text of  Cyrus Cylinder

The surviving inscription on the Cyrus Cylinder consists of 45 lines of text written in Akkadian cuneiform script, the first 35 lines of which are on fragment "A" and the remainder of which are on fragment "B". A number of lines at the start and end of the text are too badly damaged for more than a few words to be legible.

The text is written in an extremely formulaic style that can be divided into six distinct parts:

    * Lines 1–19: an introduction reviling Nabonidus, the previous king of Babylon, and associating Cyrus with the god Marduk;
    * Lines 20–22: detailing Cyrus's royal titles and genealogy, and his peaceful entry to Babylon;
    * Lines 22–34: a commendation of Cyrus's policy of restoring Babylon;
    * Lines 34–35: a prayer to Marduk on behalf of Cyrus and his son Cambyses;
    * Lines 36–37: a declaration about the good condition of the Persian Empire;
    * Lines 38–45: details of the building activities ordered by Cyrus in Babylon.
The start of the text is partly broken; the surviving content begins with an attack on the character of the deposed Babylonian king Nabonidus. It lists his alleged crimes, charging him with desecration of the temples of the gods and the imposition of forced labor  upon the populace. Because of these offences, the writer declares, the god Marduk has abandoned Babylon to seek a more fit king. Marduk called forth Cyrus to enter Babylon and become its new ruler with the god's blessing:

    The worship of Marduk, the king of the gods, he [Nabonidus] [chang]ed into abomination. Daily he used to do evil against his city [Babylon] ... He [Marduk] scanned and looked [through] all the countries, searching for a righteous ruler willing to lead [him] [in the annual procession]. [Then] he pronounced the name of Cyrus, king of Anshan, declared him to be[come] the ruler of all the world.

Midway through the text, the writer switches to a first-person narrative, as if Cyrus were addressing the reader directly. A list of his titles is given (in a Mesopotamian rather than Persian style): "I am Cyrus, king of the world, great king, legitimate king, king of Babylon, king of Sumer and Akkad, king of the four rims [of the earth], son of Cambyses, great king, king of Anshan, descendent of Teispes, great king, king of Anshan, of a family [which] always [exercised] kingship; whose rule Bel [Markuk] and Nebo love, whom they want as king to please their hearts." He describes the pious deeds he performed after his conquest: he restored peace to Babylon and the other cities sacred to Marduk, freeing their inhabitants from their "yoke", and he "brought relief to their dilapidated housing (thus) putting an end to their (main) complaints". He repaired the ruined temples in the cities he conquered, restored their cults, and returned their sacred images as well as their former inhabitants which Narbonidus had taken to Babylon. Near the end of the inscription Cyrus highlights his restoration of Babylon's city wall, saying: "In [the gateway] I saw inscribed the name of my predecessor King Ashurbanipal". The remainder is missing but presumably describes Cyrus's rededication of the gateway mentioned.

The fragmentary nature of the inscription meant that the full text of the Cylinder was, for a long time, unclear and incomplete. A partial transcription by F.H. Weissbach in 1911 was supplanted by a much more complete transcription after the identification of the "B" fragment; this is now available in German and in English. Several editions of the full translated text of the Cylinder are available online.

A fake translation of the text – affirming, among other things, the abolition of slavery and the right to self-determination, a minimum wage and asylum – has been promoted on the Internet. It has not deceived experts because it refers to the Zoroastrian divinity Ahura Mazda rather than the Mesopotamian god Marduk. The fake translation has been widely circulated; alluding to its claim that Cyrus supposedly said "Every country shall decide for itself whether or not it wants my leadership", Iranian Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi in her acceptance speech described Cyrus as "the very emperor who proclaimed at the pinnacle of power 2,500 years ago that ... he would not reign over the people if they did not wish it". The authorship of the fake translation is unknown but the Dutch historian Jona Lendering has suggested that it was created to buttress the historically dubious claim that the Cylinder represents "the world's first declaration of human rights".