The First Right
How a Zoroastrian King Invented Human Rights 2,500 Years Before the United Nations eFireTemple.com The Object It is a clay cylinder, roughly nine inches long, covered in Akkadian cuneiform script. It was discovered in 1879 during the excavation of Babylon by the Assyriologist Hormuzd Rassam. It sits today in the British Museum, Room 52, Case 16. It is the Cyrus Cylinder . And it is the most important political document in human history.
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How a Zoroastrian King Invented Human Rights 2,500 Years Before the United Nations eFireTemple.com The Object It is a clay cylinder, roughly nine inches long, covered in Akkadian cuneiform script. It was discovered in 1879 during the excavation of Babylon by the Assyriologist Hormuzd Rassam. It sits today in the British Museum, Room 52, Case 16. It is the Cyrus Cylinder . And it is the most important political document in human history. In 539 BCE, Cyrus the Great — the founder of the Achaemenid Persian Empire, a king from the Zoroastrian religious world — conquered Babylon without a battle. The city's gates opened. The Babylonian king Nabonidus was deposed. And Cyrus, instead of doing what every conqueror before him had done — enslaving the population, destroying the temples, imposing his own gods — did something unprecedented. He issued a decree.
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Gathas · Cyrus Cylinder · Hebrew Bible