Mahsa Dini
M.A. in International Relations, Allameh Tabataba’i University
Introduction
The adoption of the resolution “Cyrus Cylinder: an Early Charter of Human Rights and Cultural Diversity” at the 43rd Session of the UNESCO General Conference once again brought one of the best-known surviving artifacts of the ancient world to the forefront of historical and human rights debates. On the one hand, this development provides an opportunity to reconsider the contribution of Eastern civilizations to the emergence of ideas such as tolerance, cultural coexistence, and the restraint of state violence. On the other hand, it raises a methodological question: can a text dating from the sixth century BCE be regarded as a “human rights charter” in the contemporary sense? A precise answer to this question requires, first, that the Cylinder be read within its own historical and political context; second, that the nature and limits of UNESCO’s decision be clarified; and finally, that the relationship between this artifact and contemporary human rights discourse be assessed.
Avoiding two opposing approaches—nationalist mythmaking on the one hand and disregard for the artifact’s civilizational significance on the other—this article seeks to examine the historical place of the Cyrus Cylinder, the meaning of UNESCO’s decision, and the relationship between the Cylinder and contemporary human rights discourse within a contextualized framework. Its central argument is that the significance of the artifact lies in the important evidence it provides regarding the language of political legitimation and certain practices of post-conquest governance, including the return of some displaced peoples, the restoration of temples, and pragmatic accommodation with local traditions. On this basis, the UNESCO resolution should be understood less as conferring a legal status on the Cylinder than as a normative, educational, and cultural initiative aimed at rereading the artifact within contemporary discussions of diversity, tolerance, and shared heritage.
The Cyrus Cylinder in Its Historical Context
The Cyrus Cylinder is an inscribed object bearing a cuneiform text in Babylonian Akkadian, produced following the conquest of Babylon by Cyrus II (Cyrus the Great), king of the Achaemenid Empire in ancient Iran, in 539 BCE. Hormuzd Rassam discovered it in 1879 during excavations at Babylon, in present-day Iraq, and the artifact is now held in the British Museum under museum number BM 90920. The surviving text comprises approximately 45 lines and, in terms of literary genre, constitutes both a royal inscription and a building foundation deposit within the Mesopotamian tradition—that is, an object placed within an important structure to record the king’s deeds and establish religious and political legitimacy (Finkel, 2013: 16–19).
The text opens with a condemnation of Nabonidus, the last king of Babylon, before presenting Cyrus as the ruler chosen by Marduk, the chief god of Babylon, to restore order. In the first-person section, Cyrus speaks of his peaceful entry into Babylon, the alleviation of the burdens imposed on the population, the rebuilding or restoration of sanctuaries, the return of cult statues of the gods to their temples, and the return of a number of displaced peoples to their settlements. These themes are undoubtedly significant for understanding Cyrus’s approach to governing a vast and diverse realm (Kuhrt, 2007: 70–74).
Within this historical context, situating the Cyrus Cylinder in the long-standing tradition of Mesopotamian royal inscriptions does not diminish its significance; rather, it provides a more precise framework for understanding its political function. In Assyrian and Babylonian traditions, kings frequently portrayed themselves as chosen by the gods, restorers of order, renovators of temples, and guarantors of social stability. A substantial part of the Cylinder’s language should therefore be analyzed within these established conventions of royal legitimation. Cyrus likewise employed the Akkadian language, invoked Marduk, and reproduced political and religious concepts familiar to Babylonian society, thereby articulating his rule in terms that would have been intelligible and acceptable to temple elites and local institutions. The Cylinder, therefore, cannot be understood simply as a neutral account of the events following the conquest of Babylon. Rather, it should be read as a text that both reflects certain policies and measures claimed by the new regime and serves to recast the conqueror’s legitimacy within the cultural and religious framework of Babylon. The significance of the document lies precisely in this dual character: the Cylinder is both a source for reconstructing aspects of Cyrus’s post-conquest policies and evidence of how those policies were formulated and presented to a Babylonian audience (Briant, 2002: 41–44).
The same methodological caution is necessary when examining the relationship between the Cyrus Cylinder and the return of the Jews from the Babylonian Exile. The Book of Ezra attributes to Cyrus a decree that paved the way for the return of the Jews and the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem; the Cylinder itself, however, makes no reference to the Jews, Judah, or Jerusalem. What the text directly records is the return of a number of cult statues of the gods to their sanctuaries and the resettlement of certain displaced populations in their former settlements as part of the reorganization of Babylon and its surrounding territories. The Cylinder may therefore be studied alongside the biblical accounts and other historical evidence as part of a broader body of material suggesting a policy of accommodation toward local religious institutions and a reordering of social relations following conquest. The text alone, however, does not permit the inference that a single, uniform, empire-wide policy was applied to all ethnic and religious groups. The relationship between the Cylinder and the return of the Jews should accordingly be understood as contextual and comparative, rather than as equating the two documents or as direct proof, through the Cyrus Cylinder, of the decree reported in the Book of Ezra (Getty Museum, 2013).
The Nature of UNESCO’s Decision and the Limits of Its Effects
Item 4.21, entitled “Cyrus Cylinder: an Early Charter of Human Rights and Cultural Diversity,” was considered on November 6, 2025, at the fourth meeting of the Social and Human Sciences Commission (SHS Commission) during the 43rd Session of the UNESCO General Conference in Samarkand, and the draft resolution, incorporating amendments proposed by Iran, was adopted by the Commission. Subsequently, on November 11, 2025, at its thirteenth plenary meeting, the General Conference, acting on the report of the Social and Human Sciences Commission, adopted the draft resolutions contained in that report, including the resolution concerning the Cyrus Cylinder. The final text was subsequently included in the resolutions of the 43rd Session of the General Conference as 43 C/Resolution 32 (UNESCO, 2026: 33–34). The official records identify the resolution under precisely this number and title.
In this context, the commonly used expression “global inscription of the Cyrus Charter” is institutionally imprecise. The resolution in question was neither a decision of the World Heritage Committee to inscribe a property on the list established under the 1972 World Heritage Convention, nor an inscription under the Memory of the World Programme. The World Heritage List applies to cultural and natural properties and operates through a process of nomination, expert evaluation, and decision by the World Heritage Committee. The Memory of the World Programme, by contrast, constitutes a separate mechanism for identifying and safeguarding documentary heritage. The 2025 action was therefore a resolution adopted by the UNESCO General Conference, considered within the Social and Human Sciences Commission, and was institutionally distinct from inscription mechanisms under both the World Heritage List and the Memory of the World Programme (UNESCO World Heritage Centre, 2026).
These two mechanisms also differ in their legal and institutional effects. Inscription on the World Heritage List under the 1972 World Heritage Convention is accompanied by an established framework of protection, management, and reporting, whereas inscription on the Memory of the World Programme is primarily concerned with the international recognition of the significance of documentary heritage, improving access to it, and facilitating its preservation. The Cyrus Cylinder resolution belongs to neither mechanism, nor does the resolution itself create a new legal status for the artifact or impose new obligations on States concerning its protection. In the adopted text, the General Conference describes the Cylinder as one of the earliest accounts embodying principles later associated with human rights. This formulation itself indicates that UNESCO did not claim that the ancient text embodied all the elements of human rights as understood in the contemporary era, or that it constituted a legal instrument imposing binding obligations on States. The official title of the resolution, however, employs the somewhat more explicit formulation “an Early Charter of Human Rights and Cultural Diversity.” Accordingly, any interpretation of UNESCO’s position should distinguish between the symbolic language of the resolution’s title and the more cautious formulation employed in its substantive text. The resolution calls upon the Director-General of UNESCO, within available resources, to give due consideration to the messages and values associated with the artifact in appropriate educational and cultural programs, in connection with intercultural dialogue, social justice, a culture of peace, and sustainable development (UNESCO, 2026: 33–34).
The same caution in interpreting the nature and effects of the resolution should also be applied when assessing the extent of intergovernmental support for it. According to the official report of the General Conference, Item 4.21 was introduced by Iran, Iraq, and Tajikistan, while five other countries also expressed support for the initiative. This indicates that the proposal concerning the Cyrus Cylinder was not presented solely as a national initiative from the outset, but succeeded in attracting a degree of cross-regional support. Following adoption of the text, representatives of Tajikistan, Iran, Iraq, India, Algeria, Nigeria, Colombia, Sri Lanka, Kazakhstan, Egypt, Pakistan, Kenya, Senegal, Bangladesh, Armenia, and Poland took the floor—a geographically diverse group suggesting that the initiative resonated beyond the Iranian context.
From an institutional perspective, however, a distinction must be drawn between introducing or supporting an initiative, making a statement after its adoption, and formally recording a vote. The UNESCO report records the adoption of the text with amendments, but the list in question specifically identifies the States that took the floor after adoption. Their inclusion among the speakers therefore cannot, in itself, be treated as evidence that each of those States separately cast a recorded affirmative vote (UNESCO, 2025). The official summary expressly states that the draft resolution was adopted with amendments introduced by Iran and that 16 Member States took the floor after the adoption. This distinction is important for accurately assessing the political weight of the resolution: the UNESCO decision attracted a notable degree of diplomatic attention and support, without the available evidence permitting a specific voting pattern to be attributed to every State that spoke after its adoption.
Human Rights Between Symbolic Connection and Historiographical Caution
Human rights in their contemporary legal sense are the product of a relatively well-defined normative framework grounded in the universality of rights, the equality of persons, non-discrimination, the inherent dignity of the human person, and the legal recognition of individuals’ claims against public authority. In the twentieth century, this framework acquired a more coherent international formulation, particularly with the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 (United Nations, 1948). Directly projecting this conceptual framework onto the sixth century BCE, without accounting for the fundamental differences in the structures of the state, society, the individual, and rights in the ancient world, therefore carries a risk of historical anachronism. On this basis, describing the Cyrus Cylinder as the “world’s first charter of human rights,” if understood to imply the existence in the Achaemenid period of a concept equivalent to modern human rights, is not historiographically defensible (Chavalas, 2006: 426–430).
This consideration, however, does not diminish the significance of the Cylinder or sever its connection with the history of ideas relating to dignity, tolerance, and diversity. The importance of the Cyrus Cylinder lies precisely in the fact that, from within an imperial political order and long before the emergence of the language of individual and universal rights, it presents an image of post-conquest governance in which the restoration of sanctuaries, the return of certain displaced peoples and displaced religious objects, and practical respect for local traditions formed part of the reconstruction of the political and social order of the newly acquired territory. Although these elements cannot be described as human rights in the contemporary legal sense, they can be studied within the longue durée of the development of attitudes that would later find normative expression in concepts such as tolerance, respect for religious and cultural diversity, and restraints on the arbitrary exercise of power. From this perspective, the value of the Cylinder lies not in establishing the historical primacy of one civilization in the invention of human rights, but in demonstrating that some of the concerns now articulated through the language of human rights have had diverse premodern roots, analogues, and formulations across the history of human societies (UNESCO, 2026: 33–34).
The modern history of the Cylinder is likewise an inseparable part of its present-day meaning. During the 1960s and 1970s, the Pahlavi dynasty widely promoted it as the first declaration of human rights, and in 1971 a replica of the artifact was presented to the United Nations, where it is now preserved in the United Nations Gifts Collection. This process transformed the Cylinder from an ancient document rooted in the political and religious context of the Achaemenid Empire into an international symbol invested with new meanings relating to tolerance, cultural identity, and human rights. The 2025 UNESCO resolution may be understood as a new stage in this reception history. On the one hand, the decision has the potential to give greater prominence to the contribution of non-Western historical experiences within contemporary discussions of cultural diversity and tolerance. On the other hand, it itself requires the same historiographical caution necessary to prevent historical similarities from being transformed into claims of direct continuity with modern human rights. It is for this reason that some scholars have warned that even contemporary formulations linking the Cyrus Cylinder to human rights, when employed without sufficient attention to the artifact’s historical context, may result in anachronism or an identity-driven reconstruction of history (EJIL:Talk!, 2026).
Educational Potential and Cultural Diplomacy
The significance of the UNESCO resolution for Iran will extend beyond a symbolic achievement only if the Cyrus Cylinder is transformed from an object of identity-based representation into the focal point of a scholarly and international program on the history of governance, cultural diversity, and shared regional heritage. The distinctive character of the artifact lies precisely in its multilayered nature: the ruler to whom the text belongs occupies a central place in the history of Iran and in the formation of the Achaemenid Empire; the Cylinder was produced in Babylon, within the political and religious traditions of Mesopotamia; its text was written in Babylonian Akkadian in cuneiform script; and the artifact itself is now held in the British Museum. From this perspective, the Cylinder is not an isolated piece of heritage belonging to a single national narrative, but rather a particularly suitable subject for examining the intersection of Iranian history, Mesopotamia, the region’s religious traditions, archaeology, and the history of museum practice. Such a character can provide a basis for the joint production of knowledge rather than competition over narrative ownership of the artifact.
The first practical step would be to prepare a multilingual educational edition of the Cylinder. Educational use of the text should not be limited to free translations or the selection of a few well-known passages. A scholarly project could present the cuneiform text, Akkadian transliteration, a literal translation, an interpretive translation, and historical commentary alongside one another, while clearly identifying damaged or reconstructed portions of the text. Such a work should also explain which statements appear directly in the Cylinder and which interpretations derive from other sources or from modern scholarship. This distinction is particularly important in relation to issues such as freedom of religion, the return of exiles, and the relationship between the Cylinder and the return of the Jews. The educational value of such a project would lie not merely in introducing Cyrus, but in teaching one of the most fundamental skills of historical inquiry: distinguishing between the primary text, historical reconstruction, and contemporary interpretation.
The second step would be to situate the Cylinder within a broader comparative framework. Studying it alongside Babylonian and Assyrian royal inscriptions, Greek sources, biblical texts, and other evidence from the Achaemenid period could help clarify the extent to which Cyrus’s political language continued earlier Mesopotamian traditions and the extent to which it reflected distinctive features of his rule following the conquest of Babylon. Within such a framework, the scholarly question is no longer whether Cyrus invented human rights. The more precise question is how an imperial power in the sixth century BCE reconstructed its legitimacy within a society characterized by complex religious and cultural structures, how it engaged with local religious institutions, and how it managed population displacement and the restoration of religious objects within the new political order. This shift in perspective transforms the Cylinder from an object of celebratory symbolism into a serious subject for the comparative study of empires and the history of governance in diverse societies.
A third area of potential lies in establishing scholarly cooperation between Iranian and international institutions. Rather than limiting activities to exhibitions or commemorative events, specific projects could be developed for the digital documentation of the artifact, the production of three-dimensional images and high-resolution research reproductions, the creation of a database of relevant sources, specialized workshops on the Akkadian language and Achaemenid history, and collaborative research on the history of the Cylinder’s discovery, transfer, display, and reinterpretation. Iranian universities and research centers with expertise in Achaemenid studies, together with international museums and institutions specializing in epigraphy and material heritage, could each contribute distinct forms of expertise to this knowledge network. Cultural diplomacy would thereby move beyond the presentation of a national narrative toward the joint production of knowledge—a level of engagement that is generally more sustainable and carries greater international scholarly credibility.
Alongside the history of the Cylinder itself, its reception history also merits independent study. The Cylinder has not carried a fixed meaning over the past two and a half millennia. What began as a royal inscription has, in the modern era, become a symbol of ancient Iran, tolerance, human rights, and cultural identity. Examining how this transformation occurred, the role it has played in museum exhibitions, political discourses, cultural diplomacy, and public memory, and the process through which the designation “the first charter of human rights” became associated with it constitutes an important field of inquiry in its own right within historiography and cultural heritage studies. Such an approach teaches audiences that ancient artifacts possess not only a history of production, but also histories of interpretation and reinterpretation.
From this perspective, the Cylinder can also become a substantive tool for teaching critical thinking in the field of human rights. Its educational potential lies precisely not in projecting twentieth-century concepts directly onto the ancient world, but in enabling comparison between two different historical frameworks: on the one hand, the logic of governance and legitimacy in an ancient empire, and on the other, the contemporary concept of universal and equal human rights. Questions such as how tolerance in an ancient empire differs from the right to freedom of religion in contemporary law, or how the return of displaced groups relates to the contemporary concept of the right of return, can elevate human rights education from the memorization of terminology to a historical and critical understanding of concepts.
Even the resolution’s connection with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) will be meaningful only if it moves beyond symbolic references. Its connection with Goal 16 can be articulated through educational programs on diversity, the peaceful management of differences, and the historical study of relations between power and society, while its connection with Goal 17 can be realized through academic networks, joint research projects, researcher exchanges, and open access to scholarly data. The success of such programs should likewise be measured not by the number of ceremonies or statements issued, but by the production of reliable translations, open data, collaborative research, educational programs, participation by institutions from different countries, and expanded public access to scholarly resources.
Accordingly, the most important opportunity for cultural diplomacy arising from the UNESCO resolution lies not merely in presenting the Cyrus Cylinder as one of the symbols of Iranian history, but in transforming it into an international subject for collaborative research on power, diversity, religion, population displacement, and modes of governance in the ancient world. Such an approach, while preserving Cyrus’s historical connection to Iran’s heritage, also recognizes the Cylinder’s Mesopotamian and transnational complexity and, precisely for this reason, can strengthen its place in global scholarly and cultural dialogue.
Conclusion
The adoption of the resolution concerning the Cyrus Cylinder by the UNESCO General Conference should be assessed as more than a symbolic or purely cultural measure. The significance of this decision lies less in conferring a legal designation upon an ancient text than in recognizing the historical and intellectual potential of an artifact that constitutes one of the most important direct sources for studying the relationship among political power, legitimacy, religion, displaced communities, and local traditions in the ancient world. The Cyrus Cylinder is not a “human rights charter” in the modern sense, nor does the UNESCO resolution transform it into a binding instrument of international law. Yet the artifact’s genuine value does not depend on such a claim. Its historical significance lies in the fact that, from within an imperial system dating back more than two and a half millennia, it records a mode of reconstructing order after conquest in which the restoration of sanctuaries, the return of certain displaced peoples and religious objects, and accommodation with the religious and cultural traditions of Babylon formed part of the instruments of governance and political legitimation.
From this perspective, the Cyrus Cylinder stands at the intersection of political history, the history of religions, empire studies, and the history of ideas concerning diversity and tolerance. Its value lies not in recasting the past as an anticipatory version of contemporary human rights concepts, but precisely in the possibility it offers for critical comparison between historical experiences of governance and values that, centuries later, acquired legal and universal expression through concepts such as freedom of religion, respect for cultural diversity, human dignity, and the protection of communities. It is precisely this historical distance that transforms the study of the Cylinder from a celebratory narrative into a subject that is both scholarly and meaningful for the contemporary world.
Accordingly, the most important achievement of the UNESCO resolution may lie in providing a new framework for the study, teaching, and international discussion of the artifact. An accurate translation of the Akkadian text, the development of comparative research, cooperation among universities and museums in Iran and other countries, and the reassessment of the Cylinder within the actual historical contexts of the Achaemenid Empire and Mesopotamia could move it beyond a subject entangled in identity-based controversies and exaggerated narratives, and toward recognition as one of the outstanding sources for the global history of political thought and governance. Under such a reading, the significance of the Cyrus Cylinder derives not from attributing to it concepts that belong to the modern era, but from what it actually is: an exceptional witness to the encounter between conquering power and a diverse society with deeply rooted traditions, and a text that, after twenty-five centuries, continues to provide a basis for dialogue about power, diversity, tolerance, and the relationship between government and society.
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