Baqai said, “If we catch the British killing time and delaying the sending of the cylinder, we will inform the world that Britain is pushing cultural issues into the political arena..”
Last week, when Baqai announced the delay, he avoided any anger, threats or displays of spleen. After several days, and some objections to his mild manner, he has now changed his tune.
A few years ago, the Britain Museum and ICHTO reached an agreement under which Iran loaned the British Museum major objects from the era of Shah Abbas the Great and the British Museum was to send the Cyrus Cylinder to Iran for display over several months.
The Shah Abbas exhibit has since been held to rave reviews. The cylinder was to be sent to Iran last September, but the British Museum expressed concern over the post-election disorders and did not ship the cylinder.
Iran then complained angrily and threatened to cancel all cultural cooperation. The British Museum then said it would deliver the cylinder January 16.
But just days before the delivery date, Iran said it received a letter from the British Museum saying the cylinder could not be handed over just yet because some recently discovered artifacts pointed to the possibility that copies of the cylinder were made 25 centuries ago and might still be found in the Middle East. It wasn’t clear why research on the new discoveries would require the physical presence of the cylinder in London.
The Iran Times reported last week that the new discoveries were chips from the cylinder. But the Mehr news agency now reports that the new discovery is not chips from the cylinder but two separate cuneiform tablets in the British Museum’s collection that were recently translated and that contain passages similar to those on the cylinder.
The cylinder was discovered in 1878 in the main temple at Babylon in modern day Iraq.
Dated to 538 BCE, the cylinder records a proclamation by Cyrus the Great that is widely viewed as the first statement promulgating religious freedom and human rights.