INV. 012 · Inscription
The Cyrus Cylinder
Clay cylinder with cuneiform text, discovered in 1879 and kept today at the British Museum. According to the book, the text tells how the Babylonian god Marduk chose Cyrus to bring Babylonia's divine images back to their sanctuaries, and it presents the king as a pious restorer of tradition, a portrait parallel to Deutero-Isaiah's.
Editorial note: Date, institution and provenance come only from the Wikimedia Commons record and have not yet been checked against the institution's catalogue.
- Type
- Inscription
- Nature
- Ancient objectThe object itself dates from the period indicated.
- Date of the object
- mid-sixth century BCEThe Commons file title gives 'mid 500s BC'; the book speaks of a Babylonian text of Cyrus's own time.
- Depicts
- Cuneiform text on Marduk's choice of Cyrus.
- Institution
- British Museum
- Image
- Daderot
- Licence
- CC0 1.0 ↗
- Retrieved
- Commons API, 2026-10-14
Sourced historical context
The Cyrus Cylinder, a Babylonian text of the same period found in 1879 and now kept in the British Museum, is cylindrical probably because it was used to roll out multiple impressions of its text on fresh clay tablets. Its text tells how the Babylonian god Marduk chose Cyrus to bring the divine images of Babylonia back to their sanctuary. The Cylinder presents Cyrus as a devout restorer of tradition, much as Deutero-Isaiah claims God chose him to restore the Temple. Some call both works propaganda, attempts to make the Persian conquest look like a continuation of local custom.