The Cyrus Cylinder
A Babylonian foundation deposit later read as the first charter of human rights.
- When
- Known to
- ± 1 year
- Era
- Iron Age, Holocene
A clay cylinder buried in Babylon's walls in 539 BCE records Cyrus's capture of the city, his restoration of temples and his return of deported peoples and their gods to their homes. It is a conventional Mesopotamian royal inscription in form, and the claim that it is the first declaration of human rights — advanced in the 1970s and repeated since — reads modern ideas into it. What it does record, accurately, is a deliberate imperial policy of religious restoration rather than suppression.