The Cyrus Cylinder is often proclaimed by many as the world’s first charter of human rights. Various false translations circulate online, adding further credibility to these assertions. Even Neil MacGregor, the British Museum’s Director described it as “The cylinder, often referred to as the first bill of human rights”. According to the British Museum’s own website, The reality is that although it does describe some human rights, it is not unique, but it in fact reflects a long tradition in Mesopotamia where, from as early as the third millennium BC, kings began their reigns with declarations of reforms. The fact that this might be the first such declaration that survives does not make it the first declaration.

Whether or not it is a declaration of human rights could be a never-ending debate, but the fact is that many perceive it as such and as a result, ascribe all sorts of proclamations to it that are not present in any of the official translations. It should be noted that this is by no means unique to the Cyrus Cylinder – the Magna Carta has long suffered a similar fate. These documents may or may not be the foundations of later declarations, but some of what they are claimed to contain is patently untrue.

Notwithstanding the above, the area of Human Rights is an ever shifting canvas. To my mind, one important right should be that of a people to have access to their own cultural heritage. It is afterall what gives them and their nation its identity, as well as being something that they can be proud of. It could be seen as a the provenance of a culture.

The Cyrus Cylinder, though acquired legitimately, was like the Parthenon Marbles, taken with authorisation from the Ottoman Empire, from a location within Modern Iraq, but has a clear association with Cyrus The Great, a ruler associated with The area known today as Iran. Currently it is housed in the British Museum, but Iran has at various times disputed its ownership, although when it has been loaned to them, no attempts have ever been made to break the terms of the loan agreement. Many, particularly within Iran, would continue to argue that it is a part of their heritage and such they have a right of easier access to this key element of their past.

To me, all the above makes the following statement on the Foreign and Commonwealth’s office particularly muddled.

Essentially, they are using the Cyrus Cylinder (under its premise as an early declaration of human rights), as an introduction to criticising the current human rights record of a variety of countries. We are annoyed that these countries do not play by our rules, but at the same time, we are happy to wrong many of them, by continuing to ignore the disputes surrounding our own possession of their cultural property. Various countries on their list (of concerns about human rights violations) are also on the list of original owners of disputed artefacts. Just at a quick glance, Egypt continues to request the return of the Rosetta Stone, Nigeria the Benin Bronzes and Ethiopia the Magdala Treasure.

I am not saying that the human rights records of any of these countries is remotely acceptable, or criticising the FCO’s methodology in compiling their list. Surely though, using an item of disputed cultural property to introduce this is not the best way to do it? while we are pointing fingers, we must not forget that our credibility is being judged by these same nations on other issues, issues that remain very real and important to them as part of their quest to maintain their own cultural identity.

The Cyrus Cylinder, currently housed in the British Museum

From:
Foreign and Commonwealth Office

Human Rights and the Cyrus Cylinder
March 3, 2015

Next week the Foreign Office will release its annual report on Human Rights and Democracy. It will showcase some of the work the UK has been doing to promote human rights around the world over the course of our current parliament (ie. the last five years), paying special attention to the value we place on civil society. It will also look in detail at 27 “countries of concern”, in which we consider there to be the most serious violations and abuses of human rights, and 10 “case study countries”, where the focus is on one particular ‘theme’.

Human Rights are sometimes portrayed as a “Western” concept or invention (usually most vociferously by those committing the most serious violations). This is, in fact, a misreading of centuries of history which led up to the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. Way back in 539 B.C., the armies of Cyrus the Great, the first king of ancient Persia (modern day Iran), conquered the city of Babylon. In doing so, and as he prepared to govern his new territory, he declared that slaves would be free, people had the right to choose their own religion, and that different races living in the city would be treated equally. He recorded all of this on a baked-clay cylinder (known today as the Cyrus Cylinder and resident in the British Museum) – an ancient record that has been recognised by many as the world’s first charter of human rights. It is translated into all six official languages of the United Nations and its provisions mirror the first four Articles of the Universal Declaration.
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Neil MacGregor would love it is the world believed that his latest initiative with the loan of a Parthenon Sculpture to the Hermitage was all about “cultural diplomacy”. This is not the first time he has tried taking this line – one previous example was with the loan of the Cyrus Cylinder to Iran. Now, like Geoffrey Robertson, I would be very interested to know if there was any improvement in Iran’s human rights record (or for that matter it relations with the UK) as a result of this, but I know that the answer would have to be an unequivocal no!

Geoffrey Robertson QC, Currently providing legal advice to Greece over the Parthenon Marbles issue

From:
Independent

Geoffrey Robertson
Friday 5 December 2014
The British Museum has just lost the Elgin Marbles argument
This loan is welcome — in that it gives the game away

The British Museum has moved the river god Illisos from his plinth in the Duveen Gallery to St. Petersburg for a celebration of Russian art collection at the Hermitage.

This raises two issues: first, why give a propaganda windfall to President Putin at a time when his breaches of international law can only be deterred by sanctions that are beginning to bite? Second, if a part of the Marbles can now been seen for the next two months by visiting St. Petersburg, why should all surviving pieces of the greatest art in world history not be seen, reunited at the Acropolis Museum under a blue attic sky and in the shadow of the Parthenon?

The museum claims that “cultural diplomacy” can somehow discourage human rights violators. This is nonsense – it tends to embolden them. In 2010 the museum lent the Cyrus Cylinder to Iran, only to have it welcomed by a pageant staged by President Ahmadinejad, in which Cyrus wore the insignia of the Basij militia, which the previous year had brutally beaten and killed hundreds of “Green Movement” demonstrators.
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British Museum Director Neil MacGregor sets out why he believes that the loan of the Parthenon Sculptures to the hermitage in St Petersburg is entirely appropriate.

As expected, it falls back on MacGregor’s old favourite reasoning – that is to say, the Universal Museum. While what MacGregor describes as Universal Museums may have existed for a long time though, you will not see any mention in the press of such a concept prior to 2002.

We must remember that these so called Universal Museums are entirely self appointed entities. Outside of the new world, almost all have their roots in the era of colonialism & empires. They never asked the permission of the other countries whose artefacts they exhibit. They can only justify it now, through being bigger than the other museums. It is an incredibly elite club & the barriers to entry (both legal & financial) are such that it would be almost important to create similar institutions today.

It is interesting that MacGregor makes much of the loan of the Cyrus Cylinder to Iran – conveniently forgetting that for years the British Museum reneged on a prior reciprocal loan agreement to the infuriation of Iran. The loan only eventually proceeded after Iran threatened to withdraw all cultural cooperation with the museum.

It is clear that the Hermitage has cooperated with the British Museum numerous times in the past, meaning that they are in the institutions good books. However, this is also the case with Greece, that has on regular occasions loaned artefacts & never made any threats to withdraw cooperation in the way that Iran did.

He ends with a justification for the choice of the Parthenon Sculptures (rather than any of the eight million or so (by their own estimation) other items in their collection). This section is where it gets particularly hazy, with the rationale essentially boiling down to the fact that Pericles (under whose instruction the Parthenon was built) was a great statesman who understood the value of being seen as an ambassador abroad. From this vagueness, he jumps straight onto the presumption that “Pericles would applaud the journey of Ilissos to Russia”.

Certainly, there is some slight value to this justification, but the same could be said of many other items in the British Museum’s collection. And if this is seen as a valid reasoning behind a loan, then surely the overwhelming moral & contextual argument of unification presented by Greece presents a far more compelling case?

Part of the Parthenon Marbles, the British Museum plans to loan the river-god Ilissos to the Hermitage in St Petersburg

From:
British Museum

December 5, 2014 • 12:15 am
Loan of a Parthenon sculpture to the Hermitage: a marble ambassador of a European ideal
Neil MacGregor, Director, British Museum

The British Museum is a museum of the world, for the world and nothing demonstrates this more than the loan of a Parthenon sculpture to the State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg to celebrate its 250th anniversary.

The British Museum opened its doors in 1759, just five years before the Hermitage. Sisters, almost twins, they are the first great museums of the European Enlightenment. But they were never just about Europe. The Trustees of the British Museum were set up by Parliament to hold their collection to benefit not only the citizens of Great Britain, but ‘all studious and curious persons’ everywhere. The Museum today is the most generous lender in the world, sending great Assyrian objects to China, Egyptian objects to India and Iranian objects to the United States – making a reality of the Enlightenment ideal that the greatest things in the world should be seen and studied, shared and enjoyed by as many people in as many countries as possible.
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While its great to enable as many people as possible to see iconic ancient artefacts, I have a couple of issues with this. First of all, it seems that a loan to not one, but five different museums can take place with relatively little fuss – yet when it was loaned to Iran (the original owners of the artefact), it was a long drawn out process over a number of years involving threats of legal action and to withdraw other cooperation before finally they were able to receive it.

At the end, Neil MacGregor talks about Universal Objects – clearly, this is the next step on from the Universal Museum, which he is is so fond of. Clearly now, we can have objects, that by association of name, if nothing else, can only be displayed in Universal Museums and are no longer valid for consideration for return to their original owners. As with the Universal Museum concept though, the real issue though, as I have mentioned before, is that the museums claiming to fill this role are entirely self appointed to it. No international committee chose them for this, no others were involved in assigning them to this undertaking.

From:
New York Times

November 27, 2012, 7:00 pm
A British Museum Treasure Will Visit the United States
By CAROL VOGEL

The Cyrus Cylinder — one of the most famous objects in the British Museum — will travel from its home in London to five museums in the United States next year.

Often referred to as “the first bill of human rights” because its inscription encourages freedom of worship throughout the Persian Empire, it is a small clay object — not quite nine inches long — bearing an account, in Babylonian cuneiform, by Cyrus, the King of Persia of his conquest of Babylon in 539 B.C. The cylinder was found in what was once Babylon, now Iraq, in 1879 during a British Museum excavation and has been on display at the museum ever since. It is one of the most famous objects to have survived from the ancient world.
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This article appears as a response to the previous article in the Guardian. There are many things that make the Parthenon Sculptures a special case – the fact that they form part of a greater whole & that they were designed to be seen in a specific context, not as an object could be easily relocated are just a couple of them. This is not to deny that other cases have merit to them as well – each case should be judged alone, as they are so different. The differences are not just in the objects themselves, but in their cultural significance, where they were taken from, when they were taken, the circumstances surrounding their removal etc.

In cases such as the Parthenon Marbles, Greece has previously made clear offers that if the sculptures were returned, they would provide Britain with other temporary exhibitions of similar value (a very hard thing to assess). Temporary exhibitions are the main thing that draws people back on return visits to the British Museum, so surely having these regularly arranged for them would result in win-win situation for the museum?

From:
Guardian

Are the Parthenon marbles really so special?
Mike Pitts
Monday 2 April 2012 20.30 BST

The British Museum has had only one request to return something from its vast collections that it regards as official. The Greek government has asked the British government if it can have the Parthenon marbles back. Stephen Fry also thinks the issue of these sculptures is unique. In December last year, in a blog picked up over the weekend by a restitution lobby group, Fry wrote: “The Parthenon affair is a special case.”

Which it is. That stunning building embodies the culture that gave us democracy, the Olympic Games and all that classical stuff we used to be taught at school. It inspired the Renaissance and Byron, and now the many who would like to see the bits in the British Museum – about half the surviving sculptures – given back to Greece.
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More coverage of the dispute between Iran & the Louvre in Paris.

From:
Press TV

Iran rejects Louvre Museum claims
Thu Apr 28, 2011 12:34PM

In a statement released on Wednesday, the National Museum of Iran said that a cultural agreement was signed between Iran’s Cultural Heritage, Handicrafts and Tourism Organization (ICHTO) and the Louvre Museum on October 31, 2004, under which the two museums were supposed to hold exhibitions in the Iranian and French capitals.

The agreement, which is in English, Persian and French, has clearly stated that the two museums can exchange experts and cooperate in research and educational activities, IRNA reported.
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The loan of the Cyrus Cylinder to Iran was always going to be a political issue, in terms of the reasons for Iran requesting it & some of the reasons for Britain’s delay in going ahead with their original offer. The Cylinder has now returned to the British Museum – negating many of the original warnings made about the safety of the artefacts while it was out of the country & the doubts expressed about Iran’s willingness to return it.

Channel 4 News

Monday 18 April 2011
The Persian relic that divides Iran’s leaders

Saturday morning and the British Charge d’Affaires breaks cover to issue a public condemnation of Iran’s human rights record, and urges Tehran to respect its obligations on this score. She does so at the very moment that the Government in Tehran is handing back the most precious artefact to reside beyond Iran’s border.

The Cyrus cylinder has been on loan to Iran – against Foreign Office advice, since September. Hundreds of thousands (Iran claims millions) of people have filed past it – a tiny 2,500-year-old fragment of Persian historic culture laid on a velvet cushion. The relic has cuniform lettering on it and is regarded as one of the very earliest statements of human rights known to mankind. Yesterday saw its return to the custody of the British Museum..where it has lain since it was dug up in babylon in the late 19th century. It will arrive back in its showcase this afternoon.
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In a similar way to last years dispute with the British Museum, Iran is now threatening to withdraw cultural ties with France, if the Louvre does not proceed with a planed exhibition within an agreed timescale.

From:
Channel News Asia

Iran warns France over Louvre artefacts: report
Posted: 31 January 2011 2028 hrs

TEHRAN – Tehran has warned it will cut cultural ties with France if renowned Paris museum The Louvre fails to set up an exhibition of Persian artefacts in Iran as agreed, an official was Monday cited as saying.

“If this museum (The Louvre) fails to fulfill its commitment with the (Iranian) Cultural Heritage Organisation in the next two months, then we will cut cultural ties with France,” head of the organisation Hamid Baghai was quoted as saying by Tehran Emrouz newspaper.
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Despite, or maybe because of the current controversy surrounding its ownership & loan, the Cyrus Cylinder has attracted large numbers of visitors, during its temporary return to Iran.

From:
Tehran Times

Cyrus Cylinder draws about 190,000 visitors to National Museum of Iran
Tehran Times Culture Desk
January 27, 2011

TEHRAN — About 190,000 people visited the Cyrus Cylinder exhibit at the National Museum of Iran (NMI). The artifact was loaned by the British Museum on September 10, 2010 to the National Museum of Iran for a four-month show that ended on January 10.
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Whilst the loan (& hopeful extension of the loan) of the Cyrus Cylinder to Iran should be welcomed, there is an issue to consider, that in the context of Iran, President Ahmadinejad is trying to use it in some ways to give himself an additional sense of legitimacy within the country. There is no right or wrong answer, but in the end, whilst the location of artefacts is a political issue, this does not necessarily justify them being used as a political pawn to suit other motives.

From:
CAIS

Cyrus the Great Cylinder and Ahmadinejad’s quest for legitimacy
Saturday, 08 January 2011 10:18
By Amir Taheri

LONDON, (CAIS) — Hoping to regain a measure of legitimacy in the wake of the disputed presidential election in 2009, Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may be trying to recast himself as a nationalist leading a struggle against foreign foes.

We have already noted this trend in previous columns as, slowly but surely, the president abandoned the standard Islamist discourse in favour of a nationalist one.
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Contrary to other recent reports, it appears that there is still doubt about whether the loan of the Cyrus Cylinder to Iran will be extended for three months as requested.

From:
Tehran Times

Monday, January 10, 2011
Cyrus Cylinder show extension not confirmed
Tehran Times Culture Desk

TEHRAN — The National Museum of Iran (NMI) curator said on Wednesday that so far, the report on the extension of the showcase for the Cyrus Cylinder in Tehran has not been officially approved.

Bloomberg and several other foreign websites published a report on Wednesday announcing that the British Museum has agreed to extend its loan of the artifact for three more months in response to a request by Iranian authorities.
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More coverage of the decision by the British Museum to extend the loan of the Cyrus Cylinder to Iran.

From:
The Art Newspaper

Cyrus Cylinder to remain in Iran until Spring
The extension gives people from the provinces the opportunity to visit the exhibition during the Persian New Year holidays
By Martin Bailey
Published online 5 Jan 11

The British Museum (BM) has agreed to extend the loan of the Cyrus Cylinder to Iran’s National Museum. Although it was due to be returned on 16 January, BM trustees took the unusual decision to offer a last-minute extension. As we predicted, it has now been accepted that the antiquity, an inscribed royal decree of 539 BC, can continue on loan to Tehran until 15 April, after the Iranian new year holidays.

A BM spokeswoman explained: “This decision has been taken in recognition of the fact that the exhibition has proved to be very popular. The extension will give an opportunity for people from the provinces, including school groups, to visit the exhibition during the No-Ruz (new year) holidays around 20 March.” So far the Cyrus Cylinder has been seen by over 200,000 visitors, who are allowed in to the gallery on a timed entry system to view the antiquity for a few minutes each.
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