The UK’s Junior Foreign Minister Alistair Burt and the director of the National Museum of Iran, Jebreil Nokandeh, agreed to boost cooperation between their countries’ museums and work for more bilateral scientific cooperation in archaeology during the former’s visit to Iran at the weekend, IFP reported on September 4.

Burt and Nokandeh’s talks reportedly took in the latest situation as regards the 6^th century BC Cyrus Cylinder, on display at the British Museum in London.

The ancient clay cylinder, now broken into several pieces, was lent to Iran for an exhibition eight years ago, and Nokandeh was described as hopeful that the treasured artefact might soon again feature in an Iranian exhibition.

Discovered in the ruins of Babylon in Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq) in 1879, it bears a written declaration in cuneiform script in the name of Persia's Achaemenid King Cyrus the Great. The text on the Cylinder praises Cyrus, sets out his genealogy and portrays him as a king from a line of kings, who is extolled by the citizens of Babylonia as their benefactor. Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last Shah of Iran, claimed that the text included the first ever declaration of universal human rights, but some historians have rejected that conclusion as anachronistic and a misunderstanding of the cylinder's generic nature as a typical statement made by a new monarch at the start of his reign.

A copy of the cylinder hangs next to the UN Security Council Chamber in New York, where it is held as a symbol of Cyrus's reputation for fair and just rule.

During the administration of the now much derided ex-president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, several clerics and hardline media commentators in Iran slammed the country for not holding on to the cylinder after it arrived “home” for the exhibition.

"Isn't it correct that the Cyrus Cylinder belongs to Iran?" asked the Keyhan newspaper, a mouthpiece for hardline conservatives. "Isn't it true that the British government stole this valuable and ancient object of ours? If the answer to these questions is positive, which it is, why should we return [it]… to the party which stole it,” the Guardian quoted the media title as saying at the time.