Cyrus Cylinder

The Cyrus Cylinder is a clay cylinder made after Cyrus II, king of Achaemenid Persia (biblical Persia), took Babylon. Its surface is inscribed in Akkadian cuneiform, and it is held by the British Museum in London. Cuneiform was the script of ancient Mesopotamia, written by pressing wedge-shaped strokes into clay.

Background

In the mid-sixth century BC, Mesopotamia was ruled by the Neo-Babylonian Empire. Under Nebuchadnezzar, this empire destroyed Jerusalem and carried the people of Judah into captivity, a period Scripture records as the Babylonian exile. Its last king, Nabonidus, exalted the moon god in place of Marduk, the chief god of Babylon (the "Merodach" of Jeremiah 50:2), and was absent from the capital for long periods. These actions reportedly provoked the resentment of the Babylonian priesthood.

Course of Events

In 539 BC, the army of Cyrus defeated the Babylonian forces at Opis on the Tigris River and entered Babylon. The text of the cylinder recounts the following:

• Marduk, angered by the impious Nabonidus, chose Cyrus as a righteous ruler.
• Cyrus entered Babylon without battle and did not oppress its inhabitants.
• He returned divine images that had been carried off elsewhere to their original temples and allowed dispersed peoples to return to their homelands.
• He repaired the walls of Babylon and other structures.

The cylinder is thought to follow the traditional Mesopotamian form of the building inscription, which was buried in the foundations of structures. It was discovered in 1879 among the ruins of Babylon by Hormuzd Rassam while he was leading excavations for the British Museum.

Results and Influence

The cylinder does not mention the Jews, Jerusalem, or the LORD. The places it names as destinations for return are cities in Mesopotamia and the surrounding regions. Nevertheless, the cylinder is regarded as evidence of Cyrus's policy of respecting the religions of conquered peoples and permitting their return. For this reason it is often cited together with the decree of Cyrus recorded in Ezra 1:1–4 and 2 Chronicles 36:22–23. Scripture records that, in accordance with this decree, the people of Judah returned to Jerusalem and rebuilt the temple.

Isaiah 44:28 and 45:1 call Cyrus the LORD's "shepherd" and "anointed." Conservative scholars regard these verses as the prophet Isaiah foretelling Cyrus by name. Most critical scholars, however, hold that Isaiah 40 onward was written around the time of the exile.

In modern times, Iran's Pahlavi dynasty promoted the cylinder as "the first charter of human rights" during its 1971 celebration of 2,500 years of the Persian monarchy. A replica is displayed at United Nations (UN) headquarters, and in 2010 the cylinder was lent for exhibition at the National Museum of Iran.

Assessment

Some praise the cylinder as a record of a tolerant policy that respected the religions and ethnic identities of conquered peoples. Many scholars of the ancient Near East, however, see it differently. In their view, the cylinder is a piece of political propaganda that follows the inscriptional conventions of earlier Assyrian and Babylonian kings, a text in which a new ruler disparages his predecessor and justifies his own reign as the will of the gods. They therefore argue that calling it a "charter of human rights" in the modern sense is anachronistic. A passage in the cylinder stating that Cyrus had seen an inscription of the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal also shows an awareness of this earlier tradition.

In Christian circles, the cylinder is often presented as archaeological evidence that the biblical record intersects with actual history. At the same time, it is commonly noted that the cylinder does not directly mention the return of the Jews. Scholars therefore generally understand the cylinder not as direct evidence of the decree in the book of Ezra but as indirect evidence of the same general policy.