What is the Cyrus Cylinder and why is it significant?
The Cyrus Cylinder is one of many kingly proclamations on stone or clay known from ancient Mesopotamia. What makes it unique is not its form, but rather the policy it records: Cyrus’s decision to allow deported peoples to return to their settlements and to restore their desecrated sanctuaries.
What does the Cyrus Cylinder tell us?
It tells how the god of Babylon – the conquered land – has chosen Cyrus to improve the lives of the Babylonians, and it talks about Cyrus’s efforts in repatriating displaced people and restoring temples across Mesopotamia, letting them worship the god of their choice, not the god of the conqueror.
What was the Cyrus Cylinder used for?
It was created and used as a foundation deposit following the Persian conquest of Babylon in 539 BC, when the Neo-Babylonian Empire was invaded by Cyrus and incorporated into his Persian Empire. The text on the Cylinder praises Cyrus, sets out his genealogy and portrays him as a king from a line of kings.
What is Cyrus the Great known for?
Cyrus the Great was the founder of the Achaemenian Empire. His empire, stretching from the Aegean Sea to the Indus River, was the largest that had ever existed at the time of his rule. Cyrus pieced his kingdom together using a mixture of conquest and diplomacy, attesting to his skills as a warrior and a statesman.
How and why is the Cyrus Cylinder important to the kinds of freedom enjoyed in liberal Western style democracies such as Britain and the United States?
This is what sets the Cyrus Cylinder apart from a number of other ancient objects. To Jewish people the story told by the Cyrus Cylinder is a magnificent one, as it corroborates the events in the Old Testament about King Cyrus allowing captive Jews to return to Jerusalem and rebuild their temple.
What is the story of Cyrus?
According to the Bible, Cyrus the Great, king of the Achaemenid Empire, was the monarch who ended the Babylonian captivity. In the first year of his reign he was prompted by God to decree that the Temple in Jerusalem should be rebuilt and that such Jews as cared to might return to their land for this purpose.
What makes the Cyrus Cylinder such an important document?
The main reason for this is how the Cyrus Cylinder is symbolic of tolerance and freedom. Most amazingly, he lets them recover their statues and gods – all the things that were confiscated as symbols of victory – and go back to their lives and religions, worshiping their gods in their own way and in their own temples.
How do you reference the Cyrus Cylinder?
MLA (7th ed.) Finkel, Irving L. The Cyrus Cylinder: The King of Persia’s Proclamation from Ancient Babylon. , 2013. Print.
What is the legacy of the Cyrus Cylinder?
It marks the establishment of Persian rule in 539 B.C. by Cyrus the Great, with the defeat of Babylon, the restoration of shrines, and the return of deported peoples and their gods. Cyrus’ legacy is celebrated in the biblical tradition, where he is seen as a liberator, enabling the return to Jerusalem.
What’s the meaning of Cyrus?
Meaning. “Sun”, “One who bestows care” Other names. Related names. Kourosh, Koresh.