14. Susa was the Greek name of the place called Shushan in Neh. 1:1,and frequently so in the book of Esther.[113] It has been identified with extensive ruins 175 miles north of the Persian Gulf and 275 miles east of Babylon. One of the mounds shows the remains of a vast palace with one central hall containing thirty-six columns about sixty feet in height. Other halls and columns with porches make it certain that this is the palace called so frequently “Shushan the palace” in the history of Esther. It was the capital of Elam, the country around being called Susiana. It was an ancient city and was captured by the Assyrian king Assur-bani-pal about B. C. 650. When the father of Nebuchadnezzar, Nabopolassar king of Babylon, and Cyaxaresking of Media, conquered Nineveh and divided the empire between them, Shushan fell to Babylon. The wealth of the city may be known from the fact that at the Macedonian conquest of this region Alexander found treasure here of the value of $60,000,000. It is situated on the east bank of the Shapur River, which is supposed to have been the Ulai (pronounced u´-la-i) of the book of Daniel, Dan. 8:1, 2, 27.
15. It was in the palace in Susa that Nehemiah held the office of cup-bearer to the Persian king Artaxerxes, B. C. 446, thirty-two years after Esther was crowned, B. C. 478.
16. It is shown by this history that the Jews, fifty-eight years after their freedom was granted them, B. C. 536 to B. C. 478, had already spread over the provinces of Persia. The extent of these provinces was such, according to Rawlinson,that Persia deserved the title of a mighty empire,[114] having in the middle of the sixth century before the Christian era “established itself on the ruins of the Assyrian and Babylonian kingdoms.”
The monotheistic nature of the religion of the Persians,and the fact that it allowed no idolatry nor any representation of the Supreme Being under any material form,[115] rendered the Jewish settlement far less objectionable in Persia than in any other land, and it is, therefore, not improbable that the Jewish population was greater in the Persian Empire alonethan it was at the same period in Palestine after the return from Babylon.
The population of Susa in the time of Xerxes is supposed to have been about “a half a million.”[116]
17. As the recently discovered monuments have, in several instances, enabled us to correct the errors of the Greek writers of this age,we have given a complete view of the Persian successions from Cyrus to Alexander the Great.[117]
Cyrus, B. C. 538. Captured Babylon. The Persian army entered Babylonia from the south. June 16 the Persian general Gobryas marched in. In October Cyrus himself entered his new capital.
B. C. 536. The proclamation to the Jews, ending captivity.
B. C. 529. Death of Cyrus.
Cambyses, B. C. 529. Invaded and conquered Egypt; entered Ethiopia—Oasis of Ammon; committed suicide after eight years’ reign alone, two years having been with Cyrus. Gomates, a Magian, usurped the throne for less than a year, from six to eight months.