Position in chronology
Cyrus Cylinder
Translation · reference
Scholar-verifiedI am Cyrus, king of the world, great king, mighty king, king of Babylon, king of Sumer and Akkad, king of the four quarters of the world… When I entered Babylon as a friend, and established the seat of government in the palace of the ruler under jubilation and rejoicing, Marduk, the great lord, induced the magnanimous inhabitants of Babylon to love me…
Source: Schaudig 2001, Die Inschriften Nabonids von Babylon und Kyros' des Großen; Finkel 2013, The Cyrus Cylinder: The King of Persia's Proclamation from Ancient Babylon
Why it matters
Often called the world's first declaration of human rights — a 20th-century characterization that overstates its scope; it is, more accurately, a typical Mesopotamian royal accession text framed as Marduk's restoration of order. But its references to religious tolerance and the return of exiled peoples (which the Hebrew Bible echoes in describing the end of the Babylonian Exile) have made it one of the most politically resonant cuneiform artifacts ever recovered.
Transliteration
anāku Kuraš šar kiššati šarru rabû šarru dannu šar Bābili / [I am Cyrus, king of the world, great king, mighty king, king of Babylon]
Scholarly note
The Cyrus Cylinder records the Persian king Cyrus II's capture of Babylon in 539 BCE and his official policy thereafter: restoration of native cults, return of deported peoples to their homelands, recognition of Marduk as legitimating divinity. The text is Akkadian, written on baked clay in the cuneiform tradition of Babylonian royal inscriptions; Cyrus appropriates the genre rather than inventing a new one. The cylinder was discovered in 1879 at Babylon by Hormuzd Rassam, fragmented; further fragments were identified in the British Museum's collection as recently as 2010.
Attribution
Image: British Museum, BM 90920 · imagery to be sourced at next ingestion pass.
Translation excerpted from Schaudig 2001, Die Inschriften Nabonids von Babylon und Kyros' des Großen; Finkel 2013, The Cyrus Cylinder: The King of Persia's Proclamation from Ancient Babylon.
Related tablets
Related sources
One of the earliest specimens of human writing. Not literature, not law — accounting. The need to keep track of grain in a temple bureaucracy is what pushed marks-on-clay into a system that could one day carry epics.
Marks the boundary between proto-writing and writing. We can see signs being used systematically — but not yet phonetically. The leap to recording speech itself comes a few centuries later.
The earliest historical document in human history. Before this, we have lists, accounts, and dedications. Here, for the first time, a ruler tells us what happened — with names, places, and consequences.