CANDIDATE RECORD — NOT YET VERIFIED. Drafted from the British Museum collection entry; confirm in the repository before publication.
A fired clay cylinder carrying a Babylonian account of the conquest of Babylon by Cyrus in 539 BCE. The text records Cyrus’s entry into the city and his restoration of temples and religious practice disrupted under Nabonidus. It is the external anchor for any dossier on Cyrus in Isaiah 44–45.
What to check in the archive
- Registration 1880,0617.1941 and BM number 90920 resolve to this object.
- Findspot Amran (Babylon); excavated by Hormuzd Rassam.
- The British Museum publishes its own full translation — record which translation and which line numbers the dossier will quote.
A caution worth writing into the dossier: this cylinder is a royal inscription, which is to say propaganda. It is excellent evidence that Cyrus wished to be seen restoring the temples, and weaker evidence about what he actually did. That distinction belongs in the case against, not in a footnote.