Human Rights: some ancient history

Occasionally I will buy a National  Geographic  magazine (hard copy - the photographs are in colour that way) from my local supermarket (or the Australian  Geographic). Today I actually bought last month's edition (featuring Mars, but also the reversal of some death sentences) and a reissue (from 2016) of a single issue magazine: "The most influential figures of ancient history". 

Being a history buff, I'm finding it enjoyable, and the article on Cyrus the Great introduced me to the Cyrus  Cylinder, a cylinder with writing recording the unusual actions Cyrus committed after conquering lands for his empire - such  as freeing slaves, allowing people to choose their religion, and establishing racial equality. I knew about the later  Hammurabi  Code (also included in that edition), but not the Cyrus Cylinder - a replica of which was presented to the United Nations by Iran in 1971. 

The magazine will also get into significant figures, such as Ashoka, who banned slavery two and a half millennia ago.

Also of interest is this human rights network, which I came across while doing an Internet search on the Cyrus cylinder (their list of human rights champions is good),and this, on the benefits of the Roman Empire falling (I think freeing the masses is a "good thing").