The cylinder is now back in Iran, on loan from London for four months. This has presented the Iranian clerical regime with a dilemma. Celebrations of Iran’s pre-Islamic past have been out of fashion for 30 years as too reminiscent of the shah.I don't think the British Museum has covered itself with glory by giving Iran's batty head of state this excuse for a political platform, although he does seem to be seizing the opportunity to make a fool of himself with it. Cyrus was an ancient empire builder, not a human rights champion, but in some ways he looks pretty good next to the current Iranian Government.
But Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, has seized the opportunity to bask in the cylinder’s glow and turn it into a symbol of the Islamic Republic’s power and prestige. For years Mr Ahmadinejad has been seen as a religious zealot, impatiently awaiting the return of the messiah of Shiite Islam. Now he is emerging as an Iranian nationalist.
In a ceremony on Sunday to unveil the cylinder at the Iranian National Museum, Mr Ahmadinejad sought to link modern Iran with the old Persian empire. He decorated a man dressed as one of King Cyrus’s soldiers with a keffiyeh, which is part of the uniform of the pro-government militia, the Basij. Having described Cyrus as “King of the World”, he praised the cylinder as embodying respect for the basic rights of mankind, freedom of thought and choice, and the revolutionary ideal of fighting oppression. Folk dancers representing the various ethnic groups of Iran performed to the sound of traditional instruments.
Stepping up the rhetoric, the hard-line newspaper Keyhan said that the cylinder “belonged to Iran” and suggested it should not be returned to the “thieves” of the British Museum.
There are several problems with this Iranian nationalist discourse. First, the cylinder was discovered in Babylon, 85 kilometres south of Baghdad, so if it were to be returned, it would be to Iraq, not Iran. Second, scholars are somewhat sceptical as to the thesis of Cyrus the Great as the pioneer of human rights. The proclamation appears to be part of a tradition going back thousands of years in Mesopotamia – modern Iraq – whereby new kings would make such declarations on ascending to the throne. “The Cylinder may indeed be a document of human rights and it is clearly linked with the history of Iran, but it is in no real sense an Iranian document: it is part of a much larger history of the ancient Near East, of Mesopotamian kingship, and of the Jewish diaspora,” Neil MacGregor, the director of the British Museum, has argued. In short, the cylinder’s origins lie as much in Mesopotamian tradition as in Persian.
Academic disputes aside, what matters is the context in which Mr Ahmadinejad was speaking. It is not uncommon for a politician in a tight spot to wrap himself in the nation’s flag, and the Iranian president is certainly beset by problems. ...
That article calling for Iran to keep the Cylinder sounds ominous.
Background here.
