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Cyrus the Great

Original nameCyrus II

Founder of the Persian Achaemenid Empire, One of the Most Tolerant Conquerors of Antiquity

Those Who First Drew the Borders on the Map · Founders of Civilizations

The Achaemenid EmpireThe Cyrus CylinderThe Policy of Religious Tolerance

Who they are

Cyrus the Great (reigned c. 600–530 BC) was the founder of the Persian Achaemenid Empire, who through a series of military conquests united Media, Lydia, and the Neo-Babylonian kingdom, building one of the most vast empires of the ancient world. After taking Babylon he issued an edict allowing the various peoples deported by Babylon, the Jews among them, to return to their homelands and rebuild their temples — a policy of tolerance recorded on the famous "Cyrus Cylinder" (a clay cylinder inscription), often called by modern scholars one of the "earliest charters of human rights in history" (though this modernized characterization is somewhat anachronistic, the cylinder’s original intent being more a propaganda text of Persian royal authority). The Hebrew Bible’s Book of Isaiah even calls him God’s anointed "messiah," one of the very few gentile monarchs to receive a favorable judgment in the Jewish tradition.

Primary sourcesThe Cyrus Cylinder inscriptionHerodotus, The HistoriesThe Book of Ezra of the Hebrew Bible

Key stories

The Cyrus Cylinder

After taking Babylon, Cyrus ordered a clay cylinder inscription made, proclaiming that he had liberated the people of Babylon, restored the religious worship the Neo-Babylonian king had forbidden, and allowed the deported peoples to return to their homelands — this artifact is now held in the British Museum, and in 1971 Iran presented a replica of it to the United Nations, displayed as a symbolic artifact of "the world’s earliest declaration of human rights," though this modern interpretation is somewhat contested in scholarship.

Allowing the Jews to Rebuild the Temple

The Hebrew Bible records that after taking Babylon Cyrus issued an edict allowing the deported Jews to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the destroyed Temple, an act that won him an extremely favorable historical judgment in the Jewish tradition, the Book of Isaiah even calling him the "anointed" of Yahweh — the only monarch of non-Jewish blood in the Hebrew Bible to receive such an honor.

Relationships

Disciple

🏛️Darius I　Darius I inherited and systematized the imperial administration Cyrus began

Echoes today

Below are how modern works borrow or reinterpret this name or story — not the original material. The two differ, so keep them apart.

The "Cyrus Cylinder" and human-rights discourseSince the twentieth century the content of the Cyrus Cylinder on treating conquered peoples well and allowing religious freedom has been cited by some modern accounts as the "earliest declaration of human rights," though most historians hold this modernized reading to exceed the historical context of the inscription as a royal propaganda text.

Appears in

The Empires and Thought of the Axial AgeCyrus the Great’s Empire of Tolerance The Empires and Thought of the Axial AgeThe Rise and Fall of Babylon and Assyria

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