(crowd chatting) Hello, I'm Joan Aruz,
Curator in Charge of the Department
of Ancient Near Eastern Art here at the Metropolitan. And we are all here today
to celebrate the arrival of the Cyrus Cylinder
at the Metropolitan Museum. This wonderful object was
discovered in Babylon in 1879, and is one of the most iconic
works in the British Museum. The Cylinder takes center stage
in an exhibition, "The Cyrus Cylinder
and Ancient Persia: Charting a New Empire," curated by our speaker,
Dr. John Curtis. And we are extremely grateful
to the Iran Heritage Foundation for their sponsorship of the United States
national tour of this and the other
extraordinary objects that are in the show. I also want to acknowledge
Assistant Curators Yelena Rakic and Fiona Kidd
here at The Met, who worked with me on the show, as well as Tim Healing
and Shawn Osborne-Campbell, and our designers Mike Batista
and Kamomi Solidum. As the title implies, the objects selected
for this exhibition demonstrate a time of transition
in the ancient Near East, one that is reinforced
by the placement in our permanent galleries
of this show against a backdrop
of the lions that adorned
the processional way at Babylon at the height
of the Babylonian Empire, centered in ancient Mesopotamia. But it is also adjacent
to our display of the arts of Iran
leading up to the period of the great Achaemenid
Persian Empire. We also celebrate the arrival of a valued colleague,
John Curtis, once more to the Metropolitan for the first of three
major events associated with the show. A second will take place
on June 28 when David Stronach, the excavator
of the site of Pasargadae, will introduce a film that reconstructs
Cyrus's capital city. And on July 11, we will hear
different perspectives on Cyrus and the significance
of the Cylinder from another BM colleague,
Irving Finkel, who has most recently
translated it, and from Robert Faulkner, an expert on the Cyropaedia
of Xenophon, with the help of our moderator,
Mohamad Tavakoli-Targhi. So we hope that you will
attend these. Dr. John Curtis
has been affiliated with the British Museum
since 1971, after completing his doctorate
on late Assyrian metalwork at the Institute of Archaeology,
University of London-- and this invaluable resource
has recently been published. Then he spent two years
in Baghdad as a fellow of the British School
of Archaeology in Iraq. He was then appointed Keeper of Western Asiatic
Antiquities in 1989, and since October 2011 has become Keeper of Special
Middle East Projects at the BM. Dr. Curtis is chiefly interested
in Mesopotamia, Iran, and the Caucasus
in the first millennium BC, of the Iron Age, and is author or editor
of around 20 books and more... certainly a lot more than
100 articles on these subjects. He's an active archaeologist,
and between 1983 and '89 directed excavations
on behalf of the British Museum at eight different sites
in Iraq, including the Assyrian cities
of Nimrud and Balawat. After he became Keeper,
he supervised the installation of six new Ancient Near Eastern
galleries in the British Museum, and also curated the traveling
exhibition "Art and Empire: Treasures from Assyria
in the British Museum" that was sent to many different
venues around the world after its inauguration at the Metropolitan Museum
of Art in 1995. In 2005 to 2006, he organized
the special exhibition "Forgotten Empire:
The World of Ancient Persia" at the British Museum, and then arranged
for the display of the Cyrus Cylinder
in Tehran. Since 2003, Dr. Curtis
has also been very involved in efforts to safeguard
the cultural heritage of ancient Iraq. To celebrate
his many accomplishments, he was elected a fellow
of the British Academy in 2003 and awarded an Order
of the British Empire in 2006, one of his numerous accolades. We had the pleasure
of hearing John Curtis lecture to us a few years ago
on the topic of Babylon, and it is now our great
privilege to welcome him again to tell the story
of the remarkable Cyrus Cylinder and the nature of Persian rule
in its early years. He will also address
such questions as how the document relates
to the portrayal of Cyrus in the Bible, memories of this illustrated
in our galleries by wonderful works on loan to us
from the Metropolitan Museum's Departments of European
Sculpture and Decorative Arts and Drawings and Prints. Another dimension of his talk
will focus on the Cylinder and how it has taken on a new
life in its more recent history as a symbol of tolerance. And I highly recommend to you
the catalog of the show, which he edited
and also contributed to, where these subjects
are further discussed. But now, please join me
in welcoming our dear colleague John Curtis, who will present
a lecture with the title "The Cyrus Cylinder
from Ancient Babylon and the Beginning
of the Persian Empire." (applause) Thank you very much indeed,
Joan, for those warm words. Good evening,
ladies and gentlemen. It's a great pleasure to be here
back in the Metropolitan Museum giving a lecture. I'd like to thank very much the authorities
of the Metropolitan Museum, particularly Joan, for inviting me here
this evening. And I also would like
to pay tribute to the Iran Heritage Foundation, which has sponsored
the exhibition "The Cyrus Cylinder," which is currently on show here
at the moment, and is being shown at five
different U.S. venues. Central to this lecture is,
of course, the Cyrus Cylinder itself. It's unremarkable in appearance, but is one of the most
iconic objects to have survived
from the ancient world. It's a barrel-shaped
clay Cylinder, sometimes said to be about the size
of an American football, which is inscribed
in the Babylonian language in Babylonian cuneiform,
or wedge-shaped characters. It was written after the Persian
king Cyrus the Great captured Babylon in 539 BC, and it was buried as
a foundation deposit. Before describing it
in detail, though, I'll try and put it into context by saying something
about the early history of the Persians,
and also of Cyrus. It's generally thought that people speaking
Indo-European languages, including tribes
who later became to be identified
as the Medes and Persians, began to appear
on the Iranian plateau from about 2000 BC onwards. When they arrived, they came
into contact with civilizations that were already old. In the southwestern part
of Iran, Elamite civilization
had flourished since at least 3000 BC. Sorry, I didn't mean to go on. Anyway, Elam is down in
the southwestern part of Iran, where it's marked Khuzestan
on that map. And the Elamites
had their own language and distinctive cuneiform-- it's okay,
I'll do it with this-- writing system. The origins of these
Indo-European tribes and the manner
of their arrival in Iran are subjects that are still
hotly debated. There are two principal
schools of thought about the birthplace of the
Indo-European language family. One theory
localizes this phenomenon in the steppes to the north
of the Black Sea, while the other would place it
in western Turkey, or in Anatolia, believing that
the languages spread with the expansion of farming,
wheeled vehicles, and horses. How many people
might have been involved in these early migrations
is particularly unclear, but recent DNA research
suggests that numbers would have been
quite small. A recent study
based on 938 samples apparently shows that
successive migrations from the Neolithic Period
onwards have not substantially altered
the basic gene pool of the Iranian population. Even if their numbers
were small, however, the Indo-European immigrants
made a major impact, and by the early first
millennium BC, we have documentary evidence for both the Medes
and the Persians in western Iran. And the Medes are first
mentioned in the records of their powerful
Assyrian neighbors in the reign of Shalmaneser III
in the ninth century BC, and for the next 200 years, they were to be a thorn
in the side of the Assyrians. The Medes and the Assyrians
frequently clashed, and the Assyrians
encountered the Medes in a series
of military campaigns into the Zagros region
and beyond. And Median fortresses with towers
and crenellated battlements are sometimes shown
on the stone wall reliefs in Assyrian palaces. At the end
of the seventh century BC, under their king Cyaxares, the Medes teamed up
with the Babylonians to launch a series of attacks
on Assyria. The coup de grace was delivered
in 612 BC, when all the major
Assyrian cities, including Nimrud and Nineveh,
were sacked and destroyed. And this sequence of events
gave the Medes a footing on what was then
the world stage, and by the middle
of the sixth century BC, the Medes were loosely
in control of a vast swath of territory extending from the river Hyllus
in Turkey to the river Oxus
in Central Asia. In spite of references
to the Medes in the Assyrian
and Babylonian records, however, our information about them
is tantalizingly inadequate, and part of the problem is that
traces of the Medes in the archaeological record
are meager. There's just a handful
of archaeological sites in Iran that have been identified
as Median or having Median levels, including Tepe Nush-i Jan,
near Hamadan. You can see it here. The lack of evidence
about the Medes has led many authorities
to conclude that the Medes were merely
a loose confederation of tribes who had little if any
centralized structure, and can't be considered
as a state in the modern sense
of the word, although I have to say that's not a view
with which I agree myself. However that may be, their art, like their politics,
is also enigmatic. But here, it's interesting
to see what were later regarded as typical Median products
in the early Achaemenid period. So on the Apadana reliefs
at Persepolis, the Median delegation
brings vessels, presumably in precious metal, a short sword-- a so-called
acinaces-- bracelets, and folded costumes,
probably of the same type as the delegates themselves
are wearing, namely trouser suits with hoods. And we'll come across
this costume later on. Well, if the prehistory
of the Medes is contradictory and elusive, that of the Persians
is even more so. However,
by the sixth century BC, the Persians were
well established in Fars Province-- you see that down towards
the bottom left of the map-- with their center at Anshan,
a former Elamite stronghold. And from this base,
they were able, in conjunction with the Medes,
to launch an empire that dominated the Middle East
for more than 200 years. Now, in the Cyrus Cylinder, Cyrus says that he's
the son of Cambyses, King of the city of Anshan, grandson of Cyrus,
King of Anshan, and a descendant of Teispes,
King of Anshan. The Nabonidus Cylinder,
a Babylonian document, also records that Cyrus
was king of Anshan. And we know that
the site of Anshan is about 50 kilometers northwest
of Persepolis, and it's known today
as Tal-e Malyan. It was once,
together with Susa, one of the great centers
of the Elamite state. Beyond this,
the cuneiform sources don't have any information, and we're reliant
on classical authors. Herodotus and Xenophon
are broadly in agreement, and say that Cyrus was the son
of a Persian named Cambyses and his wife Mandane, the daughter of the Median
king, Astyages. Cyrus would, therefore, have
been the grandson of Astyages. Herodotus has a fanciful story
about the upbringing of Cyrus, which we needn't repeat here. But we're probably
on firm ground with a deposition by Cyrus of his grandfather,
the Median king. According to the Nabonidus
Chronicle, Astyages, alarmed by the growing power
and influence of his grandson, sent a force against him,
but the soldiers revolted and handed Astyages over
to Cyrus. So in 550 BC,
Cyrus, King of Ansham, took possession
of the Median throne and apparently united
the Median and Persian tribes. But did he? In spite of the unequivocal
statements by Herodotus and Xenophon
that Cyrus was a Persian, there are lingering doubts. This is because Anshan,
as I've said, is a well-known Elamite center,
and it's... and it is now known that
the Elamite state lasted until 550 BC
and was not wiped off the map by the Assyrian
king Ashurbanipal in 646, as sometimes thought. And further evidence
linking Cyrus with Anshan comes in the form
of Cylinder seal impressions on Persepolis tablets
showing a man on horseback fighting against enemies accompanied by an Elamite
inscription that reads, "Kourosh"-- that is Cyrus--
"the Anshenite son of Teispes." The Cyrus referred to is thought to be the grandfather
of Cyrus the Great. It's possible, then, that Cyrus may have been
Elamite himself, or have had close
Elamite connections. However, although
the Nabonidus Chronicle describes Cyrus
as king of Anshan when he seized the Median throne
in 550 BC, three years later,
when he attacked Lydia, he was described as
king of Persia. Whatever the truth of all this,
by seizing the Median throne, Cyrus acquired all the territory previously controlled
by the Medes and added to it all the former Persian
and Elamite possessions. So began the Persian
or Median... oh, sorry. Persian or Achaemenid Period, named after,
as we shall see shortly, the eponymous founder
of the dynasty, Achaemenes. Well, after he'd established
control over Iran in about 547, Cyrus defeated Croesus of Lydia
in Turkey, which brought much of modern
Turkey under his control. He now turned his attention
to Babylon, which, since the overthrow
of Assyria in 612, had ruled supreme in most
of the ancient Near East, reaching its zenith under the renowned
king Nebuchadnezzar. More recently, though, Babylon had been in decline
under the king Nabonidus, who was more concerned
with pursuing his own religious interests
than in ruling Babylon, and for a period of ten years, he'd even moved to Tamar,
now in Saudi Arabia, where he dedicated a temple
to the moon god Sin, leaving behind in Babylon his son Belshazzar
as the regent. So in 539,
Cyrus moved against Babylon, and according
to his own account was able to capture the city
peacefully. We take up the story now
with the Cylinder. It was found at Babylon,
then part of the Ottoman Empire, and now in Iraq, in 1879, during excavations supervised
by Hormuzd Rassam on behalf of the British Museum. A firman
from the Ottoman government allowed the export
to the British Museum of any antiquities
that he found. The Cylinder itself was found
between February and March 1879, at a time when Rassam himself
was actually not at the site. With regard to the exact
find spot of the Cylinder, in a letter to Samuel Birch, the Keeper of the Department
of Oriental Antiquities at the British Museum, Rassam wrote that the Cylinder
had been found at Amran. Now, Amran refers
to the mound... Sorry, I'm not doing very well
with this pointer. Ah... no. Well, anyway... Sorry, I think I'd better get... Yes, now if I go forward
again... Amran is... if you can see
where it says "Ruins of Babylon" and look down below that,
it says "Amran Mounds" just at that bend
of the river Euphrates. But 20 years later, in his book "Asshur
and the Land of Nimrod," Rassam wrote that
the Cylinder was found in the ruins of Jimjima, and this is the name
of a village meaning "skull" in Arabic,
which is marked on a map by the German archaeologist
Robert Koldewey as "DD." And you can see that the spot
which he marked "DD" is just at the south of the mound
of Amran-ibn-Ali. So the two accounts
given by Rassam are not necessarily in conflict
with each other. Well, let's now look
at the evidence from the Cylinder itself. If it was indeed wholly
or partly a building or foundation deposit, it ought to mention
the building or feature under which it was buried. And indeed, it does. In the text, Cyrus says that
he strengthened the defenses of the inner city wall,
Imgur-Enlil, and he also says that
he completed the key wall, made up of baked bricks,
alongside the river Euphrates. Now, you can see... I'll try this once again,
perhaps. No... Ah, there, good. Sorry about that. Now, there's the line
of the city wall, called Imgur-Enlil,
coming along there, following that line. And the key wall is along here. The river Euphrates
is actually... this is the ancient bed
of the Euphrates. It now flows some distance
to the west. So in fact, the likelihood
is that the Cylinder comes from the spot at which
the key wall joins the... joins the inner fortification
wall of Imgur-Enlil, just at that point there. And that's entirely in accord with what Rassam
actually tells us. Well, as many of you know,
in the Second Gulf War, Babylon was turned
into a military camp, and there was, unfortunately,
a certain amount of damage in the form of long trenches
through undisturbed... previously undisturbed
archaeological deposits. And there was
some stealing of bricks from the foundations
of the Ishtar Gate. And also restored buildings
at Babylon-- these are actually modern,
of course-- were allowed to deteriorate
through lack of maintenance. But I'm very happy to say that
now the site has been... well, a management plan is
in the process of being drawn up by the World Monuments Fund, and they've done a great deal
of detailed work already. And I hope that Babylon
will soon be listed as a World Heritage Site. The Cylinder was
apparently broken, either accidentally
or even deliberately, at the time of its discovery
or soon after, and is now made up
of several pieces that have been fixed together. And a small joining fragment, that's the one
right at the bottom there, belonging to Yale University,
was identified in 1971. But just over a third of
the Cylinder is still missing. And this Yale fragment is part
of a collection of tablets acquired by
the Reverend James Nies in the early 20th century. Well, the text of the Cylinder
is written in parallel lines extending from one end
of the Cylinder to the other, and all or parts of 45 lines
of the text are preserved, while about 20 or more
are completely missing. And the missing parts
include portions of some lines at the beginning and the end
of the text. And the Cylinder was evidently
written by a Babylonian scribe who was familiar
with Babylonian textual and literary traditions. The style is Babylonian,
and some sentences recall earlier texts
of the Neo-Babylonian period. However, the scribe may have been putting
into a Babylonian format content that was determined
by the new Persian overlords. So what does the Cylinder
actually say? It records that Nabonidus had neglected the sanctuaries
of various gods and had shown lack of respect
for Marduk, king of the gods. We read, "He did yet more evil
to his city every day." Individual gods were angry
that they or statues of them have been brought to Babylon. The population of the land
of Sumer and Akkad had become like corpses. As a result, Marduk looked for the upright
king of his choice and chose Cyrus,
and it says, "He took the hand of Cyrus,
king of the City of Anshan, "and called him by this name,
proclaiming him aloud for the kingship
over all of everything." And incidentally, when I'm
quoting from the Cylinder, I'm quoting
from the new translation of it referred to by Dr. Aruz by my colleague
Dr. Irving Finkel. Well, Cyrus was ordered
by Marduk to go to Babylon, and with the assistance
of Marduk, he entered Babylon
without any battle. The text then switches
to the first person, as if Cyrus himself
is actually speaking. "I am Cyrus,
king of the universe, "the great king,
the powerful king, "king of Babylon,
king of Sumer and Akkad, king of the four quarters
of the world." And he says that his troops
marched peaceably in Babylon, and he freed the people
of Babylon from their bonds. This is thought to mean that
he absolved them from forced labor obligations imposed
during the previous regime. He boasts that kings
from every quarter, from the upper sea
to the lower sea, brought tribute to him
in Babylon and kissed his feet, and that he sent back gods--
that is, statues of gods-- to various sanctuaries
which had become dilapidated and which he restored. And these sanctuaries included
the cities of Ashur and Susa, and places
across the river Tigris. He then says--
and this is significant-- "I collected together
all of their people"-- that is, the people
from those sanctuaries-- "and returned them
to their settlements." He arranged for offerings
to be supplied to the restored shrines, and then talks
about the restorations of the Wall of Babylon that
we've already talked about. And in the course
of the building projects, he says he came across
a foundation inscription of the Assyrian king
Ashurbanipal, and the surviving text ends
with a prayer to Marduk beseeching him for a long life
and the fullness of age. Well, we now come on to
the crucial question, which is, what is the real significance
of the Cyrus Cylinder? Is it, as its proponents
would argue, some kind of declaration
of human rights, or is it nothing more than a standard type
of building inscription in the Assyrian
and Babylonian tradition? Well, to start with,
we should consider why the Cylinder
is marked out by some as a document
of special significance. First, there's the claim
that the conquest and occupation of Babylon
was entirely peaceful. It's certainly true
that there's no evidence for any kind of destruction
level at Babylon at the beginning
of the Persian period, and it's also the case that
it was standard practice both before and after
the Achaemenid period for conquerors to loot and burn
captured cities. So in this instance, Cyrus was departing
from normal practice. Secondly, Cyrus claims, if this passage has been
correctly understood, that he freed the inhabitants
of Babylon from their forced labor
obligations, and this was presumably
a magnanimous act. Thirdly, and most important,
we have the statement in lines 30 to 34
that Cyrus restored shrines in places in greater Mesopotamia and sent back to those shrines
statues of gods that had presumably
been brought to Babylon by the previous
Babylonian kings. This statement
is usually taken to mean that Cyrus is not only allowing,
but actively encouraging, the worship of gods
in different places. He's therefore effectively
promoting religious tolerance and freedom of worship. Fourthly, there is the statement that people
from the restored shrines were collected together and returned
to their settlements. This is usually understood
to refer to peoples who had been deported
by the Babylonian kings. Fifthly, new evidence
has recently emerged that shows the Cyrus Cylinder was in whole or part
some sort of proclamation. These two fragments
of cuneiform tablet were actually identified, read and identified,
very recently, at the end of 2009
and the beginning of 2010. They are actually fragments
that are in the collections of the British Museum. One was identified by the late
professor Wilfred Lambert, another by my colleague
Dr. Irving Finkel, and they are
from a cuneiform tablet which exactly replicates
the text on the Cyrus Cylinder itself. And fortunately, they do actually give us
some extra information in that they fill in
some missing bits of the Cyrus Cylinder. The significance, then,
is that the Cyrus Cylinder was much more than
a building inscription. It must have been
some sort of proclamation, and copies of it were probably
distributed far and wide. And there are precedents
for Achaemenid kings issuing proclamations,
and we know that versions of Darius's great rock cut
inscription of Behistun near Kermanshah was circulated
around the empire. The inscription itself,
incidentally, was in three languages: Old Persian, Elamite,
and Babylonian. And in the Old Persian version, Darius says that he sent copies
of the inscription to everywhere in the provinces. And we've also got the evidence
of a stele, found at Babylon, which actually
reproduces on the reverse the Babylonian version,
or part of it, of the Behistun Inscription. And there's even
an Aramaic version of the Behistun Inscription
found at Elephantine in Egypt. It seems almost certain, then, that Cyrus issued
a proclamation of the same kind. So we've cited five reasons
why the Cyrus Cylinder might be viewed as an unusual
and extraordinary document. But skeptics argue that
the Cyrus Cylinder is a foundation inscription
of typical Babylonian type and doesn't depart
from the traditional model, either in terms of its shape
or its content. So they compare the Cyrus
Cylinder with barrel Cylinders of the preceding Babylonian
and Assyrian kings, and argue that Cyrus
is merely following standard Babylonian practice. Well, here we have to say
the fact that the Cylinder is written in Babylonian style and using Babylonian phraseology
is irrelevant, as we know that it was written
by a Babylonian scribe in, of course,
the Babylonian language. It's certainly true that
some parallels can be found in the foundation inscriptions
of Assyrian kings, particularly Esarhaddon
and Ashurbanipal. And Esarhaddon does talk
about returning god statues which had been plundered
and brought to Babylon. So it is possibly true that
Cyrus was following precedent when he sent statues of gods back to the shrines
from which they'd been seized. Skeptics also argue that
by sending back god statues, Cyrus was doing nothing
very remarkable, and they point to the fact that,
as we shall we see, Achaemenid kings,
possibly including Cyrus, although they were worshippers
of Ahura Mazda, this doesn't mean that they
didn't respect other deities. So in the Cylinder, we see
that Cyrus acts in accordance with the wishes of the
Babylonian god Marduk, who he calls, "My lord." And in other contexts,
he supports different gods. He also undertook restoration
work at Warka, where there was a sanctuary
of Ishtar, and he was also active at Ur, where there was a sanctuary
of Sin, the Babylonian moon god. And we know from the Persepolis
fortification tablets from the time of Darius that official funds
were set aside for providing rations
for religious ceremonies offering a variety
of Elamite, Babylonian, and even Iranian gods. In fact, it was customary
at this time for kings to respect
other people's gods and even to recognize that
they had authority in their own country. And we see the same
sort of thing in the Bible. So in the books of Ezra
and Nehemiah, Yahweh is presented as
the god of the Israelites, not as the only god who prevails
over the whole world. Cyrus, then,
lived in a pluralistic world where it was customary to pay
tribute to a number of gods, even if your main allegiance was
to a single national god. And in the Cylinder,
skeptics say, by returning the god statues, Cyrus was sending a signal
that he was happy for the status quo
to continue. It is true that the concept
of a state religion that needed to be carried abroad
didn't exist at this time and wouldn't do so in Iran,
at least, until the Sasanian period-- that is, about 800 years
after the time of Cyrus. Well, set against
these objections, we have the statement that,
in addition to the god statues, people-- that is, deportees-- were returned
to their settlements. This doesn't seem to be part
of the usual rubric of Assyrian or Babylonian
inscriptions. We also have the claims that
Babylon was occupied peacefully, that the inhabitants were freed
from forced labor obligations, and the new evidence
that supports the notion that the Cylinder was some kind
of proclamation. I think we can conclude, then, that the Cylinder does show
evidence of a departure from the standard foundation
inscription. So what are the implications
of the Cylinder? The message is not so much
about religious tolerance, but more about political
pragmatism. In the space of just 11 years, Cyrus was confronted
with the problem of how to control
the first world empire. He chose to do so, it seems, by compromise
rather than confrontation. For this, he earned
the admiration and gratitude of his contemporaries. So let's now see
how Cyrus was regarded by the Biblical
and Classical writers. Both portray him
as an enlightened, if not benevolent, ruler,
and firstly, there's the evidence of Cyrus
in the Bible. Well, at the end
of the second book of Chronicles and the first book of Ezra, we're told that because of
the wickedness of King Zedekiah, the lord allowed Nebuchadnezzar,
king of Babylon, to attack Jerusalem. He slaughtered many
of the inhabitants, carried off to Babylon
the temple treasures, burnt the temple,
and deported to Babylon the inhabitants who had survived
the massacre. Then the Lord God of Heaven
empowered Cyrus to rebuild the temple
in Jerusalem, and Cyrus decreed
that all Judeans should return to Jerusalem to help in the rebuilding
of the temple, both physically and financially. Cyrus also returned to Jerusalem all the temple treasures
that Nebuchadnezzar had seized. So the Bible tells us that Cyrus
liberated the Judeans from their Babylonian exile and sent them back to Jerusalem
to rebuild the temple. As we've seen, the Cyrus
Cylinder doesn't mention Judah or the temple in Jerusalem,
but that's because it's concerned with events
in greater Mesopotamia. Given that it refers
to the restoration of shrines and the repatriation
of deported peoples, it seems entirely reasonable
to connect the biblical story with the account
in the Cylinder. And for the Judeans,
the return to Jerusalem and the building
of the second temple were clearly momentous events, and this is reflected
by the view of Cyrus in the book of Isaiah, where he's referred to
as the lord shepherd, and to his anointed,
literally "his messiah." We also have the testimony
of the Classical authors. Herodotus of the fifth century
BC greatly admired Cyrus. Xenophon of the fourth century
made him the subject of a novel or a political
romance called Cyropaedia, and this book is based
on the life of Cyrus, although it's partly fictional and it presents him
as an ideal ruler. And incidentally, it's a measure
of the impact the book has had that Cyropaedia is said
to have been required reading alongside Machiavelli's
"The Prince" for some of the founding fathers
of the USA, including Thomas Jefferson,
who actually had two copies. The conclusions, then, are that
Cyrus was a remarkable ruler and that the Cylinder
should be regarded as a very special document, and this is certainly
corroborated by the Bible and Classical sources. The year 539 BC,
when Cyrus captured Babylon, is usually taken
as the foundation date of the Persian Empire. Possession of Babylon
brought with it control over the former
Babylonian Empire that extended as far as
the Mediterranean coast. Already then,
in the reign of Cyrus, the Persian Empire extended
from Central Asia to the Levant. But what of Babylon itself? As we've seen,
Cyrus didn't destroy Babylon, and in the Cyrus Cylinder,
he says, "I founded my sovereign
residence there within the palace at Babylon
amid celebration and rejoicing." There were also references
in Xenophon's Cyropaedia to a palace or palaces
of Babylon in the time of Cyrus. But which palace or palaces
are we talking about? Up until now,
the only building at Babylon that's been certainly identified
as a Persian building is that small structure there, which is a small columned hall
of Persian type with a single portico. And as you see, it's tacked on
to the west side of what is known as the southern
palace of Nebuchadnezzar. And this building had red
plaster floors of the same type as the Persian palaces
of Persepolis and Susa, and glazed bricks
and a column capital with bull protomes were found
nearby. And this palace used to be
attributed to Darius, but now believed to date
from the reign of Artaxerxes II. In any case,
it's a very small building, only about 35 meters long, and it's more of a pavilion
than a palace. It certainly wasn't
an administrative or residential center. So where were Cyrus
and his successors based? Well, the Belgian archaeologist
Herman Gash has recently come up
with an intriguing suggestion. He proposes that a certain
architectural device visible in some of the palaces
at Babylon is of Persian origin. This is a plan known in French as the "salle
à quatre saillants" or in English as
the room with four pilasters or four buttresses. And there's a good example
of this type of plan in Darius's palace at Susa. Um... We're talking
about these rooms here, and these are the pilasters,
or buttresses, there. So you can see that the plan
consists of long rooms, each with four buttresses
separated by wide doorways, and the point of this type
of plan is that it enables long rooms to be
roofed with barrel vaults, which are a long,
rectangular vault in the center and transverse vaults
at either end. And Gash argues that this type
of plan is Iranian or, more specifically,
Elamite in origin, and he traces examples going
back to the circa millennium BC. He discounts the argument
that is sometimes advanced that the same plan can be found in Assyrian
and Babylonian palaces. For him, therefore, when the "salle
à quatre saillants" appears in palaces at Babylon, it's certain evidence
of Achaemenid period rulers. So he thinks that the west part of Nebuchadnezzar's
southern palace-- that's this part here--
dates from the time of Darius, and certainly, it is true that
there's a fracture line all the way down there
between the two buildings. And so he also suggests that there was extensive
Persian building work in the northern palace
of Babylon and in the summer palace, and he even goes beyond this
and suggests that a further part
of the southern palace was probably constructed
in the time of Cyrus. He's actually talking
about all this part here. So this in the time of Cyrus
and this in the time of Darius, and then this little building
in the time of Artaxerxes II. Well, all this remains unproven, but it would be ironic indeed
if the part of the building so lavishly reconstructed
by Saddam Hussein even during the Iraq/Iran war actually dated
from the Persian period. (crowd murmuring) Here, you see
the reconstructed palace... the palace as reconstructed
by Saddam Hussein. And in the far distance here is the so-called summer palace
of Nebuchadnezzar, also... well, Gash also believes there's evidence
of Persian-period building. Well, probably towards
the end of his life, Cyrus established a new center
at Pasargadae in Iran and was buried there
in a splendid gabled tomb. He was succeeded
by his son Cambyses, who added Egypt to the empire,
and Cambyses died while returning from Egypt
to deal with a rebellion, and there followed
a period of civil war from which Darius, undoubtedly the greatest
of the Persian kings, emerged victorious. It was really Darius
who shaped the empire, and under him,
it reached its greatest extent, stretching from Egypt
to the Indus Valley. But who was Darius, and what was
his claim to the throne? According to the great rock
inscription at Behistun, which we've already seen,
Darius says, "My father was Hystaspes,
Hystaspes' father was Arsames, "Arsames' father was Ariaramnes,
Ariaramnes' father was Teispes, "Teispes' father was Achaemenes. "For this reason,
we're called Achaemeneans. From long ago,
our family have been kings." Now, as we saw,
in the Cylinder, Cyrus says that he
is the son of Cambyses, grandson of Cyrus,
and descendant of Teispes. If what Darius says is true,
therefore, not only would he have been
related to Cambyses-- in fact, according to my
reckoning, his third cousin-- but he would have had
a strong claim to the throne, perhaps even a stronger one
than the heirs of Cyrus. However, most scholars,
but not all, believe that Darius's genealogy
was fabricated simply in order to justify
his claim to the throne. However that may be,
there's no doubt that he had a great influence in
the burgeoning Persian Empire, and as well as
expanding the empire and improving communications
and administrative structures, he was also a great builder. At Susa, at the junction
of lowland Mesopotamia and highland Iran,
he built himself a vast palace, which was part columned hall
in the Iranian tradition and part mud brick palace, decorated with glazed bricks
in the Mesopotamian tradition. But his greatest building
project was at Persepolis, the crowning glory
of the Persian Empire. Well, we've already referred
to some of Darius's reforms. Amongst other innovations
during his reign is apparently the introduction
of Old Persian cuneiform, a new set of cuneiform
or wedge-shaped signs devised to write Old Persian. Cuneiform had been in use
from about 3,000 BC onwards, but never before
to write Persian. And you can see it here,
Old Persian, on the right-hand side on
this column base from Hamadan, which is in the current
exhibition. But one of the very best-known
examples of Old Persian writing is on this wonderful object,
again in the exhibition. It's the Cylinder seal
of Darius himself, and it's got
a trilingual inscription in Old Persian, Elamite,
and Babylonian, which says,
"I am Darius, great king." It should be noted, though, that alongside the use
of Old Persian is an increasing use of Aramaic for communication
and correspondence. Aramaic had already been used in the Assyrian
and Babylonian periods, but now it became more common. Similarly, coins were invented
before the Persian period. They were used by Croesus
in Lydia, but from the time
of Darius onwards, the Persian kings themselves
started to mint coins. And whereas previously, they'd been restricted to
a small part of western Turkey, now they were widely circulated all around the western part
of the Persian Empire. These are three examples
that are in the exhibition all showing the so-called
royal archer figure. Well, we come on now
to the interesting and intriguing question
of religion. From the time of Darius onwards, Achaemenid kings paid tribute
in their inscriptions to the god Ahura Mazda and should most properly
be described as worshippers of Ahura Mazda,
or Mazda worshippers. We don't know if Cyrus himself
was a believer in Ahura Mazda, but many people,
including myself, believe that he would have been. Now, Ahura Mazda is the supreme
god in the Zoroastrian religion, but it's unclear whether the
Persian kings were Zoroastrians in the sense that
they were aware of and followed the teachings
of the prophet Zarathustra, known as Zoroaster in Greek, who reformed
the ancient religion centered on Ahura Mazda. Nevertheless, it was
during the Achaemenid period that the Zoroastrian religion
took root in Iran. It has to be admitted
that traces of the Zoroastrian religion
in the Achaemenid period are elusive and often contested, but a gold plaque
from the Oxus Treasure shows a figure
that's often associated as a Zoroastrian priest. And this man wears
the Median trouser suit that we saw towards
the beginning of the lecture, and he carries
a bundle of sticks that's known as a barsom, and these twigs are thought
to represent grasses that were used
in religious ceremonies and gathered together
after a sacrifice. And incidentally,
in the Oxus Treasure, which was found
on the north bank of the river Oxus
in what's now Tajikistan, there are 25 gold plaques showing figures
in Median costume holding barsoms of this kind. Also from the Oxus Treasure,
and again, in the exhibition, is a gold bowl, one of the wonderful examples
of Achaemenid tableware. And again, we've got
the evidence of innovations and new practice at this time. What's very interesting here
is that the bowl is actually decorated
on the underside rather than on the top side
so that it can be seen when it's being held up aloft
by the drinker rather than when it's filled
with liquid and sitting on a table. And a silver bowl
in the exhibition is decorated
in exactly the same way, but here, the figures are
actually applied rather than being embossed, and they again show lions
standing on their hind legs, but here, the lions are winged, and each one's got the head
and feather crown of the Egyptian dwarf god Bes. Then lastly in the exhibition,
we have one of the most spectacular objects
in the Oxus Treasure. It's yet another icon
of Achaemenid art, this massive gold armlet with terminals in the form
of winged griffins, and originally,
it would have been inlaid with precious stones, glass,
and paste, producing a very bright
and multicolored effect. And this technique of inlaying, which is known as inlaid
polychrome decoration, is a characteristic feature
of the Achaemenid period. And it's also interesting
to note that bracelets of this kind
were regarded as... were very highly regarded
in the Achaemenid period, and they're shown on the Apadana
reliefs at Persepolis being brought
by four different delegations as presents
for the Assyrian king. This particular delegation,
as you see, is coming from Lydia
in western Turkey. Well, to return
to the Cyrus Cylinder, its importance was recognized almost immediately
after its discovery. The text was read
by Theophilus Pinches, on the left-hand side, very soon after its arrival
in the British Museum, and it was published
by Henry Creswicke Rawlinson in the journal of the Royal
Asiatic Society for 1880. However, there was no thought
at that time that the Cylinder
had special connotations for human rights
or freedom of expression, and there was no hint
of the notoriety that the Cylinder
was later to acquire. And matters stood in that way
until the 1960s, when phrases like
"the first bill of human rights" seem first to have been used, but exactly by whom
is now not quite clear. However, by 1967, in his book
"The White Revolution of Iran," Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi
was calling the Cylinder "the world's first declaration
of human rights," and in 1971, the Cyrus Cylinder
was made the official symbol of the celebrations held
to mark the 2,500th anniversary of the founding of the Persian
Empire by Cyrus the Great to give it its official title. At this time, the Cylinder
was loaned very briefly to Iran and was on exhibition
for just four days in the Shahyad Tower,
renamed now the Azadi Tower. And it's interesting to note that reverence
for the Cyrus Cylinder has outlasted the monarchy that
promoted it in the first place. It became an Iranian icon during the time
of the Iranian monarchy, and rather surprisingly, it's also been adopted as
an icon by the Islamic republic. And when it was exhibited,
the Cylinder, in the National Museum in Tehran
in September 2010 to April 2011, it was seen by
up to half a million people. Well, as we've seen, the Cylinder is not the first
declaration of human rights. It wasn't intended to be
anything of that kind, and indeed,
the concept of human rights didn't exist at that time. However, it is a very remarkable
document indeed, and taken as a whole,
the contents of the Cylinder do certainly demonstrate a break
with past tradition and the ushering in
of a new era. As an exercise
in pragmatic politics, the Cylinder is a tour de force,
and it set the pattern for the next 200 years
of Achaemenid rule. This was a period when
there were many developments and innovations spread
over a very wide area. It was indeed a time of change
and a new beginning. Thank you very much indeed. (applause)
