0:00:00.000,0:00:02.000
The things we make

0:00:02.000,0:00:05.000
have one supreme quality --

0:00:05.000,0:00:07.000
they live longer than us.

0:00:07.000,0:00:09.000
We perish, they survive;

0:00:09.000,0:00:12.000
we have one life, they have many lives,

0:00:12.000,0:00:15.000
and in each life they can mean different things.

0:00:15.000,0:00:18.000
Which means that, while we all have one biography,

0:00:18.000,0:00:20.000
they have many.

0:00:20.000,0:00:22.000
I want this morning to talk

0:00:22.000,0:00:25.000
about the story, the biography -- or rather the biographies --

0:00:25.000,0:00:28.000
of one particular object,

0:00:28.000,0:00:30.000
one remarkable thing.

0:00:30.000,0:00:32.000
It doesn't, I agree,

0:00:32.000,0:00:34.000
look very much.

0:00:34.000,0:00:37.000
It's about the size of a rugby ball.

0:00:37.000,0:00:39.000
It's made of clay,

0:00:39.000,0:00:41.000
and it's been fashioned

0:00:41.000,0:00:44.000
into a cylinder shape,

0:00:44.000,0:00:46.000
covered with close writing

0:00:46.000,0:00:49.000
and then baked dry in the sun.

0:00:49.000,0:00:51.000
And as you can see,

0:00:51.000,0:00:53.000
it's been knocked about a bit,

0:00:53.000,0:00:55.000
which is not surprising

0:00:55.000,0:00:58.000
because it was made two and a half thousand years ago

0:00:58.000,0:01:00.000
and was dug up

0:01:00.000,0:01:02.000
in 1879.

0:01:02.000,0:01:04.000
But today,

0:01:04.000,0:01:06.000
this thing is, I believe,

0:01:06.000,0:01:08.000
a major player

0:01:08.000,0:01:10.000
in the politics of the Middle East.

0:01:10.000,0:01:12.000
And it's an object

0:01:12.000,0:01:14.000
with fascinating stories

0:01:14.000,0:01:18.000
and stories that are by no means over yet.

0:01:18.000,0:01:20.000
The story begins

0:01:20.000,0:01:24.000
in the Iran-Iraq war

0:01:24.000,0:01:26.000
and that series of events

0:01:26.000,0:01:28.000
that culminated

0:01:28.000,0:01:30.000
in the invasion of Iraq

0:01:30.000,0:01:32.000
by foreign forces,

0:01:32.000,0:01:34.000
the removal of a despotic ruler

0:01:34.000,0:01:37.000
and instant regime change.

0:01:37.000,0:01:39.000
And I want to begin

0:01:39.000,0:01:41.000
with one episode from that sequence of events

0:01:41.000,0:01:44.000
that most of you would be very familiar with,

0:01:44.000,0:01:46.000
Belshazzar's feast --

0:01:46.000,0:01:48.000
because we're talking about the Iran-Iraq war

0:01:48.000,0:01:51.000
of 539 BC.

0:01:51.000,0:01:53.000
And the parallels

0:01:53.000,0:01:55.000
between the events

0:01:55.000,0:01:58.000
of 539 BC and 2003 and in between

0:01:58.000,0:02:00.000
are startling.

0:02:00.000,0:02:02.000
What you're looking at is Rembrandt's painting,

0:02:02.000,0:02:04.000
now in the National Gallery in London,

0:02:04.000,0:02:06.000
illustrating the text from the prophet Daniel

0:02:06.000,0:02:09.000
in the Hebrew scriptures.

0:02:09.000,0:02:11.000
And you all know roughly the story.

0:02:11.000,0:02:14.000
Belshazzar, the son of Nebuchadnezzar,

0:02:14.000,0:02:17.000
Nebuchadnezzar who'd conquered Israel, sacked Jerusalem

0:02:17.000,0:02:19.000
and captured the people

0:02:19.000,0:02:21.000
and taken the Jews back to Babylon.

0:02:21.000,0:02:24.000
Not only the Jews, he'd taken the temple vessels.

0:02:24.000,0:02:27.000
He'd ransacked, desecrated the temple.

0:02:27.000,0:02:30.000
And the great gold vessels of the temple in Jerusalem

0:02:30.000,0:02:33.000
had been taken to Babylon.

0:02:33.000,0:02:35.000
Belshazzar, his son,

0:02:35.000,0:02:37.000
decides to have a feast.

0:02:37.000,0:02:39.000
And in order to make it even more exciting,

0:02:39.000,0:02:42.000
he added a bit of sacrilege to the rest of the fun,

0:02:42.000,0:02:45.000
and he brings out the temple vessels.

0:02:45.000,0:02:48.000
He's already at war with the Iranians,

0:02:48.000,0:02:50.000
with the king of Persia.

0:02:50.000,0:02:53.000
And that night, Daniel tells us,

0:02:53.000,0:02:55.000
at the height of the festivities

0:02:55.000,0:02:58.000
a hand appeared and wrote on the wall,

0:02:58.000,0:03:01.000
"You are weighed in the balance and found wanting,

0:03:01.000,0:03:03.000
and your kingdom is handed over

0:03:03.000,0:03:05.000
to the Medes and the Persians."

0:03:05.000,0:03:07.000
And that very night

0:03:07.000,0:03:11.000
Cyrus, king of the Persians, entered Babylon

0:03:11.000,0:03:16.000
and the whole regime of Belshazzar fell.

0:03:16.000,0:03:18.000
It is, of course, a great moment

0:03:18.000,0:03:20.000
in the history

0:03:20.000,0:03:22.000
of the Jewish people.

0:03:22.000,0:03:24.000
It's a great story. It's story we all know.

0:03:24.000,0:03:26.000
"The writing on the wall"

0:03:26.000,0:03:29.000
is part of our everyday language.

0:03:29.000,0:03:31.000
What happened next

0:03:31.000,0:03:33.000
was remarkable,

0:03:33.000,0:03:35.000
and it's where our cylinder

0:03:35.000,0:03:37.000
enters the story.

0:03:37.000,0:03:39.000
Cyrus, king of the Persians,

0:03:39.000,0:03:41.000
has entered Babylon without a fight --

0:03:41.000,0:03:43.000
the great empire of Babylon,

0:03:43.000,0:03:45.000
which ran from central southern Iraq

0:03:45.000,0:03:47.000
to the Mediterranean,

0:03:47.000,0:03:49.000
falls to Cyrus.

0:03:49.000,0:03:53.000
And Cyrus makes a declaration.

0:03:53.000,0:03:56.000
And that is what this cylinder is,

0:03:56.000,0:03:59.000
the declaration made by the ruler guided by God

0:03:59.000,0:04:03.000
who had toppled the Iraqi despot

0:04:03.000,0:04:05.000
and was going to bring freedom to the people.

0:04:05.000,0:04:07.000
In ringing Babylonian --

0:04:07.000,0:04:09.000
it was written in Babylonian --

0:04:09.000,0:04:12.000
he says, "I am Cyrus, king of all the universe,

0:04:12.000,0:04:14.000
the great king, the powerful king,

0:04:14.000,0:04:18.000
king of Babylon, king of the four quarters of the world."

0:04:18.000,0:04:21.000
They're not shy of hyperbole as you can see.

0:04:21.000,0:04:23.000
This is probably

0:04:23.000,0:04:25.000
the first real press release

0:04:25.000,0:04:27.000
by a victorious army

0:04:27.000,0:04:29.000
that we've got.

0:04:29.000,0:04:31.000
And it's written, as we'll see in due course,

0:04:31.000,0:04:34.000
by very skilled P.R. consultants.

0:04:34.000,0:04:37.000
So the hyperbole is not actually surprising.

0:04:37.000,0:04:39.000
And what is the great king, the powerful king,

0:04:39.000,0:04:42.000
the king of the four quarters of the world going to do?

0:04:42.000,0:04:45.000
He goes on to say that, having conquered Babylon,

0:04:45.000,0:04:48.000
he will at once let all the peoples

0:04:48.000,0:04:50.000
that the Babylonians -- Nebuchadnezzar and Belshazzar --

0:04:50.000,0:04:52.000
have captured and enslaved

0:04:52.000,0:04:54.000
go free.

0:04:54.000,0:04:56.000
He'll let them return to their countries.

0:04:56.000,0:04:58.000
And more important,

0:04:58.000,0:05:00.000
he will let them all recover

0:05:00.000,0:05:02.000
the gods, the statues,

0:05:02.000,0:05:04.000
the temple vessels

0:05:04.000,0:05:06.000
that had been confiscated.

0:05:06.000,0:05:09.000
All the peoples that the Babylonians had repressed and removed

0:05:09.000,0:05:11.000
will go home,

0:05:11.000,0:05:14.000
and they'll take with them their gods.

0:05:14.000,0:05:17.000
And they'll be able to restore their altars

0:05:17.000,0:05:19.000
and to worship their gods

0:05:19.000,0:05:22.000
in their own way, in their own place.

0:05:22.000,0:05:24.000
This is the decree,

0:05:24.000,0:05:27.000
this object is the evidence

0:05:27.000,0:05:29.000
for the fact that the Jews,

0:05:29.000,0:05:31.000
after the exile in Babylon,

0:05:31.000,0:05:34.000
the years they'd spent sitting by the waters of Babylon,

0:05:34.000,0:05:37.000
weeping when they remembered Jerusalem,

0:05:37.000,0:05:40.000
those Jews were allowed to go home.

0:05:40.000,0:05:42.000
They were allowed to return to Jerusalem

0:05:42.000,0:05:44.000
and to rebuild the temple.

0:05:44.000,0:05:46.000
It's a central document

0:05:46.000,0:05:48.000
in Jewish history.

0:05:48.000,0:05:52.000
And the Book of Chronicles, the Book of Ezra in the Hebrew scriptures

0:05:52.000,0:05:54.000
reported in ringing terms.

0:05:54.000,0:05:56.000
This is the Jewish version

0:05:56.000,0:05:58.000
of the same story.

0:05:58.000,0:06:00.000
"Thus said Cyrus, king of Persia,

0:06:00.000,0:06:03.000
'All the kingdoms of the earth have the Lord God of heaven given thee,

0:06:03.000,0:06:05.000
and he has charged me

0:06:05.000,0:06:07.000
to build him a house in Jerusalem.

0:06:07.000,0:06:09.000
Who is there among you of his people?

0:06:09.000,0:06:11.000
The Lord God be with him,

0:06:11.000,0:06:14.000
and let him go up.'"

0:06:14.000,0:06:16.000
"Go up" -- aaleh.

0:06:16.000,0:06:19.000
The central element, still,

0:06:19.000,0:06:21.000
of the notion of return,

0:06:21.000,0:06:23.000
a central part

0:06:23.000,0:06:25.000
of the life of Judaism.

0:06:25.000,0:06:27.000
As you all know, that return from exile,

0:06:27.000,0:06:29.000
the second temple,

0:06:29.000,0:06:31.000
reshaped Judaism.

0:06:31.000,0:06:33.000
And that change,

0:06:33.000,0:06:35.000
that great historic moment,

0:06:35.000,0:06:39.000
was made possible by Cyrus, the king of Persia,

0:06:39.000,0:06:42.000
reported for us in Hebrew in scripture

0:06:42.000,0:06:45.000
and in Babylonian in clay.

0:06:45.000,0:06:47.000
Two great texts,

0:06:47.000,0:06:49.000
what about the politics?

0:06:49.000,0:06:51.000
What was going on

0:06:51.000,0:06:54.000
was the fundamental shift in Middle Eastern history.

0:06:54.000,0:06:57.000
The empire of Iran, the Medes and the Persians,

0:06:57.000,0:06:59.000
united under Cyrus,

0:06:59.000,0:07:03.000
became the first great world empire.

0:07:03.000,0:07:06.000
Cyrus begins in the 530s BC.

0:07:06.000,0:07:10.000
And by the time of his son Darius,

0:07:10.000,0:07:13.000
the whole of the eastern Mediterranean

0:07:13.000,0:07:15.000
is under Persian control.

0:07:15.000,0:07:17.000
This empire is, in fact,

0:07:17.000,0:07:19.000
the Middle East as we now know it,

0:07:19.000,0:07:22.000
and it's what shapes the Middle East as we now know it.

0:07:22.000,0:07:24.000
It was the largest empire the world had known until then.

0:07:24.000,0:07:26.000
Much more important,

0:07:26.000,0:07:28.000
it was the first

0:07:28.000,0:07:30.000
multicultural, multifaith state

0:07:30.000,0:07:32.000
on a huge scale.

0:07:32.000,0:07:34.000
And it had to be run in a quite new way.

0:07:34.000,0:07:36.000
It had to be run in different languages.

0:07:36.000,0:07:39.000
The fact that this decree is in Babylonian says one thing.

0:07:39.000,0:07:41.000
And it had to recognize their different habits,

0:07:41.000,0:07:44.000
different peoples, different religions, different faiths.

0:07:44.000,0:07:47.000
All of those are respected by Cyrus.

0:07:47.000,0:07:49.000
Cyrus sets up a model

0:07:49.000,0:07:51.000
of how you run

0:07:51.000,0:07:56.000
a great multinational, multifaith, multicultural society.

0:07:56.000,0:07:58.000
And the result of that

0:07:58.000,0:08:01.000
was an empire that included the areas you see on the screen,

0:08:01.000,0:08:04.000
and which survived for 200 years of stability

0:08:04.000,0:08:07.000
until it was shattered by Alexander.

0:08:07.000,0:08:09.000
It left a dream of the Middle East as a unit,

0:08:09.000,0:08:11.000
and a unit where people of different faiths

0:08:11.000,0:08:13.000
could live together.

0:08:13.000,0:08:15.000
The Greek invasions ended that.

0:08:15.000,0:08:18.000
And of course, Alexander couldn't sustain a government

0:08:18.000,0:08:20.000
and it fragmented.

0:08:20.000,0:08:22.000
But what Cyrus represented

0:08:22.000,0:08:24.000
remained absolutely central.

0:08:24.000,0:08:27.000
The Greek historian Xenophon

0:08:27.000,0:08:29.000
wrote his book "Cyropaedia"

0:08:29.000,0:08:31.000
promoting Cyrus as the great ruler.

0:08:31.000,0:08:34.000
And throughout European culture afterward,

0:08:34.000,0:08:37.000
Cyrus remained the model.

0:08:37.000,0:08:39.000
This is a 16th century image

0:08:39.000,0:08:41.000
to show you how widespread

0:08:41.000,0:08:44.000
his veneration actually was.

0:08:44.000,0:08:46.000
And Xenophon's book on Cyrus

0:08:46.000,0:08:49.000
on how you ran a diverse society

0:08:49.000,0:08:51.000
was one of the great textbooks

0:08:51.000,0:08:53.000
that inspired the Founding Fathers

0:08:53.000,0:08:55.000
of the American Revolution.

0:08:55.000,0:08:57.000
Jefferson was a great admirer --

0:08:57.000,0:08:59.000
the ideals of Cyrus

0:08:59.000,0:09:01.000
obviously speaking to those 18th century ideals

0:09:01.000,0:09:03.000
of how you create religious tolerance

0:09:03.000,0:09:06.000
in a new state.

0:09:08.000,0:09:10.000
Meanwhile, back in Babylon,

0:09:10.000,0:09:12.000
things had not been going well.

0:09:12.000,0:09:15.000
After Alexander, the other empires,

0:09:15.000,0:09:18.000
Babylon declines, falls into ruins,

0:09:18.000,0:09:22.000
and all the traces of the great Babylonian empire are lost --

0:09:22.000,0:09:24.000
until 1879

0:09:24.000,0:09:27.000
when the cylinder is discovered

0:09:27.000,0:09:30.000
by a British Museum exhibition digging in Babylon.

0:09:30.000,0:09:33.000
And it enters now another story.

0:09:33.000,0:09:35.000
It enters that great debate

0:09:35.000,0:09:37.000
in the middle of the 19th century:

0:09:37.000,0:09:40.000
Are the scriptures reliable? Can we trust them?

0:09:40.000,0:09:42.000
We only knew

0:09:42.000,0:09:44.000
about the return of the Jews and the decree of Cyrus

0:09:44.000,0:09:46.000
from the Hebrew scriptures.

0:09:46.000,0:09:48.000
No other evidence.

0:09:48.000,0:09:50.000
Suddenly, this appeared.

0:09:50.000,0:09:52.000
And great excitement

0:09:52.000,0:09:54.000
to a world where those who believed in the scriptures

0:09:54.000,0:09:56.000
had had their faith in creation shaken

0:09:56.000,0:09:58.000
by evolution, by geology,

0:09:58.000,0:10:00.000
here was evidence

0:10:00.000,0:10:02.000
that the scriptures were historically true.

0:10:02.000,0:10:05.000
It's a great 19th century moment.

0:10:05.000,0:10:10.000
But -- and this, of course, is where it becomes complicated --

0:10:10.000,0:10:12.000
the facts were true,

0:10:12.000,0:10:15.000
hurrah for archeology,

0:10:15.000,0:10:18.000
but the interpretation was rather more complicated.

0:10:18.000,0:10:21.000
Because the cylinder account and the Hebrew Bible account

0:10:21.000,0:10:23.000
differ in one key respect.

0:10:23.000,0:10:25.000
The Babylonian cylinder

0:10:25.000,0:10:27.000
is written by the priests

0:10:27.000,0:10:29.000
of the great god of Bablyon, Marduk.

0:10:29.000,0:10:31.000
And, not surprisingly,

0:10:31.000,0:10:33.000
they tell you that all this was done by Marduk.

0:10:33.000,0:10:36.000
"Marduk, we hold, called Cyrus by his name."

0:10:36.000,0:10:39.000
Marduk takes Cyrus by the hand,

0:10:39.000,0:10:41.000
calls him to shepherd his people

0:10:41.000,0:10:44.000
and gives him the rule of Babylon.

0:10:44.000,0:10:46.000
Marduk tells Cyrus

0:10:46.000,0:10:48.000
that he will do these great, generous things

0:10:48.000,0:10:50.000
of setting the people free.

0:10:50.000,0:10:52.000
And this is why we should all be grateful to

0:10:52.000,0:10:54.000
and worship Marduk.

0:10:54.000,0:10:56.000
The Hebrew writers

0:10:56.000,0:10:58.000
in the Old Testament,

0:10:58.000,0:11:01.000
you will not be surprised to learn,

0:11:01.000,0:11:03.000
take a rather different view of this.

0:11:03.000,0:11:05.000
For them, of course, it can't possibly by Marduk

0:11:05.000,0:11:07.000
that made all this happen.

0:11:07.000,0:11:09.000
It can only be Jehovah.

0:11:09.000,0:11:11.000
And so in Isaiah,

0:11:11.000,0:11:13.000
we have the wonderful texts

0:11:13.000,0:11:15.000
giving all the credit of this,

0:11:15.000,0:11:16.000
not to Marduk

0:11:16.000,0:11:19.000
but to the Lord God of Israel --

0:11:19.000,0:11:21.000
the Lord God of Israel

0:11:21.000,0:11:23.000
who also called Cyrus by name,

0:11:23.000,0:11:26.000
also takes Cyrus by the hand

0:11:26.000,0:11:28.000
and talks of him shepherding his people.

0:11:28.000,0:11:30.000
It's a remarkable example

0:11:30.000,0:11:34.000
of two different priestly appropriations of the same event,

0:11:34.000,0:11:36.000
two different religious takeovers

0:11:36.000,0:11:38.000
of a political fact.

0:11:38.000,0:11:40.000
God, we know,

0:11:40.000,0:11:42.000
is usually on the side of the big battalions.

0:11:42.000,0:11:45.000
The question is, which god was it?

0:11:45.000,0:11:47.000
And the debate unsettles

0:11:47.000,0:11:49.000
everybody in the 19th century

0:11:49.000,0:11:51.000
to realize that the Hebrew scriptures

0:11:51.000,0:11:54.000
are part of a much wider world of religion.

0:11:54.000,0:11:56.000
And it's quite clear

0:11:56.000,0:11:59.000
the cylinder is older than the text of Isaiah,

0:11:59.000,0:12:01.000
and yet, Jehovah is speaking

0:12:01.000,0:12:03.000
in words very similar

0:12:03.000,0:12:05.000
to those used by Marduk.

0:12:05.000,0:12:08.000
And there's a slight sense that Isaiah knows this,

0:12:08.000,0:12:10.000
because he says,

0:12:10.000,0:12:13.000
this is God speaking, of course,

0:12:13.000,0:12:15.000
"I have called thee by thy name

0:12:15.000,0:12:17.000
though thou hast not known me."

0:12:17.000,0:12:19.000
I think it's recognized

0:12:19.000,0:12:21.000
that Cyrus doesn't realize

0:12:21.000,0:12:24.000
that he's acting under orders from Jehovah.

0:12:24.000,0:12:27.000
And equally, he'd have been surprised that he was acting under orders from Marduk.

0:12:27.000,0:12:29.000
Because interestingly, of course,

0:12:29.000,0:12:31.000
Cyrus is a good Iranian

0:12:31.000,0:12:33.000
with a totally different set of gods

0:12:33.000,0:12:35.000
who are not mentioned in any of these texts.

0:12:35.000,0:12:37.000
(Laughter)

0:12:37.000,0:12:39.000
That's 1879.

0:12:39.000,0:12:41.000
40 years on

0:12:41.000,0:12:44.000
and we're in 1917,

0:12:44.000,0:12:46.000
and the cylinder enters a different world.

0:12:46.000,0:12:48.000
This time, the real politics

0:12:48.000,0:12:50.000
of the contemporary world --

0:12:50.000,0:12:53.000
the year of the Balfour Declaration,

0:12:53.000,0:12:56.000
the year when the new imperial power in the Middle East, Britain,

0:12:56.000,0:12:58.000
decides that it will declare

0:12:58.000,0:13:00.000
a Jewish national home,

0:13:00.000,0:13:02.000
it will allow

0:13:02.000,0:13:04.000
the Jews to return.

0:13:04.000,0:13:06.000
And the response to this

0:13:06.000,0:13:09.000
by the Jewish population in Eastern Europe is rhapsodic.

0:13:09.000,0:13:11.000
And across Eastern Europe,

0:13:11.000,0:13:13.000
Jews display pictures of Cyrus

0:13:13.000,0:13:15.000
and of George V

0:13:15.000,0:13:17.000
side by side --

0:13:17.000,0:13:19.000
the two great rulers

0:13:19.000,0:13:22.000
who have allowed the return to Jerusalem.

0:13:22.000,0:13:25.000
And the Cyrus cylinder comes back into public view

0:13:25.000,0:13:27.000
and the text of this

0:13:27.000,0:13:30.000
as a demonstration of why what is going to happen

0:13:30.000,0:13:33.000
after the war is over in 1918

0:13:33.000,0:13:36.000
is part of a divine plan.

0:13:36.000,0:13:38.000
You all know what happened.

0:13:38.000,0:13:41.000
The state of Israel is setup,

0:13:41.000,0:13:44.000
and 50 years later, in the late 60s,

0:13:44.000,0:13:47.000
it's clear that Britain's role as the imperial power is over.

0:13:47.000,0:13:50.000
And another story of the cylinder begins.

0:13:50.000,0:13:52.000
The region, the U.K. and the U.S. decide,

0:13:52.000,0:13:55.000
has to be kept safe from communism,

0:13:55.000,0:13:58.000
and the superpower that will be created to do this

0:13:58.000,0:14:00.000
would be Iran, the Shah.

0:14:00.000,0:14:03.000
And so the Shah invents an Iranian history,

0:14:03.000,0:14:05.000
or a return to Iranian history,

0:14:05.000,0:14:08.000
that puts him in the center of a great tradition

0:14:08.000,0:14:10.000
and produces coins

0:14:10.000,0:14:12.000
showing himself

0:14:12.000,0:14:14.000
with the Cyrus cylinder.

0:14:14.000,0:14:17.000
When he has his great celebrations in Persepolis,

0:14:17.000,0:14:19.000
he summons the cylinder

0:14:19.000,0:14:22.000
and the cylinder is lent by the British Museum, goes to Tehran,

0:14:22.000,0:14:24.000
and is part of those great celebrations

0:14:24.000,0:14:27.000
of the Pahlavi dynasty.

0:14:27.000,0:14:30.000
Cyrus cylinder: guarantor of the Shah.

0:14:30.000,0:14:33.000
10 years later, another story:

0:14:33.000,0:14:35.000
Iranian Revolution, 1979.

0:14:35.000,0:14:37.000
Islamic revolution, no more Cyrus;

0:14:37.000,0:14:39.000
we're not interested in that history,

0:14:39.000,0:14:42.000
we're interested in Islamic Iran --

0:14:42.000,0:14:44.000
until Iraq,

0:14:44.000,0:14:47.000
the new superpower that we've all decided should be in the region,

0:14:47.000,0:14:49.000
attacks.

0:14:49.000,0:14:51.000
Then another Iran-Iraq war.

0:14:51.000,0:14:53.000
And it becomes critical for the Iranians

0:14:53.000,0:14:56.000
to remember their great past,

0:14:56.000,0:14:58.000
their great past

0:14:58.000,0:15:01.000
when they fought Iraq and won.

0:15:01.000,0:15:03.000
It becomes critical to find a symbol

0:15:03.000,0:15:06.000
that will pull together all Iranians --

0:15:06.000,0:15:08.000
Muslims and non-Muslims,

0:15:08.000,0:15:11.000
Christians, Zoroastrians, Jews living in Iran,

0:15:11.000,0:15:13.000
people who are devout, not devout.

0:15:13.000,0:15:16.000
And the obvious emblem is Cyrus.

0:15:16.000,0:15:19.000
So when the British Museum and Tehran National Musuem

0:15:19.000,0:15:21.000
cooperate and work together, as we've been doing,

0:15:21.000,0:15:23.000
the Iranians ask for one thing only

0:15:23.000,0:15:25.000
as a loan.

0:15:25.000,0:15:27.000
It's the only object they want.

0:15:27.000,0:15:29.000
They want to borrow the Cyrus cylinder.

0:15:29.000,0:15:31.000
And last year,

0:15:31.000,0:15:35.000
the Cyrus cylinder went to Tehran

0:15:35.000,0:15:38.000
for the second time.

0:15:38.000,0:15:41.000
It's shown being presented here, put into its case

0:15:41.000,0:15:44.000
by the director of the National Museum of Tehran,

0:15:44.000,0:15:47.000
one of the many women in Iran in very senior positions,

0:15:47.000,0:15:49.000
Mrs. Ardakani.

0:15:49.000,0:15:51.000
It was a huge event.

0:15:51.000,0:15:54.000
This is the other side of that same picture.

0:15:54.000,0:15:57.000
It's seen in Tehran

0:15:57.000,0:15:59.000
by between one and two million people

0:15:59.000,0:16:01.000
in the space of a few months.

0:16:01.000,0:16:03.000
This is beyond any blockbuster exhibition

0:16:03.000,0:16:05.000
in the West.

0:16:05.000,0:16:08.000
And it's the subject of a huge debate

0:16:08.000,0:16:11.000
about what this cylinder means, what Cyrus means,

0:16:11.000,0:16:14.000
but above all, Cyrus as articulated through this cylinder --

0:16:14.000,0:16:17.000
Cyrus as the defender of the homeland,

0:16:17.000,0:16:19.000
the champion, of course, of Iranian identity

0:16:19.000,0:16:21.000
and of the Iranian peoples,

0:16:21.000,0:16:23.000
tolerant of all faiths.

0:16:23.000,0:16:25.000
And in the current Iran,

0:16:25.000,0:16:28.000
Zoroastrians and Christians have guaranteed places

0:16:28.000,0:16:31.000
in the Iranian parliament, something to be very, very proud of.

0:16:31.000,0:16:34.000
To see this object in Tehran,

0:16:34.000,0:16:36.000
thousands of Jews living in Iran

0:16:36.000,0:16:38.000
came to Tehran to see it.

0:16:38.000,0:16:40.000
It became a great emblem,

0:16:40.000,0:16:42.000
a great subject of debate

0:16:42.000,0:16:45.000
about what Iran is at home and abroad.

0:16:45.000,0:16:48.000
Is Iran still to be the defender of the oppressed?

0:16:48.000,0:16:50.000
Will Iran set free the people

0:16:50.000,0:16:53.000
that the tyrants have enslaved and expropriated?

0:16:53.000,0:16:56.000
This is heady national rhetoric,

0:16:56.000,0:16:58.000
and it was all put together

0:16:58.000,0:17:00.000
in a great pageant

0:17:00.000,0:17:02.000
launching the return.

0:17:02.000,0:17:05.000
Here you see this out-sized Cyrus cylinder on the stage

0:17:05.000,0:17:08.000
with great figures from Iranian history

0:17:08.000,0:17:10.000
gathering to take their place

0:17:10.000,0:17:13.000
in the heritage of Iran.

0:17:13.000,0:17:15.000
It was a narrative presented

0:17:15.000,0:17:18.000
by the president himself.

0:17:18.000,0:17:20.000
And for me,

0:17:20.000,0:17:22.000
to take this object to Iran,

0:17:22.000,0:17:24.000
to be allowed to take this object to Iran

0:17:24.000,0:17:26.000
was to be allowed to be part

0:17:26.000,0:17:28.000
of an extraordinary debate

0:17:28.000,0:17:30.000
led at the highest levels

0:17:30.000,0:17:32.000
about what Iran is,

0:17:32.000,0:17:35.000
what different Irans there are

0:17:35.000,0:17:37.000
and how the different histories of Iran

0:17:37.000,0:17:40.000
might shape the world today.

0:17:40.000,0:17:43.000
It's a debate that's still continuing,

0:17:43.000,0:17:45.000
and it will continue to rumble,

0:17:45.000,0:17:47.000
because this object

0:17:47.000,0:17:49.000
is one of the great declarations

0:17:49.000,0:17:51.000
of a human aspiration.

0:17:51.000,0:17:55.000
It stands with the American constitution.

0:17:55.000,0:17:58.000
It certainly says far more about real freedoms

0:17:58.000,0:18:00.000
than Magna Carta.

0:18:00.000,0:18:03.000
It is a document that can mean so many things,

0:18:03.000,0:18:06.000
for Iran and for the region.

0:18:06.000,0:18:08.000
A replica of this

0:18:08.000,0:18:10.000
is at the United Nations.

0:18:10.000,0:18:13.000
In New York this autumn, it will be present

0:18:13.000,0:18:15.000
when the great debates

0:18:15.000,0:18:18.000
about the future of the Middle East take place.

0:18:18.000,0:18:20.000
And I want to finish by asking you

0:18:20.000,0:18:22.000
what the next story will be

0:18:22.000,0:18:24.000
in which this object figures.

0:18:24.000,0:18:26.000
It will appear, certainly,

0:18:26.000,0:18:28.000
in many more Middle Eastern stories.

0:18:28.000,0:18:30.000
And what story of the Middle East,

0:18:30.000,0:18:32.000
what story of the world,

0:18:32.000,0:18:34.000
do you want to see

0:18:34.000,0:18:36.000
reflecting what is said,

0:18:36.000,0:18:38.000
what is expressed in this cylinder?

0:18:38.000,0:18:40.000
The right of peoples

0:18:40.000,0:18:42.000
to live together in the same state,

0:18:42.000,0:18:44.000
worshiping differently, freely --

0:18:44.000,0:18:46.000
a Middle East, a world,

0:18:46.000,0:18:48.000
in which religion is not the subject of division

0:18:48.000,0:18:51.000
or of debate.

0:18:51.000,0:18:54.000
In the world of the Middle East at the moment,

0:18:54.000,0:18:57.000
the debates are, as you know, shrill.

0:18:57.000,0:18:59.000
But I think it's possible

0:18:59.000,0:19:03.000
that the most powerful and the wisest voice of all of them

0:19:03.000,0:19:05.000
may well be the voice

0:19:05.000,0:19:07.000
of this mute thing,

0:19:07.000,0:19:09.000
the Cyrus cylinder.

0:19:09.000,0:19:11.000
Thank you.

0:19:11.000,0:19:15.000
(Applause)