Feature: Norouz: Persian New Year - A free event in the Great Court of the British Museum - Sat & Sun 20/21 March
Published 18 March 2010
by JOSH LOEB
IRAN is a place many people associate with bearded fundamentalists, hostage-taking and police clobbering protesters. But a small clay object in the British Museum’s Rahim Irvani Gallery tells a different story.
The Cyrus Cylinder is an ancient artefact inscribed with a proclamation issued by Persian ruler Cyrus the Great after he overthrew the iron-fisted Babylonian dictator Nabonidus two-and-a-half thousand years ago.
It calls for peace, workers’ rights and religious tolerance, condemning Nabonidus for his desecration of temples and use of forced labour.
And it has inspired those planning a celebration of the Iranian festival of Norouz, due to take place in the museum this weekend.
“Iran is stigmatised in the press and in reality we are not what they say we are,” says Shirley Elghanian, who founded the charity Magic of Persia, which promotes Iranian artists and helps Iranian students visit the UK.
She explains: “The Cyrus Cylinder is looked on as the first declaration of human rights. It embodies the values of hospitality, tolerance and respect that are embedded in each Iranian. We cannot be that backward if we were so forward-thinking two-and-a-half thousand years ago.”
This weekend’s festivities, which are sponsored by Magic of Persia, will take over the Bloomsbury museum’s Great Court with music, dance and cheeky satire.
The festival of Norouz, which marks the vernal equinox and start of spring, is associated with an ancient religion, Zoroastrianism, that people in modern Iran are banned from converting to. Yet in the Islamic republic it is a public holiday – a contradiction that annoys the country’s rulers.
Zoroastrianism, based on the teachings of the prophet Zoroaster and belief in the sacred properties of fire and water, was the religion of Cyrus’s empire.
It was sidelined in Iran after the rise of Islam and its adherents have faced persecution at various times since.
The British Museum is itself no stranger to Iran’s disapproval.
The BM had promised to loan Iran the Cyrus Cylinder but reneged last year in the wake of the country’s post-election crackdown.
The Iranian authorities demanded the BM send them the piece, so highly prized for being “the world’s first declaration of human rights”.
They were sceptical about the museum’s claim that it was hanging onto the artefact because fragments of it that had previously been thought lost had just been discovered in a store room and needed to be examined.
Iranian vice president Hamid Baqaei slammed BM director Neil MacGregor’s “excuses” and criticised “British procrastination”.
Even when Mr MacGregor announced last month that he would be sending the Cylinder to Iran this summer (much later than originally agreed) the Iranians responded by cutting cultural ties with the museum.
As proof that Iranians are more than capable of laughing at themselves, Magic of Persia‘s Norouz celebrations will involve the screening of a film, Daie Jan Napoleon (My Uncle Napoleon), based on a novel about a delusional old man in 1940s Tehran who blames his every misfortune on the British.
“Uncle Napoleon has this conspiracy theory, which many Iranians have, in which everything that has happened is the fault of the British,” explains Shirley Elghanian. “It is a comedy and we thought it would be funny to screen it, especially because of the issue of the Cyrus Cylinder.”
Ms Elghanian calls the downturn in relations between the UK and Iran “a virus”, saying she believes the countries will return to a friendly relationship.
And she hopes events like this weekend’s Norouz bash could be part of the solution.
• Norouz: Persian New Year, a free event sponsored by Magic of Persia, will take place in the Great Court of the British Museum, Great Russell Street, WC1, on Saturday and Sunday (March 20 and 21) from 11am-4.30pm, 020 7323 8838, www.britishmuseum.org