Monthly Archives: March 2013

Cyrus Cylinder: Ancient Persia Foreshadowed Modern Values

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The Cyrus Cylinder has left its British Museum repository for its first U.S. tour, beginning at the Smithsonian Institution’s Arthur M. Sackler Gallery in Washington. “The Cyrus Cylinder and Ancient Persia” showcases this 2,600-year-old archeological treasure amid other artifacts from the Achaemenid Empire (550–331 B.C.) founded by the Persian ruler Cyrus the Great.

Among the most important objects in world history, the cylinder “in its time declared a new way of ruling in which disparate races and people were not oppressed into conformity but respected for diversity,” Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Director Julian Raby told journalists at the preview.

Read more: http://iipdigital.usembassy.gov/st/english/article/2013/03/20130311143905.html#ixzz2ORg555DQ

 

Statue of Zoroaster in New York

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zoroaster

“Author William Culican remarks that the “Laws of the Medes and Persians” became a by-word of judicial incorruptibility and harshness, throughout the subject lands.  Execution by crucifixion is a Persian invention. It was theZoroastrians who gave the world legal principles enshrined in the law of evidence and procedure.  Legal concepts like arbitration, release on bail, representation by a lawyer, power of attorney and execution of wills are of Persian origin, later picked up by the Greeks and Romans.

In recognition of Zoroastrian contribution to the development of law, a statue of Zoroaster stands in the Court of the Appellate Division (near Madison Square and 23rd Street) with other law givers like Moses, Manu, Charlemagne and Alfred the Great.”

 

Courtesy : Rusi Sorabji