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The things we make

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have one supreme quality --

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they live longer than us.

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We perish, they survive;

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we have one life, they have many lives,

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and in each life they can mean different things.

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Which means that, while we all have one biography,

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they have many.

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I want this morning to talk

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about the story, the biography -- or rather the biographies --

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of one particular object,

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one remarkable thing.

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It doesn't, I agree,

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look very much.

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It's about the size of a rugby ball.

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It's made of clay,

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and it's been fashioned

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into a cylinder shape,

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covered with close writing

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and then baked dry in the sun.

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And as you can see,

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it's been knocked about a bit,

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which is not surprising

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because it was made two and a half thousand years ago

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and was dug up

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in 1879.

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But today,

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this thing is, I believe,

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a major player

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in the politics of the Middle East.

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And it's an object

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with fascinating stories

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and stories that are by no means over yet.

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The story begins

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in the Iran-Iraq war

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and that series of events

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that culminated

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in the invasion of Iraq

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by foreign forces,

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the removal of a despotic ruler

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and instant regime change.

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And I want to begin

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with one episode from that sequence of events

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that most of you would be very familiar with,

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Belshazzar's feast --

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because we're talking about the Iran-Iraq war

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of 539 BC.

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And the parallels

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between the events

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of 539 BC and 2003 and in between

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are startling.

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What you're looking at is Rembrandt's painting,

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now in the National Gallery in London,

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illustrating the text from the prophet Daniel

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in the Hebrew scriptures.

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And you all know roughly the story.

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Belshazzar, the son of Nebuchadnezzar,

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Nebuchadnezzar who'd conquered Israel, sacked Jerusalem

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and captured the people

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and taken the Jews back to Babylon.

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Not only the Jews, he'd taken the temple vessels.

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He'd ransacked, desecrated the temple.

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And the great gold vessels of the temple in Jerusalem

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had been taken to Babylon.

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Belshazzar, his son,

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decides to have a feast.

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And in order to make it even more exciting,

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he added a bit of sacrilege to the rest of the fun,

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and he brings out the temple vessels.

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He's already at war with the Iranians,

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with the king of Persia.

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And that night, Daniel tells us,

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at the height of the festivities

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a hand appeared and wrote on the wall,

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"You are weighed in the balance and found wanting,

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and your kingdom is handed over

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to the Medes and the Persians."

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And that very night

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Cyrus, king of the Persians, entered Babylon

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and the whole regime of Belshazzar fell.

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It is, of course, a great moment

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in the history

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of the Jewish people.

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It's a great story. It's story we all know.

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"The writing on the wall"

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is part of our everyday language.

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What happened next

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was remarkable,

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and it's where our cylinder

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enters the story.

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Cyrus, king of the Persians,

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has entered Babylon without a fight --

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the great empire of Babylon,

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which ran from central southern Iraq

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to the Mediterranean,

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falls to Cyrus.

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And Cyrus makes a declaration.

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And that is what this cylinder is,

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the declaration made by the ruler guided by God

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who had toppled the Iraqi despot

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and was going to bring freedom to the people.

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In ringing Babylonian --

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it was written in Babylonian --

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he says, "I am Cyrus, king of all the universe,

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the great king, the powerful king,

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king of Babylon, king of the four quarters of the world."

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They're not shy of hyperbole as you can see.

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This is probably

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the first real press release

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by a victorious army

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that we've got.

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And it's written, as we'll see in due course,

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by very skilled P.R. consultants.

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So the hyperbole is not actually surprising.

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And what is the great king, the powerful king,

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the king of the four quarters of the world going to do?

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He goes on to say that, having conquered Babylon,

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he will at once let all the peoples

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that the Babylonians -- Nebuchadnezzar and Belshazzar --

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have captured and enslaved

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go free.

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He'll let them return to their countries.

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And more important,

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he will let them all recover

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the gods, the statues,

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the temple vessels

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that had been confiscated.

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All the peoples that the Babylonians had repressed and removed

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will go home,

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and they'll take with them their gods.

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And they'll be able to restore their altars

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and to worship their gods

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in their own way, in their own place.

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This is the decree,

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this object is the evidence

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for the fact that the Jews,

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after the exile in Babylon,

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the years they'd spent sitting by the waters of Babylon,

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weeping when they remembered Jerusalem,

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those Jews were allowed to go home.

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They were allowed to return to Jerusalem

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and to rebuild the temple.

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It's a central document

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in Jewish history.

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And the Book of Chronicles, the Book of Ezra in the Hebrew scriptures

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reported in ringing terms.

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This is the Jewish version

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of the same story.

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"Thus said Cyrus, king of Persia,

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'All the kingdoms of the earth have the Lord God of heaven given thee,

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and he has charged me

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to build him a house in Jerusalem.

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Who is there among you of his people?

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The Lord God be with him,

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and let him go up.'"

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"Go up" -- aaleh.

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The central element, still,

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of the notion of return,

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a central part

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of the life of Judaism.

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As you all know, that return from exile,

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the second temple,

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reshaped Judaism.

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And that change,

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that great historic moment,

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was made possible by Cyrus, the king of Persia,

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reported for us in Hebrew in scripture

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and in Babylonian in clay.

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Two great texts,

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what about the politics?

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What was going on

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was the fundamental shift in Middle Eastern history.

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The empire of Iran, the Medes and the Persians,

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united under Cyrus,

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became the first great world empire.

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Cyrus begins in the 530s BC.

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And by the time of his son Darius,

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the whole of the eastern Mediterranean

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is under Persian control.

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This empire is, in fact,

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the Middle East as we now know it,

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and it's what shapes the Middle East as we now know it.

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It was the largest empire the world had known until then.

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Much more important,

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it was the first

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multicultural, multifaith state

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on a huge scale.

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And it had to be run in a quite new way.

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It had to be run in different languages.

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The fact that this decree is in Babylonian says one thing.

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And it had to recognize their different habits,

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different peoples, different religions, different faiths.

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All of those are respected by Cyrus.

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Cyrus sets up a model

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of how you run

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a great multinational, multifaith, multicultural society.

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And the result of that

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was an empire that included the areas you see on the screen,

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and which survived for 200 years of stability

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until it was shattered by Alexander.

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It left a dream of the Middle East as a unit,

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and a unit where people of different faiths

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could live together.

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The Greek invasions ended that.

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And of course, Alexander couldn't sustain a government

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and it fragmented.

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But what Cyrus represented

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remained absolutely central.

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The Greek historian Xenophon

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wrote his book "Cyropaedia"

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promoting Cyrus as the great ruler.

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And throughout European culture afterward,

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Cyrus remained the model.

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This is a 16th century image

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to show you how widespread

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his veneration actually was.

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And Xenophon's book on Cyrus

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on how you ran a diverse society

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was one of the great textbooks

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that inspired the Founding Fathers

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of the American Revolution.

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Jefferson was a great admirer --

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the ideals of Cyrus

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obviously speaking to those 18th century ideals

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of how you create religious tolerance

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in a new state.

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Meanwhile, back in Babylon,

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things had not been going well.

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After Alexander, the other empires,

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Babylon declines, falls into ruins,

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and all the traces of the great Babylonian empire are lost --

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until 1879

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when the cylinder is discovered

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by a British Museum exhibition digging in Babylon.

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And it enters now another story.

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It enters that great debate

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in the middle of the 19th century:

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Are the scriptures reliable? Can we trust them?

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We only knew

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about the return of the Jews and the decree of Cyrus

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from the Hebrew scriptures.

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No other evidence.

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Suddenly, this appeared.

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And great excitement

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to a world where those who believed in the scriptures

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had had their faith in creation shaken

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by evolution, by geology,

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here was evidence

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that the scriptures were historically true.

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It's a great 19th century moment.

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But -- and this, of course, is where it becomes complicated --

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the facts were true,

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hurrah for archeology,

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but the interpretation was rather more complicated.

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Because the cylinder account and the Hebrew Bible account

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differ in one key respect.

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The Babylonian cylinder

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is written by the priests

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of the great god of Bablyon, Marduk.

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And, not surprisingly,

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they tell you that all this was done by Marduk.

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"Marduk, we hold, called Cyrus by his name."

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Marduk takes Cyrus by the hand,

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calls him to shepherd his people

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and gives him the rule of Babylon.

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Marduk tells Cyrus

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that he will do these great, generous things

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of setting the people free.

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And this is why we should all be grateful to

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and worship Marduk.

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The Hebrew writers

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in the Old Testament,

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you will not be surprised to learn,

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take a rather different view of this.

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For them, of course, it can't possibly by Marduk

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that made all this happen.

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It can only be Jehovah.

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And so in Isaiah,

279
00:11:11,000 --> 00:11:13,000
we have the wonderful texts

280
00:11:13,000 --> 00:11:15,000
giving all the credit of this,

281
00:11:15,000 --> 00:11:16,000
not to Marduk

282
00:11:16,000 --> 00:11:19,000
but to the Lord God of Israel --

283
00:11:19,000 --> 00:11:21,000
the Lord God of Israel

284
00:11:21,000 --> 00:11:23,000
who also called Cyrus by name,

285
00:11:23,000 --> 00:11:26,000
also takes Cyrus by the hand

286
00:11:26,000 --> 00:11:28,000
and talks of him shepherding his people.

287
00:11:28,000 --> 00:11:30,000
It's a remarkable example

288
00:11:30,000 --> 00:11:34,000
of two different priestly appropriations of the same event,

289
00:11:34,000 --> 00:11:36,000
two different religious takeovers

290
00:11:36,000 --> 00:11:38,000
of a political fact.

291
00:11:38,000 --> 00:11:40,000
God, we know,

292
00:11:40,000 --> 00:11:42,000
is usually on the side of the big battalions.

293
00:11:42,000 --> 00:11:45,000
The question is, which god was it?

294
00:11:45,000 --> 00:11:47,000
And the debate unsettles

295
00:11:47,000 --> 00:11:49,000
everybody in the 19th century

296
00:11:49,000 --> 00:11:51,000
to realize that the Hebrew scriptures

297
00:11:51,000 --> 00:11:54,000
are part of a much wider world of religion.

298
00:11:54,000 --> 00:11:56,000
And it's quite clear

299
00:11:56,000 --> 00:11:59,000
the cylinder is older than the text of Isaiah,

300
00:11:59,000 --> 00:12:01,000
and yet, Jehovah is speaking

301
00:12:01,000 --> 00:12:03,000
in words very similar

302
00:12:03,000 --> 00:12:05,000
to those used by Marduk.

303
00:12:05,000 --> 00:12:08,000
And there's a slight sense that Isaiah knows this,

304
00:12:08,000 --> 00:12:10,000
because he says,

305
00:12:10,000 --> 00:12:13,000
this is God speaking, of course,

306
00:12:13,000 --> 00:12:15,000
"I have called thee by thy name

307
00:12:15,000 --> 00:12:17,000
though thou hast not known me."

308
00:12:17,000 --> 00:12:19,000
I think it's recognized

309
00:12:19,000 --> 00:12:21,000
that Cyrus doesn't realize

310
00:12:21,000 --> 00:12:24,000
that he's acting under orders from Jehovah.

311
00:12:24,000 --> 00:12:27,000
And equally, he'd have been surprised that he was acting under orders from Marduk.

312
00:12:27,000 --> 00:12:29,000
Because interestingly, of course,

313
00:12:29,000 --> 00:12:31,000
Cyrus is a good Iranian

314
00:12:31,000 --> 00:12:33,000
with a totally different set of gods

315
00:12:33,000 --> 00:12:35,000
who are not mentioned in any of these texts.

316
00:12:35,000 --> 00:12:37,000
(Laughter)

317
00:12:37,000 --> 00:12:39,000
That's 1879.

318
00:12:39,000 --> 00:12:41,000
40 years on

319
00:12:41,000 --> 00:12:44,000
and we're in 1917,

320
00:12:44,000 --> 00:12:46,000
and the cylinder enters a different world.

321
00:12:46,000 --> 00:12:48,000
This time, the real politics

322
00:12:48,000 --> 00:12:50,000
of the contemporary world --

323
00:12:50,000 --> 00:12:53,000
the year of the Balfour Declaration,

324
00:12:53,000 --> 00:12:56,000
the year when the new imperial power in the Middle East, Britain,

325
00:12:56,000 --> 00:12:58,000
decides that it will declare

326
00:12:58,000 --> 00:13:00,000
a Jewish national home,

327
00:13:00,000 --> 00:13:02,000
it will allow

328
00:13:02,000 --> 00:13:04,000
the Jews to return.

329
00:13:04,000 --> 00:13:06,000
And the response to this

330
00:13:06,000 --> 00:13:09,000
by the Jewish population in Eastern Europe is rhapsodic.

331
00:13:09,000 --> 00:13:11,000
And across Eastern Europe,

332
00:13:11,000 --> 00:13:13,000
Jews display pictures of Cyrus

333
00:13:13,000 --> 00:13:15,000
and of George V

334
00:13:15,000 --> 00:13:17,000
side by side --

335
00:13:17,000 --> 00:13:19,000
the two great rulers

336
00:13:19,000 --> 00:13:22,000
who have allowed the return to Jerusalem.

337
00:13:22,000 --> 00:13:25,000
And the Cyrus cylinder comes back into public view

338
00:13:25,000 --> 00:13:27,000
and the text of this

339
00:13:27,000 --> 00:13:30,000
as a demonstration of why what is going to happen

340
00:13:30,000 --> 00:13:33,000
after the war is over in 1918

341
00:13:33,000 --> 00:13:36,000
is part of a divine plan.

342
00:13:36,000 --> 00:13:38,000
You all know what happened.

343
00:13:38,000 --> 00:13:41,000
The state of Israel is setup,

344
00:13:41,000 --> 00:13:44,000
and 50 years later, in the late 60s,

345
00:13:44,000 --> 00:13:47,000
it's clear that Britain's role as the imperial power is over.

346
00:13:47,000 --> 00:13:50,000
And another story of the cylinder begins.

347
00:13:50,000 --> 00:13:52,000
The region, the U.K. and the U.S. decide,

348
00:13:52,000 --> 00:13:55,000
has to be kept safe from communism,

349
00:13:55,000 --> 00:13:58,000
and the superpower that will be created to do this

350
00:13:58,000 --> 00:14:00,000
would be Iran, the Shah.

351
00:14:00,000 --> 00:14:03,000
And so the Shah invents an Iranian history,

352
00:14:03,000 --> 00:14:05,000
or a return to Iranian history,

353
00:14:05,000 --> 00:14:08,000
that puts him in the center of a great tradition

354
00:14:08,000 --> 00:14:10,000
and produces coins

355
00:14:10,000 --> 00:14:12,000
showing himself

356
00:14:12,000 --> 00:14:14,000
with the Cyrus cylinder.

357
00:14:14,000 --> 00:14:17,000
When he has his great celebrations in Persepolis,

358
00:14:17,000 --> 00:14:19,000
he summons the cylinder

359
00:14:19,000 --> 00:14:22,000
and the cylinder is lent by the British Museum, goes to Tehran,

360
00:14:22,000 --> 00:14:24,000
and is part of those great celebrations

361
00:14:24,000 --> 00:14:27,000
of the Pahlavi dynasty.

362
00:14:27,000 --> 00:14:30,000
Cyrus cylinder: guarantor of the Shah.

363
00:14:30,000 --> 00:14:33,000
10 years later, another story:

364
00:14:33,000 --> 00:14:35,000
Iranian Revolution, 1979.

365
00:14:35,000 --> 00:14:37,000
Islamic revolution, no more Cyrus;

366
00:14:37,000 --> 00:14:39,000
we're not interested in that history,

367
00:14:39,000 --> 00:14:42,000
we're interested in Islamic Iran --

368
00:14:42,000 --> 00:14:44,000
until Iraq,

369
00:14:44,000 --> 00:14:47,000
the new superpower that we've all decided should be in the region,

370
00:14:47,000 --> 00:14:49,000
attacks.

371
00:14:49,000 --> 00:14:51,000
Then another Iran-Iraq war.

372
00:14:51,000 --> 00:14:53,000
And it becomes critical for the Iranians

373
00:14:53,000 --> 00:14:56,000
to remember their great past,

374
00:14:56,000 --> 00:14:58,000
their great past

375
00:14:58,000 --> 00:15:01,000
when they fought Iraq and won.

376
00:15:01,000 --> 00:15:03,000
It becomes critical to find a symbol

377
00:15:03,000 --> 00:15:06,000
that will pull together all Iranians --

378
00:15:06,000 --> 00:15:08,000
Muslims and non-Muslims,

379
00:15:08,000 --> 00:15:11,000
Christians, Zoroastrians, Jews living in Iran,

380
00:15:11,000 --> 00:15:13,000
people who are devout, not devout.

381
00:15:13,000 --> 00:15:16,000
And the obvious emblem is Cyrus.

382
00:15:16,000 --> 00:15:19,000
So when the British Museum and Tehran National Musuem

383
00:15:19,000 --> 00:15:21,000
cooperate and work together, as we've been doing,

384
00:15:21,000 --> 00:15:23,000
the Iranians ask for one thing only

385
00:15:23,000 --> 00:15:25,000
as a loan.

386
00:15:25,000 --> 00:15:27,000
It's the only object they want.

387
00:15:27,000 --> 00:15:29,000
They want to borrow the Cyrus cylinder.

388
00:15:29,000 --> 00:15:31,000
And last year,

389
00:15:31,000 --> 00:15:35,000
the Cyrus cylinder went to Tehran

390
00:15:35,000 --> 00:15:38,000
for the second time.

391
00:15:38,000 --> 00:15:41,000
It's shown being presented here, put into its case

392
00:15:41,000 --> 00:15:44,000
by the director of the National Museum of Tehran,

393
00:15:44,000 --> 00:15:47,000
one of the many women in Iran in very senior positions,

394
00:15:47,000 --> 00:15:49,000
Mrs. Ardakani.

395
00:15:49,000 --> 00:15:51,000
It was a huge event.

396
00:15:51,000 --> 00:15:54,000
This is the other side of that same picture.

397
00:15:54,000 --> 00:15:57,000
It's seen in Tehran

398
00:15:57,000 --> 00:15:59,000
by between one and two million people

399
00:15:59,000 --> 00:16:01,000
in the space of a few months.

400
00:16:01,000 --> 00:16:03,000
This is beyond any blockbuster exhibition

401
00:16:03,000 --> 00:16:05,000
in the West.

402
00:16:05,000 --> 00:16:08,000
And it's the subject of a huge debate

403
00:16:08,000 --> 00:16:11,000
about what this cylinder means, what Cyrus means,

404
00:16:11,000 --> 00:16:14,000
but above all, Cyrus as articulated through this cylinder --

405
00:16:14,000 --> 00:16:17,000
Cyrus as the defender of the homeland,

406
00:16:17,000 --> 00:16:19,000
the champion, of course, of Iranian identity

407
00:16:19,000 --> 00:16:21,000
and of the Iranian peoples,

408
00:16:21,000 --> 00:16:23,000
tolerant of all faiths.

409
00:16:23,000 --> 00:16:25,000
And in the current Iran,

410
00:16:25,000 --> 00:16:28,000
Zoroastrians and Christians have guaranteed places

411
00:16:28,000 --> 00:16:31,000
in the Iranian parliament, something to be very, very proud of.

412
00:16:31,000 --> 00:16:34,000
To see this object in Tehran,

413
00:16:34,000 --> 00:16:36,000
thousands of Jews living in Iran

414
00:16:36,000 --> 00:16:38,000
came to Tehran to see it.

415
00:16:38,000 --> 00:16:40,000
It became a great emblem,

416
00:16:40,000 --> 00:16:42,000
a great subject of debate

417
00:16:42,000 --> 00:16:45,000
about what Iran is at home and abroad.

418
00:16:45,000 --> 00:16:48,000
Is Iran still to be the defender of the oppressed?

419
00:16:48,000 --> 00:16:50,000
Will Iran set free the people

420
00:16:50,000 --> 00:16:53,000
that the tyrants have enslaved and expropriated?

421
00:16:53,000 --> 00:16:56,000
This is heady national rhetoric,

422
00:16:56,000 --> 00:16:58,000
and it was all put together

423
00:16:58,000 --> 00:17:00,000
in a great pageant

424
00:17:00,000 --> 00:17:02,000
launching the return.

425
00:17:02,000 --> 00:17:05,000
Here you see this out-sized Cyrus cylinder on the stage

426
00:17:05,000 --> 00:17:08,000
with great figures from Iranian history

427
00:17:08,000 --> 00:17:10,000
gathering to take their place

428
00:17:10,000 --> 00:17:13,000
in the heritage of Iran.

429
00:17:13,000 --> 00:17:15,000
It was a narrative presented

430
00:17:15,000 --> 00:17:18,000
by the president himself.

431
00:17:18,000 --> 00:17:20,000
And for me,

432
00:17:20,000 --> 00:17:22,000
to take this object to Iran,

433
00:17:22,000 --> 00:17:24,000
to be allowed to take this object to Iran

434
00:17:24,000 --> 00:17:26,000
was to be allowed to be part

435
00:17:26,000 --> 00:17:28,000
of an extraordinary debate

436
00:17:28,000 --> 00:17:30,000
led at the highest levels

437
00:17:30,000 --> 00:17:32,000
about what Iran is,

438
00:17:32,000 --> 00:17:35,000
what different Irans there are

439
00:17:35,000 --> 00:17:37,000
and how the different histories of Iran

440
00:17:37,000 --> 00:17:40,000
might shape the world today.

441
00:17:40,000 --> 00:17:43,000
It's a debate that's still continuing,

442
00:17:43,000 --> 00:17:45,000
and it will continue to rumble,

443
00:17:45,000 --> 00:17:47,000
because this object

444
00:17:47,000 --> 00:17:49,000
is one of the great declarations

445
00:17:49,000 --> 00:17:51,000
of a human aspiration.

446
00:17:51,000 --> 00:17:55,000
It stands with the American constitution.

447
00:17:55,000 --> 00:17:58,000
It certainly says far more about real freedoms

448
00:17:58,000 --> 00:18:00,000
than Magna Carta.

449
00:18:00,000 --> 00:18:03,000
It is a document that can mean so many things,

450
00:18:03,000 --> 00:18:06,000
for Iran and for the region.

451
00:18:06,000 --> 00:18:08,000
A replica of this

452
00:18:08,000 --> 00:18:10,000
is at the United Nations.

453
00:18:10,000 --> 00:18:13,000
In New York this autumn, it will be present

454
00:18:13,000 --> 00:18:15,000
when the great debates

455
00:18:15,000 --> 00:18:18,000
about the future of the Middle East take place.

456
00:18:18,000 --> 00:18:20,000
And I want to finish by asking you

457
00:18:20,000 --> 00:18:22,000
what the next story will be

458
00:18:22,000 --> 00:18:24,000
in which this object figures.

459
00:18:24,000 --> 00:18:26,000
It will appear, certainly,

460
00:18:26,000 --> 00:18:28,000
in many more Middle Eastern stories.

461
00:18:28,000 --> 00:18:30,000
And what story of the Middle East,

462
00:18:30,000 --> 00:18:32,000
what story of the world,

463
00:18:32,000 --> 00:18:34,000
do you want to see

464
00:18:34,000 --> 00:18:36,000
reflecting what is said,

465
00:18:36,000 --> 00:18:38,000
what is expressed in this cylinder?

466
00:18:38,000 --> 00:18:40,000
The right of peoples

467
00:18:40,000 --> 00:18:42,000
to live together in the same state,

468
00:18:42,000 --> 00:18:44,000
worshiping differently, freely --

469
00:18:44,000 --> 00:18:46,000
a Middle East, a world,

470
00:18:46,000 --> 00:18:48,000
in which religion is not the subject of division

471
00:18:48,000 --> 00:18:51,000
or of debate.

472
00:18:51,000 --> 00:18:54,000
In the world of the Middle East at the moment,

473
00:18:54,000 --> 00:18:57,000
the debates are, as you know, shrill.

474
00:18:57,000 --> 00:18:59,000
But I think it's possible

475
00:18:59,000 --> 00:19:03,000
that the most powerful and the wisest voice of all of them

476
00:19:03,000 --> 00:19:05,000
may well be the voice

477
00:19:05,000 --> 00:19:07,000
of this mute thing,

478
00:19:07,000 --> 00:19:09,000
the Cyrus cylinder.

479
00:19:09,000 --> 00:19:11,000
Thank you.

480
00:19:11,000 --> 00:19:15,000
(Applause)