The Cyrus Cylinder - one of the most famous objects in the British Museum - will travel from its home in London to five museums in the United States next year.
Often referred to as “the first bill of human rights†because its inscription encourages freedom of worship throughout the Persian Empire, it is a small clay object - not quite nine inches long - bearing an account, in Babylonian cuneiform, by Cyrus, the King of Persia of his conquest of Babylon in 539 B.C. The cylinder was found in what was once Babylon, now Iraq, in 1879 during a British Museum excavation and has been on display at the museum ever since. It is one of the most famous objects to have survived from the ancient world.
Although it traveled to the National Museum of Iran in 2010 it has never been on view in the United States. When it does come here, it will be one of 16 other objects from the British Museum that make up a show called “The Cyrus Cylinder in Ancient Persia,'' illustrating innovations initiated by Persian rule in the ancient Near East from 550 B.C. to 331 B.C. and the impact of the Persian Empire had on the ancient world.
“The Cyrus Cylinder in Ancient Persia,'' will open in March at the Smithsonian's Arthur M. Sackler Gallery in Washington before traveling to the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston; the Metropolitan Museum of Art; and the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco. It will end at the Getty Villa in Pacific Palisades, Calif., where it will be on view from Oct.2 through Dec. 2.
The loan is part of a wider effort by the British Museum to lend what it calls “universal objects†to different parts of the world. In a statement, Neil MacGregor, director of the museum said, “You could almost say that the Cyrus Cylinder is a history of the Middle East in one object and it is a link to a past which we all share and to a key moment in history that has shaped the world around us.''
