Objects of Displacement: The Affective Journey of the Cyrus Cylinder

Van de Ven, Annelies [UCL]

The Cyrus Cylinder is a clay, barrel-shaped inscription which details the Persian conquest of Babylon by Cyrus the Great. Its text carries information about the politics, religions, peoples and topography of ancient Mesopotamia. Over the years its meaning has come to extend much further featuring in narratives of colonialism, becoming a beacon of identity in displacement and embodying conceptions of homeland. The cylinder, and Cyrus himself have become implicated in the identities of multiple peoples and nations across the globe including the UK, US, Israel and Iran, four areas that today are caught in a web of strife. The question often asked with regards to the cylinder is ‘where and to whom does it belong?’ Though significant, this question ignores the agency of the Cyrus Cylinder as well as its multivocality, evident in the object’s widespread cultural appeal. This paper uses object biography to interrogate the Cyrus Cylinder as an emotive object with active valence, not just a representative map of the networks between individuals and cultures across space and time. The purpose of this paper is to conceptualise the relationships created by and embodied within the Cyrus Cylinder and the different narratives and biographies that have become engaged with it. Using the example of the Cyrus Cylinder the potential role of objects as ambassadors and as hostages will be explored, elucidating their power to either include or exclude a variety of identities.