Edict of Cyrus

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The Edict of Cyrus usually refers to the biblical account of a proclamation by Cyrus the Great, the founding king of the Achaemenid Persian Empire, in 539 BCE. It was issued after the Persians conquered the Neo-Babylonian Empire upon the fall of Babylon, and is described in the Tanakh, which claims that it authorized and encouraged the return to Zion and the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem (i.e., the Second Temple).

The Cyrus Cylinder text has also been called the "Edict of Cyrus",^[1] but this text is now considered to support the biblical account only in a very general sense.^[2]