Cyrus Takes Babylon and Issues the Cyrus Cylinder
The largest city in the world falls without a fight, and Cyrus has a clay cylinder written to explain why the gods wanted it that way
Quick facts
- Date
- October 539 BCE
- Defeated king
- Nabonidus of Babylon
- Primary source
- The Cyrus Cylinder, British Museum
- Disputed point
- Cylinder does not name Jerusalem or Judeans directly
What happened
In October 539 BCE, Cyrus's forces took Babylon, capital of the Neo-Babylonian Empire, and captured its king Nabonidus. According to the Cyrus Cylinder, a clay document written on Cyrus's orders and now in the British Museum, Nabonidus had angered Babylon's priesthood by neglecting the city's chief god Marduk in favor of the moon god Sin, and the Babylonian population accepted Cyrus's kingship without resistance. The cylinder has Cyrus speak in the first person, declaring himself "king of the world, great king" and describing how he restored the cults Nabonidus had disrupted, ended forced labor imposed on the population, and let people who had been forcibly resettled by earlier kings return to their home cities. The biblical Book of Ezra later credits Cyrus with a decree freeing the Judean exiles held in Babylon since Nebuchadnezzar II's conquests and permitting the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem. The cylinder itself never names Jerusalem or the Judeans specifically, and scholars debate how directly its general amnesty language connects to the biblical account, but its policy of returning deported peoples and cult objects is a documented and significant break from earlier Assyrian and Babylonian practice.
Why it matters
The conquest of Babylon made Cyrus master of the entire former Babylonian Empire, including Syria and Palestine, roughly doubling his territory in one campaign. The Cylinder's language of restoring exiled peoples became one of the most-cited ancient texts on the treatment of conquered populations, and it set the tone: Achaemenid kings would generally rule through and alongside local elites and religions rather than replacing them.
How we know
The Cyrus Cylinder is a primary source, a physical clay cylinder excavated at Babylon in 1879 and held by the British Museum, inscribed in Babylonian cuneiform on Cyrus's own authority. The biblical connection comes from the Book of Ezra, a separate textual tradition written by a different community with its own religious purposes.
Sources
- The British Museum. Cyrus Cylinder (object record) · Primary source (author-declared)britishmuseum.org · Cited as a "primary" source (no stronger domain match).
- World History Encyclopedia. The Cyrus Cylinder · Reputable sourceworldhistory.org · The domain "worldhistory.org" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
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Related timelines
- Ancient Mesopotamia → · The Neo-Babylonian Empire that fell to Cyrus in this campaign