Authorities officers in Iran have raised objections to plans by the British Museum to mortgage the Cyrus Cylinder, certainly one of its most vital antiquities, to a library in Jerusalem later this 12 months. In response to the Tehran Occasions,Iran’s Director Normal of the overall workplace of museums, Hadi Mirzaei, has raised issues concerning the mortgage and even threatened authorized motion towards the London museum. The Iranian embassy in London was contacted for remark.
The cylinder is now on present on the Yale Peabody Museum of Pure Historical past in the USA. A board assembly on the British Museum in March 2022 mentioned the Cyrus Cylinder loans. The assembly minutes state: “The board permitted the mortgage of the Cyrus Cylinder to the Nationwide Library of Israel, Jerusalem, and to the Yale Peabody Museum of Pure Historical past, New Haven, USA.” The Nationwide Library of Israel in Jerusalem has not responded to quite a few requests for remark.
Hadi Mirzaei protested the plan in a letter to Ali-Akbar Mottakan, secretary-general of the Nationwide Fee for Unesco-Iran (his museums division comes beneath the Iranian ministry of cultural heritage).
“The British Museum plans to switch the Cyrus Cylinder, presently on show in the USA, to the nationwide library… in Al-Quds [the Arabic name for Jerusalem] from 4 October to twenty-eight November [2024],” says the letter printed by the Mehr information company. “The switch of this historic artifact, which holds international significance, will undoubtedly be inappropriate attributable to potential dangers related to it.”
A spokesperson for the British Museum tells The Artwork Newspaper: “The Cyrus Cylinder is presently on mortgage to the Yale Peabody Museum of Pure Historical past till 30 June. Particulars of any future venues for the cylinder will probably be introduced sooner or later.”
The Cyrus Cylinder, an inscribed clay drum, dates from 539 BC and has been described because the “first constitution of human rights”. It information Cyrus the Nice’s order for the humane therapy of the Babylonians after their conquest by the Persians. The cylinder was loaned to the Nationwide Museum of Iran in Tehran from 2010 to 2011 and in addition left the museum in 1971 for an occasion in Iran; it was additionally proven in Houston, San Francisco and Los Angeles in 2013.
