And yet, though the prophet's language was thus figurative, the prediction was eventually fulfilled in a very literal way. The empire of Cyrus was broken up after the death of Kambyses, and had to be reconquered by Darius the son of Hystaspes, the real founder of the Persian Empire. Darius was a Zoroastrian monotheist as well as a Persian, and under him and his successors polytheism ceased to be the religion of the State. Twice during his reign he had to besiege Babylon. Hardly had he been proclaimed king when it revolted under a certain Nidinta-Bel, who called himself “Nebuchadrezzar, the son of Nabonidos.” A cameo exists with his helmeted profile, engraved by a Greek artist, and surrounded by the words, “To Merodach, his lord, Nebuchadrezzar, the king of Babylon, has made (it) for his life;” unless, perhaps, Professor Schrader is right in referring the portrait, not to the pretender, but to [pg 151] the real Nebuchadrezzar of Biblical history. Babylon endured a siege of two years, and was at last captured by Darius only by the help of a stratagem. Six years afterwards it again rose in revolt, under an Armenian, who professed, like his predecessor, to be “Nebuchadrezzar, the son of Nabonidos.” Once more, however, it was besieged and taken, and this time the pretender was put to death by impalement. His predecessor, Nidinta-Bel, seems to have been slain while the Persian troops were forcing their way into the captured city. After the second capture of Babylon Darius pulled down its walls; and his son Xerxes completed the work of destruction by destroying the great temple of Bel, and carrying away the golden image of the god.
In Nidinta-Bel the line of independent Babylonian kings may be regarded as having come to an end, since the leader of the second revolt was not a native, but an Armenian settler. To him, therefore, we may apply the magnificent description of the death of the last Babylonian monarch on the battle-field, and his descent into the under-world, which we read in Isaiah xiv. Illustrations have been taken by the prophet from Babylonian mythology, in order to heighten the horror of the scene. The king of Babylonia is compared to the morning star, whose movements the Babylonians had been the first of mankind to record. He is represented as saying in his heart, “I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the (other) stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the assembly (of the gods) in the furthest regions of the north.” This mount, as we have seen in an earlier chapter, was the Olympos of the Accadians, by whom it was called Kharsak-kurra [pg 152] “the mountain of the east.” Its peak was the pivot on which the sky rested, and it was therefore also known as “the mountain of the world.” It lay far away in the regions of the north-east, the entrance, as it was supposed, to the lower world, and it was sometimes identified with the mountain of Nizir, the modern Rowandiz, on whose summit the ark of the Chaldean Noah was believed to have rested. From the heights of this mountain, where he had vainly dreamed of sitting among the gods, the Babylonian king was to be hurled into the world below. Here again the prophet borrows his illustration from the mythology of Accad. The heroes of the past are placed before us seated in Hades on their shadowy thrones, from which they rise to greet the arrival of their new comrade.
The best commentary on the description is to be found in the words of an old Babylonian poem, which tells of the descent of the goddess Istar into Hades, in search of her dead husband Tammuz. The poem opens as follows:—
“To Hades, the land whence none return, the land of darkness,
Istar the daughter of the Moon-god inclined her ear,
Yea, the daughter of the Moon-god inclined her ear.
To the house of darkness, the dwelling of the god Irkalla,
To the house out of which there is no exit,
To the road from which there is no return,
To the house from whose entrance the light is taken,