Cyrus Cylinder

choi

Richard Holledge, A King's Manifesto. Wall Street JOurnal, Mar 7, 2013
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB ... 20631934903010.html
(The Cyrus Cylinder and Ancient Persia; A new beginning. Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Mar 9 through Apr 28, 2013)

Quote:

"It [Cylinder] offers freedom to Babylon's slaves and their right to worship their own gods.

"Among the many tribes permitted to return to their settlements were the Jews, who were allowed to take their statues and ceremonial vessels back to Jerusalem, where they were allowed to rebuild their temple. It is a defining moment in their history. In the Bible's 2 Chronicles 36:23, which was probably composed between 350 and 300 BC, we are told: "Thus saith Cyrus king of Persia, All the kingdoms of the earth hath the Lord God of heaven given me; and he hath charged me to build him an house in Jerusalem. . ." That was written some 200 years after the proclamation by Cyrus, but it was not until a British Museum team in 1879 discovered the cylinder under the walls of Babylon that the Jewish account was corroborated.


Note:
(a) Machiavelli's "The Prince."
* Niccolò Machiavelli
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niccol%C3%B2_Machiavelli
(1469-1527; Italian)
* The Prince was "not published until 1532, five years after Machiavelli's death." Wiki under "The Prince."
(b) Xenophon's Cyropedia.

* Xenophon
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenophon
(c 430-354 BC; of Athens)
(c) Cyrus the Great
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyrus_the_Great
(Cyrus II; c 600 BC or 576 BC–530 BC; founder of the Achaemenid Empire [c 550–330 BC)
(d) The Cylinder is "4 inches in circumference."

circumference is 2x(pi)xr, so the radius is 0.6 inch or 1.5 cm.
(e) The Cylinder is deemed "as an historic statement of how a disparate polity may be humanely governed."

polity (n): "political organization"
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/polity
(f) The manifesto said "the gods of the land of Sumer and Akkad which Nabonidus * * * had brought into Shuanna, at the command of Marduk, the great lord."
* Sumer
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/573176/Sumer
Sumer, site of the earliest known civilization, located in the southernmost part of Mesopotamia between the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers, in the area that later became Babylonia and is now southern Iraq from around Baghdad to the Persian Gulf
* Akkad (city)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akkad_(city)
(It has not been localized)
* Babylon
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babylon
(The [archaeologic] work concentrated on the area surrounding the Ishara and Ninurta temples in the Shu-Anna city-quarter of Babylon)
* Nabonidus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nabonidus
(Akkadian for "Nabu is praised"; the last king of the Neo-Babylonian Empire, reigning from 556-539 BC; section 2.3 The Persian conquest of Babylonia)
* Marduk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marduk
(the Babylonian name of a god)

(g) Temple in Jerusalem
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_in_Jerusalem
(was one of a series of structures which were historically located on the Temple Mount in the Old City of Jerusalem, the current site of the Dome of the Rock; The Bible reports that the First Temple was built in 957 BC by King Solomon (reigned c 970-c 930 BC))

Quote: "According to the Book of Ezra, construction of the Second Temple was authorized by Cyrus the Great and began in 538 BCE, after the fall of the Babylonian Empire the year before. It was completed 23 years later