Fresh Light from the Ancient Monuments / A Sketch of the Most Striking Confirmations of the Bible, From Recent Discoveries in Egypt, Palestine, Assyria, Babylonia, Asia Minor

by A. H. Sayce

And its chiefs are like birds covered with feathers;

Light is never seen, in darkness they dwell.

In that house, O my friend, which I shall enter.

There is treasured up for me a crown.

With those wearing crowns, who from days of old ruled the earth.

To whom the gods Anu and Bel have given names of rule.”

But it is time for us to return to the inscriptions of Cyrus. Next to the fact that he was a polytheist, the most startling revelation they make is that he was not a king of Persia at all. Persia seems to have been acquired by him after his conquest of Astyages, at some time between the sixth and ninth year of Nabonidos. Both he and his ancestors were kings of Anzan or Elam. It is true, he could trace his descent back to a member of the royal Persian clan, Teispes, who appears to have taken possession of Elam during the troublous period that followed the fall of Assyria, and to have resigned his Persian dominions to his son Ariaramnes, the great-grandfather of Darius. It must be this conquest of Elam which was prophesied by Jeremiah at the [pg 154] beginning of Zedekiah's reign (Jer. xlix. 34-39), and the result of it was to make Cyrus an Elamite in education and religion. The empire which he founded was not a Persian one; Darius, the son of Hystaspes, was the real founder of that. It was only as the predecessor of Darius, and for the sake of intelligibility to the readers of a later day, that Cyrus could be called a king of Persia, as he is in the Book of Ezra, where the original words of his proclamation, “king of Elam” have been changed into the more familiar and intelligible “king of Persia” (Ez. i. 2.). Elsewhere in the Bible (Isa. xxi. 1-10), where the invasion of Babylonia is described, there is no mention of Persia, only of Elam and Media, that is to say, of the ancestral dominions of Cyrus and that kingdom of Ekbatana which he had annexed. This is in strict accordance with the revelations of the monuments, and is a most interesting testimony to the accuracy of the Old Testament records.

Another fact of an equally revolutionary kind which the inscriptions teach us is that Babylon was not besieged and taken by Cyrus. It opened its gates to his general long before he came near it, and needed neither fighting nor battle for its occupation. It thus becomes evident that the siege of Babylon described by Herodotus really belongs to the reign of Darius, and has been transferred by tradition to the reign of Cyrus, and that the late Mr. Bosanquet was right in asserting that the Darius of the Book of Daniel is Darius the son of Hystaspes. Belshazzar, as we know from an inscription of Nabonidos, which mentions him, was the eldest son of that monarch, and he is no doubt the “king's son” who commanded the Babylonian army, according to the tablet translated above.

But besides the main facts to be derived from these newly found inscriptions, there is much else in them which is worthy of regard. This is especially the case with the inscription on the clay cylinder, in which we find a reference to the restoration of the Babylonian captives to their several homes. The experience of Cyrus had taught him that the old Assyrian and Babylonian system of transporting conquered nations was an error, and did but introduce a dangerously disaffected people into the country to which they had been brought. Through this conviction, which seemed to Cyrus himself merely the result of his own experience and political sagacity, God worked to bring about the fulfilment of His promises to the Jewish exiles. Those who chose to return to Jerusalem were allowed to do so, and there rebuild a fortress which Cyrus considered would be useful to him as a check upon Egypt. The nations which had been brought from east and west were restored to their lands, along with their gods, whom they were henceforth to worship in peace. Among them, as we learn from the Old Testament, were the captives of Judah, the worshippers of the one true God.

Another fact which we gather from the words of Cyrus is that Nabonidos had offended the Babylonian priesthood, and had been accused by some of them of impiety. His removal of the images of the local deities from their shrines seems to have been regarded as a peculiar sin; and Cyrus goes so far as to assert that Nabonidos had brought them into Babylon, “to the anger of the lord of gods.” Indeed, he even says that the Babylonian king had not worshipped the patron god of his own capital. How little, however, this statement was really justified may be seen from the inscription of [pg 156] Nabonidos quoted above, in which reference is made for the first time to Cyrus, “the young servant” of Merodach.