The Writing On The Wall - Historicity

Historicity

Historical reconstruction of the fall of Babylon to Persia (539 BCE) has been problematic due to the inconstencies between the various source documents. Both the Babylonian Chronicle and the Cyrus Cylinder describe Babylon being taken "without battle" whereas the Greek historians, Herodotus, Xenophon, report that the city was besieged. The Book of Daniel implies that Babylon was taken in one night and that Belshazzar was killed.

The cuneiform texts - the Chronicle of Nabonidus, the Cyrus Cylinder and the so-called Verse Account of Nabonidus - were written after the Persian victory. They shed unfavourable light on the Babylonian king and present Cyrus II as the liberator of Babylon, the defender of the Babylonian gods and consequently as the legitimate successor to the Babylonian throne. The Cyropaedia is a historical romance, though it may contain a historical core. Herodotus, though writing long after the events, had traveled in Mesopotamia and spoken to Babylonians.

Tolini has proposed a plausible reconstruction of how Babylon fell. A receipt of reconstruction work on the Enlil Gate demonstrates that there was a forced entry into Babylon. Tolini proposes that a portion of the Persian army under the command of the general Ugbaru penetrated the Enlil Gate, which is on the West side of the Euphrates, then crossed the river to take the eastern districts of Babylon. This may be source of the story, recorded by Herodotus, that the Persian army entered Babylon along the riverbed, having diverted the Euphrates. This surprise capture of Babylon is consistent with the story recorded in Daniel 5.

The success of Ugbaru's strategy may owe something to the timing of his attack. Herodotus, Xenophon and Daniel 5 all record that Babylon was in the midst of a festival on the night it was taken. The Babylonian Chronicle records that Babylon was captured on 16th Tašrîtu, which was the night before the akitu festival in honour of Sin, the moon-god.

Xenophon describes how Gobryas (probably a Greek form of Ugbaru) led a detachment of men in the capture of Babylon and that it was he who slew the king of Babylon. Xenophon is the only source, outside Daniel 5, to describe the demise of Belshazzar.

Babylon found itself under a foreign rule for the first time. A new system of government was put in place and the Persian multi-national-state was developed. This system of government reached its peak after the conquest of Egypt by Cambyses during the reign of Darius I, thereafter receiving its ideological foundation in the inscription of the Persian kings.