In UN Treasure Honors Persian Despot, by Matthias Schulz, Spiegel Online International tells how the UN came to accept the idea that Cyrus the Great of Persia was a great humanitarian innovator. It started in 1971, in the days when Ayatollah Khomeini was in exile. Then shah of Iran, Mohammed Reza Pahlevi, held a gala event in Iran to counteract considerable turmoil in his county, while at the same time his sister presented the UN in New York with a clay cylinder from Cyrus dated to 539 B.C. The Ayatollah disagreed about the achievements of Cyrus, but the shah said the document was an "ancient declaration of human rights."
The UN says that many still consider the document to be the first human rights document. The article argues that Cyrus was simply producing propaganda and so was the shah.
The article is online at: UN Treasure Honors Persian Despot. (Or read the UK Telegraph's Cyrus cylinder's ancient bill of rights 'is just propaganda'.)
The article says there is a forged version of the cylinder online, but doesn't provide either the forged or an alternative translation. Jona Lendering has a translation on his site: The Cyrus Cylinder (2). Indeed, the article seems to repeat much of the information Jona has in his background article on the The Cyrus Cylinder. He offers a box of chocolates to the person who can tell him who is responsible for the fraudulent text.
Comments
Matthias Schulz’s article provides no historical evidence what so ever to back his postulates on the cylinder being a propaganda stunt or the way Babylan was conquered through bribes, and disregards all the historical facts.
It just sound like a sour man with basless accusations to continue the past few decades of trend of desparte effort to strip the pride out of nations that founded the basic rules of civilisation by those who themselves do’nt have any, but claim to have the patent over.
Talk about propaganda (not surprisingly coming fra Matthias Schulz).
Prof Kaveh Farokh has responded to the article in Daily Mail. Please read Retort to the Daily Telegraph’s article against Cyrus the Great
The Cyrus Cylinder is a historic fact and needs to be treasured by modern humans. God bless all who have fought for human right. Victory for the great King!
Please compare the nebonid cylinder and the Kourosh(cyrus THE GREAT) cylinder . forgot the bicker’s between shah and ayatollah khomeini and zoom on kourosh the great Attitude when Abrogate Slaveholding and donated freedom to babylone and allowed the jews to return from their babylonian Exile.
On the parse palaces glyph you can’t see a naked man, no one was angry ,no one was sit on the horse, no one was Obeisanced ,you can’t see a slave so think about that
more than 2500 years ago there is no democracy like today as we know so don’t compare it with today’s conditions .
No matter what our history says or Greek history says about ancient persia, at this moment in time, it’s time for the world to deny Iranian achievements in any possible ways,it’s not the right time to glorify Iran. Even our scientists and scholars are passed on to Arab history,mathematics, Algebra,Astronomy…etc is often refered as Arabic achievements.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Iranian_scientists_and_scholars
Herodouts worte more than 2500 years ago about Persians and said: when I entered Persia I found out that they had a very complicated education system, He said Persian could major the radius of the earth, this means not only Persians could major Earth’s radius, knowing the roundness of the Earth was something unimportant to mention.
Off-course from such advaced civilization someone like Cyrus The Great would appear.
It’s ok! lets deny Persians, Lets deny the biggest empire and one of the oldest civilizations Earth has ever seen. Persians will rise again.