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Archaeology (Persian)

The Cyrus Cylinder

high confidenceArchaeological

Summary

The Cyrus Cylinder (539 BC), recovered in Babylon in 1879, records Cyrus restoring the gods and populations of cities his predecessors had deported - the imperial pattern the decree of Ezra 1:1-4 fits.

THE CLAIM

The Cyrus Cylinder, recovered in Babylon in 1879

  1. 1The finding, 1 itemThe record
  2. 2What follows, 2 claimsArtifact

WHERE IT STANDS

The specialists agree on the reading.

high confidence
The Cyrus Cylinder, clay, 539–538 BC — Cyrus's own account of returning exiled peoples and restoring their sanctuaries. British Museum.
The Cyrus Cylinder, clay, 539–538 BC — Cyrus's own account of returning exiled peoples and restoring their sanctuaries. British Museum.Prioryman · CC BY-SA 3.0

THE CYLINDER'S OWN WORDS

Babylon, shortly after 539 BC

“From [Babylon] to Ashur and (from) Susa, Agade, Eshnunna, Zamban, Me-Turnu, Der… the sacred centers on the other side of the Tigris, whose sanctuaries had been abandoned for a long time, I returned the images of the gods, who had resided there, to their places and I let them dwell in eternal abodes. I gathered all their inhabitants and returned to them their dwellings.” (lines 30-32)

Read the city list, because it is the honest part: every place named is Mesopotamian. Judah is not on it. What the cylinder gives is the policy (a king who sends deported peoples and their gods home) not a Jewish decree.

Translation: Irving Finkel, The Cyrus Cylinder (British Museum, 2013).

THE TEXT IT MEETS

Ezra 1:2-3

“This is what Cyrus king of Persia says: The LORD, the God of heaven, who has given me all the kingdoms of the earth, has appointed me to build a house for Him at Jerusalem in Judah. Whoever among you belongs to His people, may his God be with him, and may he go to Jerusalem in Judah.”

Same king, same regnal window, same policy: each addressed to its own audience in its own gods' names.

The span, dated

  1. 539 BC

    Cyrus enters Babylon

    A clay cylinder of forty-five lines of Akkadian is buried in the foundations of the Esagila temple, presenting Cyrus as chosen by Marduk.

  2. c. 538 BC

    The decree of return

    Ezra 1:1-4 and 2 Chronicles 36:22-23 record Cyrus permitting the exiles to go home and rebuild the temple; Ezra 6:3-5 preserves a second, Aramaic administrative form of it.

  3. 1879

    Rassam digs it out

    Hormuzd Rassam, excavating Babylon for the British Museum, recovers the cylinder.

  4. 1983

    The honest objection

    Amélie Kuhrt (JSOT 25) and later Pierre Briant: the cylinder names neither Jews nor Jerusalem, and its “return of peoples and gods” language is stock Persian royal rhetoric aimed at a Babylonian audience.

  5. 2013

    The standard edition

    Irving Finkel and colleagues publish The Cyrus Cylinder: The King of Persia's Proclamation from Ancient Babylon for the British Museum.

  6. Today

    British Museum, London

    What the cylinder establishes is the policy, not the paperwork: no Jewish-specific Persian decree has been recovered in place.

Sources: Finkel (ed.), The Cyrus Cylinder (2013); Kuhrt, JSOT 25 (1983); Yamauchi, Persia and the Bible (1990); Kitchen, On the Reliability of the Old Testament (2003).

The claim

Ezra 1:1-4 and 2 Chronicles 36:22-23 record a decree of Cyrus the Great permitting the Jewish exiles to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the temple. The Cyrus Cylinder, recovered in 1879 from the foundations of the Esagila temple in Babylon, offers a contemporary royal record of Cyrus's policy toward captive peoples.

The evidence

Hormuzd Rassam, excavating for the British Museum in 1879, recovered a clay cylinder inscribed with forty-five lines of Akkadian cuneiform. After Cyrus's self-presentation as chosen by Marduk to enter Babylon (539 BC), the inscription records, in lines 30-32: "From [Babylon] to Ashur and (from) Susa, Agade, Eshnunna, Zamban, Me-Turnu, Der ... the sacred centers on the other side of the Tigris, whose sanctuaries had been abandoned for a long time, I returned the images of the gods, who had resided there, to their places and I let them dwell in eternal abodes. I gathered all their inhabitants and returned to them their dwellings" (translation: Irving Finkel, The Cyrus Cylinder: The King of Persia's Proclamation from Ancient Babylon, I. B. Tauris / British Museum, 2013).

Read the city list, because it is the honest part: every place named is Mesopotamian, and Judah is not among them. The cylinder is securely dated by Cyrus's titulary to shortly after the 539 BC conquest of Babylon.

1 from the record itself

The finding

  1. 01The record

    Records Cyrus restoring the gods and populations of named Mesopotamian cities

2 claims this page draws

What follows from it

  1. 01Artifact

    539 BC clay cylinder, Babylon; British Museum

  2. 02The record

    Establishes the imperial pattern behind Ezra 1:1-4, not a Jewish-specific decree

5 passages, Berean Standard Bible

The verses this rests on

1 objection taken at full strength

The objections, answered

  1. THE OBJECTION01Pierre Briant (From Cyrus to Alexander: A History of the Persian Empire, Eisenbrauns, 2002) and Amelie Kuhrt ("The Cyrus Cylinder and Achaemenid Imperial Policy," JSOT 25, 1983) observe that the cylinder does not name the Jews or Jerusalem. Its "return of peoples and gods" language is stock Persian royal rhetoric aimed at Babylonian audiences. The cylinder reflects a Babylonian-oriented restoration programme that cannot be projected without qualification to Judean contexts.The Ezra decree is on this reading consistent with Cyrus's known policy - but not directly attested by the cylinder itself.

    THE ANSWER

    Edwin M. Yamauchi (Persia and the Bible, Baker, 1990) and Kenneth A. Kitchen (On the Reliability of the Old Testament, Eerdmans, 2003) argue that the cylinder establishes the pattern: Cyrus did permit captive peoples to return to their homelands and restore their cults. The Ezra / 2 Chronicles decree fits this pattern precisely and falls within the same regnal window. The cylinder's specific language - return of peoples, rebuilding of sanctuaries - is exactly what Ezra 1:2-4 describes in its own formulation.

    Lester L. Grabbe (A History of the Jews and Judaism in the Second Temple Period, vol. 1, T&T Clark, 2004), though sceptical of Ezra's literary form, accepts the historical plausibility of such a decree under Cyrus.

The limits

What the evidence does not settle

  1. The "decree of Cyrus" in Ezra 6:3-5 preserves a different (Aramaic, administrative) form than the Hebrew decree of Ezra 1:2-4; the relationship between the two is still discussed. No Jewish-specific Persian decree has been recovered in situ.

  2. no mention of Jews or Jerusalem in the cylinder itself

  3. The Cylinder describes a general policy, not specifically the Jewish return

  4. The Deutero-Isaiah hypothesis argues that chapters 40-55 were written during or after the exile, which would make the naming of Cyrus (Isaiah 44:28; 45:1) contemporary reporting rather than prediction. Three things weigh against it. The Great Isaiah Scroll from Qumran (1QIsa-a, copied c. 125 BC) carries all sixty-six chapters continuously, with no seam or scribal break at chapter 40. The New Testament quotes both halves and calls both of them Isaiah — John 12:38-41 cites Isaiah 53:1 and Isaiah 6:10 in the same breath, under one name. And Isaiah 41:21-23 stakes God's uniqueness on exactly this test: "declare the things that are to come hereafter, that we may know that ye are gods." A book written after the fact would empty the argument the book itself makes.

  5. The Cylinder may be royal propaganda rather than an accurate historical record

THE RECEIPTS

Sources

  • Irving Finkel (ed.), The Cyrus Cylinder: The King of Persia's Proclamation from Ancient Babylon (I. B. Tauris / British Museum, 2013)
  • Edwin M. Yamauchi, Persia and the Bible (Baker Book House, 1990)
  • Pierre Briant, From Cyrus to Alexander: A History of the Persian Empire (Eisenbrauns, 2002)

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