Voorbij het paradijs

The plate shows an image of Cyrus the Great.

In 539 B.C. the city of Babylon was conquered by the armies of Cyrus the Great, the first king of ancient Persia (now Iran). But it was not so much this conquest, but rather what he did afterwards that became an important step forward for Humanity. Cyrus the Great freed all slaves, declared that everyone had the right to choose their own religion, and decreed that there should be racial equality. These and other decrees were recorded in Akkadian script on a cylinder of baked clay.

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Today known as the Cyrus Cylinder, this ancient stone scroll is now considered the world's first human rights charter. It has been translated into all six official languages ​​of the United Nations and its contents correspond to the first four articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Many people in today's Iran have such an image in their home as silent resistance to the current regime.

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