The Art Newspaper

Major discovery delays Cyrus Cylinder loan to Iran

British Museum says the finding of related texts is "very significant" but Iranian cultural heritage head threatening to cut cultural ties to the UK

By Martin Bailey. Web only
Published online: 20 January 2010

The Cyrus Cylinder, often regarded as the world's first declaration of human rights (Photo courtesy the British Museum)

The British Museum’s (BM) loan of the Cyrus Cylinder to Iran has been delayed, because of a major discovery in London. Part of Cyrus the Great’s text has been found on two fragments of inscribed clay tablets.

The first fragment was identified on 31 December by Wilfred Lambert, a retired professor from Birmingham University, who was going through some of the 130,000 tablets at the museum. Although it had been seen by earlier scholars, no one had linked the text to the Cyrus Cylinder.



BM curator Irving Finkel later found a second fragment which had once been part of the same tablet. Both fragments (slightly smaller than matchboxes) had been excavated by a BM team in 1879 at Dailem, south of Babylon, in what was then the Ottoman Empire (and now Iraq). Two years later the fragments were accessioned into the BM’s collection.

One of the tablets clarifies a passage which could not be properly read on the Cyrus Cylinder. The other supplies part of the missing text (since a section of the cylinder was broken off before it was excavated).

The BM’s Middle East keeper John Curtis describes the find as “very significant”, since the text was not just used in a cylindrical form as a buried object. The cylinder had apparently been buried in 539 BC in the foundations of the walls of Babylon. It is now clear that the text was also inscribed onto tablets and may well have been distributed throughout the Persian empire, representing a proclamation.

The Cyrus Cylinder has been regarded by some modern scholars as the world’s first declaration of human rights. The discovery of the tablet fragments adds to the evidence that it was indeed such a proclamation. It also appears to back up the theory that the Hebrew Biblical Book of Ezra drew upon the Cyrus text in its account of events.

The Cyrus Cylinder, one of the British Museum’s greatest treasures, was due to have been sent on loan to Tehran’s National Museum on 16 January, but this has now been delayed by the discovery. This was agreed with Iran’s Cultural Heritage, Handicraft and Tourism Organization.

However, the delay has angered Iranian vice president and cultural heritage head Hamid Baqaei. He is threatening to “cut our cultural relations with Britain”, if it appears that the discovery is being used as an excuse not to extend the loan. Baqaei also said he might ask Unesco to take measures against the BM.

The BM now plans to hold an international workshop to discuss the discovery with Iranian scholars, probably in June. There is also a hope that it may be possible to identify further fragments of the Cyrus tablet, which are written by a scribe with a very distinctive hand. The best chance of finding more fragments would be at the BM, but they could be in museums in Turkey, Iraq, Europe or North America.

Following the London workshop, the BM intends to lend both the Cyrus Cylinder and the newly discovered tablet fragments to Tehran later in the year.