The Cyrus Cylinder

An ancient clay cylinder inscribed in Akkadian cuneiform script, that was discovered in the ruins of Babylon, in ancient Mesopotamia in 1879 by archaeologist Hormuzd Rassam’s. His expedition, under the authority of Sir Austen Henry Layard of the British Museum, uncovered the cylinder in the area of the Ésagila temple, a major shrine to the chief Babylonian god Marduk. The piece was purportedly found broken in fragments.Whether the fragments were sold at the time of discovery to unscrupulous anitiquities dealers, or to private collectors, there is much speculation about the “ missing lines” of the script.

It tells the story of how the Persian king Cyrus the Great conquered Babyon in 539 BCE. It states that the god Marduk chose Cyrus over the Babylonian king Nabonidus, to restore peace and liberate the people. Interestingly, cylinders were meant to be buried in the foundation of important buildings and not meant to be seen again.

Some curiosities about the inscription on the cylinder, is that is shares similarities with other cylinders of later Babylonian rulers as well as some oracle bones found in China.

Because of the intense interest of the western hemisphere at the time of these discoveries, there may potentially be thousands of artifact fragments unaccounted for gathering dust in the repositories of the British Museum, some of which may be the missing pieces to complete the inscriptions…

We will never know, but we will find out what’s in store in Uplink 11!