What is the academic consensus regarding the Cyrus Cylinder? It's been represented as an early doctrine of human rights. What was it really?

by AMFTF
liwios

A thread in r/todayilearned mentionned exactly the same subject, maybe did you read it. Basicaly, even if the cylinder show that Cyrus showed a great amount of religious tolerance after his conquest, it is certainly not a "doctrine" of human rights. It can't be because it has no legal power on his own like a constitution, it would be totally anachronistic to apply such idea to the ancient near east, even if religious differences were tolerated de facto.

Moreover the article about the cylinder on Livius.org http://www.livius.org/ct-cz/cyrus_I/cyrus_cylinder.html clearly mentions that there are two translations in circulation. The academic one that shows a sort of "res gestae" of the king (in the words of Wisenhöfer). The story goes like this: the previous king (Nabonid) abandonned Marduk, the god search for a rightful king and choose Cyrus king of Anshan to restore the cult, followed by the benevolents acts of Cyrus.

The other one was made in 1971 to show that the idea of secularism in Iran dated back to Achaemenid Persia. An idea that omit some key points about the style of foundation cylinder and the long tradition of royal discourse in the ancient near east in general.

after a quick search I found this page: http://www.farsinet.com/cyrus/ or this document: http://derafsh-kaviyani.com/english/kourosh1.pdf (look how the fraudulent page is separated by an "and") It's easy to see that the last paragraph as no link whatsoever with the academic tradition, you can also clearly see that the text (even if it's not a direct quotation it clearly says that it comes from the cylinder) make a sudden mention of Ahura mazda wich makes no sense in a babylonian context where only Marduk is expected, and actually mentionned.

For more information you can check the paper of R.J. van der Spek, "Cyrus the Great, Exiles and Foreign Gods. A Comparison of Assyrian and Persian Policies on Subject Nations" in: W.F.M. Henkelman, C.E. Jones, M. Kozuh, C. Woods (eds.), Extraction and Control: Studies in Honor of Matthew W. Stolper

It clearly shows that there were only a few differences between the Assyrian (often depicted as tyrannical) and the persians (the supposedly founders of human rights)

finally the idea of human rights themselves have almost no sense in an esclavagist society.