philosophical underpinnings,” promoted the cylinder in order to claim eastern civilizational roots.

Yet the Islamic Republic of Iran’s theocrats have had more negative reactions to Cyrus and his cylinder than international academics. “The history of ancient pre-Islamic Iran is viewed with considerable disdain by the pan-Islamists of Iran,” University of British Columbia historian Kaveh Farrokh has noted. Therefore many regime members “have attempted to write out the history of pre-Islamic Iran (including Cyrus the Great) from the educational curricula of Iran since 1979.” “The main focus of these particular Mullahs is the pan-Islamic discourse which is in fact against the heritage of ancient (pre-Islamic) Iran, India and the west.”

The 2003 Guardian obituary for Ayatollah Sadeq Khalkhali, for example, noted his well-deserved reputation as a “hanging judge…at the forefront of the reign of terror that followed the Iranian revolution in 1979.” In Iran,he was additionally “committed to Islamification at all costs.” Correspondingly, the Iranian internet commentators recalled his book that “smeared” Cyrus as “tyrant, a liar” and how Khalkhali had also claimed that Cyrus’ historical record “was a concoction by the late Shah.”

Tormenters such as Khalkhali rightly fear Iranian memories of Cyrus the Great, however inflated. The ancient king gives modern Iranians not just a national identity apart from Islam, but also a vision of possible tolerant ideological alternatives. The Islamic Republic’s troubled relationship with his legacy thus extends beyond his cylinder to historical sites from his era such as the Achaemenid capital Persepolis. Here the shah in 1971 marked the 2,500 anniversary of Cyrus’ empire in a famously luxurious celebration, complete with his cylinder loaned from the British Museum, as the next article in this series will examine.

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Filed Under: Iran Tagged With: Cyrus cylinder, Cyrus the Great


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Comments

  1. Henry Mansfield says

    Jan 19, 2020 at 8:31 am

    I’ve always loved reading about history, and with advances in science there’s always more being uncovered.
    Agriculture was being ‘invented’ in multiple places soon after the last Ice Age ended, and cultures began to develop their individual styles.
    It appears that not long after those cultures all developed religion, as if religious feeling is inimical to humans everywhere and must be somehow channeled.
    I wonder how many Iranians at this very moment secretly wish that the Arab Mohammed had never been born and that they could practice whatever religion they wanted(or none).

    • R Russell says

      Jan 19, 2020 at 10:44 am

      I hope I have chosen the correct video.
      This is an interesting take on history

  2. Lightship Chaplain says

    Jan 19, 2020 at 8:36 am

    The truth is never silenced, no matter how much someone may hate it!

    • E deBouter says

      Jan 21, 2020 at 12:33 am

      They may try to silence truth, but somewhere it will always come out on top.

  3. PETER BUCKLEY says

    Jan 19, 2020 at 8:45 am

    “For the first time, more and more Iranians are beginning to contemplate regime change not as merely a desirable slogan but as a practical strategy to lead the nation out of the impasse created by Khomeinism.”

    https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15463/iran-old-recipe

    Iranian women leading protests:

    https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15464/iranian-women-western-feminists

  4. PETER BUCKLEY says

    Jan 19, 2020 at 8:46 am

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/13/journalists-quit-iranian-state-broadcaster-over-crash-cover-up

  5. WithPurpleAbandon says

    Jan 19, 2020 at 9:04 am

    “ancient Persians were not some early form of Swedish Social Democrats” according to Tom Holland

    Well quite: Swedish Social Democrats are the worst of crackpot fanatical totalitarians. The mere fact that they dress up like run of the mill politicians tells you absolutely nothing about what’s going on in their warped constructivist mind, duh. If that’s supposed to set an example with regards to drawing a analogy with the past somewhere, then, ironically, he doesn’t quite realize how right he is. For all the wrong reasons.

    Go ask people in Sweden who have a gutfull of Swedish Social Democrats.

    • Carol the 1st says

      Jan 21, 2020 at 11:23 pm

      Recent Rubin Report on Youtube is good:
      Debunking The Many Myths of Sweden | Aron Flam & Henrik Jönsson | INTERNATIONAL | Rubin Report

  6. FYI says

    Jan 19, 2020 at 9:07 am

    Do you know what else would challenge iran’s ayatollahs or even al lah,the Arab god of islam himself?

    The Wisdom of Solomon

    {Jewish Solomon,NOT the koran’s muslim suleiman}

    This is the koran’s muslim version,suleiman.

    “And there were gathered together unto suleiman his armies of JINN and humankind and of the birds,and they were set in battle order.
    Till when they reached the valley of the ants,an ant exclaimed” O ants!Enter your dwellings lest suleiman and his armies crush you,unperceiving”
    Koran 27 v 17-18{the Ant}

    “unperceiving” said the Ant.That’s a big word for an Ant.

    Indeed there are strange things in the OT but nothing beats the koran.

    Armies of Jinn,an Air Force of birds,talking arabic speaking ants and of course suleiman is a muslim because he couldn’t possibly be a Jew since after all..by allah’s islamic logic

    “Abraham was not a Jew nor yet a Christian”
    koran 3 v 67

    Well he couldn’t possibly have been a Christian but he was definitely NOT muslim.

    {Abraham is the genealogy of Jesus Christ{Matthew 1} who is JEWISH {John 4 v 22}so it is pretty obvious Abraham was associated with Judaism and Jews}

    I’ll bet the ayatollahs won’t accept that as they cannot deny their “perfect” koran and allah we know doesn’t like Jews{koran 2 v 65}: he thinks they believe in somebody called “Ezra is the son of allah” koran 9:30

    Yeah,that’s right allah.That’s exactly what Jews say.
    The Jews say “Ezra is the son of allah”k9:30.Sure they do allah,sure they do.

    The Persians should get rid of this ARAB god that enslaves them:a one shinned,two right handed,linguistically challenged idiot of a god and his “prophet”

    The Persians have good reason to be proud of their ancient history.

    • Quazgaa says

      Jan 20, 2020 at 12:37 am

      Iranians need to get a spine before leaving islam.

  7. WithPurpleAbandon says

    Jan 19, 2020 at 9:32 am

    All pre-Islamic culture and traditions and post-Islamic modernization belongs to the realm ofJahilyyah and is therefore shirk. And that’s just typical of Islam: there is no culture to be had before or after the advent of Islam. And that’s exactly why Islamic ideology is pretty much ill-suited to cope with any type of modernization in this world:, whether technological, scientific, social, juridical,and the like. It wipes out all that people hold dear, it doesn’t allow people to cling to traditions. It’s basically as if Islam doesn’t want people to reminisce about better times, either. Islam is the ideology of Grudges.

    • mortimer says

      Jan 19, 2020 at 1:47 pm

      Maybe true about Islam generally, WPA, but the Persian culture has a rebellious streak in it.

      • WithPurpleAbandon says

        Jan 19, 2020 at 3:24 pm

        Very true in many ways. The fact that they hold on to Now Ruz as a tradition makes the mullahcracy’s blood boil.

        • gravenimage says

          Jan 19, 2020 at 10:01 pm

          Now Ruz–the Iranian New Year–is coming up in a couple of months. Some Iranians celebrate it on the qt even now.

    • gravenimage says

      Jan 19, 2020 at 9:59 pm

      Islam considers *all* un-Islamic and pre-Islamic civilization to be “worthless Jahilyyah”

  8. Sheri Cline says

    Jan 19, 2020 at 9:55 am

    Cyrus the Great ( Cyrus II of Persia), followed by his son Darius the Great (Darius I), followed by his son Xerxes I, (called Xerxes the Great and also known as Ahasuerus). Xerxes is identified as Ahasuerus in the biblical Book of Esther.

  9. Jim says

    Jan 19, 2020 at 11:02 am

    This is very true! I didn’t realize that the Iranian regime used Cyrus the Great as justification for their regime. Well, they HAVE TO let the Jews return to their ancient homeland now! Wouldn’t want to dishonor Cyrus the Great, now would we!

  10. Ade Fegan says

    Jan 19, 2020 at 12:00 pm

    I can think of a religion who will want the cylinder destroyed
    Sorry .. no prizes for guessing

  11. David says

    Jan 19, 2020 at 1:27 pm

    It is very fortunate that Cyrus the Great’s cylinder is in the British Museum.
    It’s been there ever since its discovery in 1879 by the Assyrian-British archaeologist Hormuzd Rassam.
    If we (the British) had allowed this wonderful relic to be “repatriated” to Iran, no doubt it would now have been destroyed by the current civilisation-hating Iranian mullahs.
    Remember how the ancient statues of Buddha were destroyed by the Taliban?

    • gravenimage says

      Jan 19, 2020 at 10:02 pm

      Spot on, David.

  12. mortimer says

    Jan 19, 2020 at 1:42 pm

    The religious tolerance and recognition of human rights by Cyrus should be an inspiration to all Iranians as they prepare to dump the rapacious mullahocracy and move towards an enlightened, more tolerant and more prosperous future.

  13. Ade Fegan says

    Jan 19, 2020 at 6:06 pm

    If the ideas in the inscriptions go viral,
    Islam could be in for an early death ….. Inshallah

  14. Jim Sheffield says

    Jan 19, 2020 at 6:32 pm

    Xenophon ‘s Cyropaedia, 1803 English edition. The Cyropaedia, sometimes spelled Cyropedia, is a partly fictional biography of Cyrus the Great the founder of Achaemenid Empire, the first Persian Empire. It was written around 370 BC by Xenophon, the Athenian gentleman-soldier, and student of Socrates.
    https://www.bing.com/search?q=xenophon+cyropaedia&FORM=AWRE

  15. JamesC says

    Jan 20, 2020 at 5:03 am

    “Although wounding to Iranian pride, some historians like Lendering have dismissed the cylinder as, in Josef Wiesehöfer words, a “propaganda inscription,”……”

    That interpretation has the great merit of doing admirable justice to what the text says. Cyrus is as concerned to emphasise the supposed impiety of his defeated predecessor Nabu-na’id of Babylon, as to emphasis his own, corresponding, piety. To picture Cyrus as a champion of human rights is silly, because that idea goes far beyond anything justified by the text.

    • gravenimage says

      Jan 20, 2020 at 11:32 pm

      Yes–I rather doubt that Cyrus the Great was a champion of human rights. That being said, still better than Islam.

      • JamesC. says

        Jan 22, 2020 at 4:32 am

        Islam would in several respects not be out of place in the ANE of 2,500 years ago.

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