{"id":1737,"date":"2010-01-24T11:50:37","date_gmt":"2010-01-24T10:50:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/wordpress\/?p=1737"},"modified":"2010-01-24T11:50:37","modified_gmt":"2010-01-24T10:50:37","slug":"what-would-cyrus-the-great-make-of-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=1737","title":{"rendered":"What would Cyrus the Great make of it?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>There&#8217;s something more than faintly ironic about the argument between a democratic state like Britain and an authoritarian nation like Iran over an artefact that some claim is the first proclamation of human rights in history. I refer to the British Museum object known as the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.britishmuseum.org\/explore\/highlights\/highlight_objects\/me\/c\/cyrus_cylinder.aspx\">Cyrus cylinder<\/a> and you can read about the dispute in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/science\/2010\/jan\/24\/cyrus-cylinder-iran-museum-row\">this article<\/a>.<br \/>\nNow I was in Iran a few months ago and, while I was there, I saw the tomb of Cyrus the Great at Parsagadae and heard a local guide at Persepolis claim that his statement was the first charter of human rights. You can read my account of the trip <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/Iran.html\">here<\/a>.<br \/>\nThe holiday inspired me to write a short story which mentions the Cyrus cylinder. It is entitled &#8220;The Man From Iran&#8221; and you can read it <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/Story16.html\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There&#8217;s something more than faintly ironic about the argument between a democratic state like Britain and an authoritarian nation like Iran over an artefact that some claim is the first proclamation of human rights in history. I refer to the British Museum object known as the Cyrus cylinder and you can read about the dispute [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1737","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1737","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1737"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1737\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}