Cyrus ruled Babylon through Darius, his counselor and friend, whose courage and strategy were rewarded when the king made him satrap of Babylon. Herein is found a reconciliation of the apparent contradiction between the two statements made by Darius and Cyrus concerning the fate of the king of Babylon. Although the critics never bothered to notice such, archeology has its difficulties as well as has Scripture.
Darius tersely recounts, “In the night that I captured Babylon, I slew the king.”
The annalistic tablet of Cyrus, however, contains this note, “In the day that I entered Babylon, I made the king my captive.”
The contradiction is more fancied than real. The two generals are speaking about two different kings! Darius killed King Belshazzar; Cyrus made King Nabonidus his captive and friend.
Because of the insult that Belshazzar had offered to his majesty, Cyrus caused the Regent’s name to be stricken from all the available records and thus Belshazzar’s name passed out of history and faded from the memory of men. For twenty-five hundred years the only record of the name of Belshazzar that was preserved for posterity was found in the writings of Daniel. This very historic accuracy of Daniel was the source of a great deal of the critical rejection of his notable writing!
The first discovery in archeology that shed light upon these events was the prayer cylinder of Nabonidus. Upon the ascension of Belshazzar to the regency of the kingdom, Nabonidus caused to be engraved in all the temples of Bel a prayer for the protection, praise, and prosperity of his son, Belt-sar-utsar. In the excavations at Mukkayyar, one of the great buildings uncovered was the temple of the moon god. In each of the four corners of the building, Nabonidus, who had rebuilt the temple, had caused a clay cylinder to be buried containing the record of the work. On this cylinder, which dedicated the rebuilding of an ancient temple which was originally constructed about seventeen centuries before the day of Nabonidus, the kindly king engraved the prayer for his son and heir, to which we have previously referred.
The name of the moon god was Sin, and he was one of the chief deities of the land of Babylon. The wording on the cylinder that particularly interests the student of historical accuracy is found in these words: “Oh, Sin, thou lord of the gods, thou king of the gods of heaven and of earth, and of the gods of the gods, who dwellest in heaven, when thou enterest with joy into this temple, may the good fortune of the temples E-sagil, E-zida and E-gish-shirgal, the temples of thine exalted godhead be established at thy word. And set thou the fear of thine exalted godhead in the hearts of my people, that they sin not against thine exalted godhead, and let them stand fast like the heavens. And as for me, Nabonidus, the king of Babylon, protect thou me from sinning against thine exalted godhead and grant thou me graciously a long life and in the heart of Belshazzar, my first born son, the offspring of my loins, set the fear of thine exalted godhead so he may commit no sin and that he may be satisfied with the fullness of life.”
In the British Museum, Table Case “G” in the magnificent Babylonian Room contains these cylinders, which are numbered 91,125 to 91,128; the cylinders of Nabonidus are many. Some of them recount his building operations, while others give the record of his discoveries of some of the great monuments of antiquity in the search for which he spent so much of his time and treasure. Perhaps no single event in the long records of archeology so startled and delighted the careful students whose interest was in the authority of the Word of God, as did this discovery of the name of Belshazzar. In one magnificent demonstration archeology thus accredited the history included in the prophecies of Daniel, and shattered the conclusions of criticism beyond the possibility of recovery.
Also in this same section and case of the British Museum, there is a portion of a baked clay cylinder inscribed by Cyrus. This bears the Museum number of 90,920 and is a priceless record. We are tempted to believe in the providential preservation of this fragment, since the balance of the tablet has been destroyed and is missing. In this particular record, Cyrus describes his conquest of Babylon, following a recital of some of the chief preliminary events in the early part of his reign. He ascribes his good success to the god Marduk. He tells how he had forced all nations to accept his standard until finally, under divine command, Marduk caused him to go to Babylon. Because of the significance of this statement and its bearing upon our foregoing paragraphs, we reproduce this much of the words of Cyrus, “Marduk the great lord, the protector of his people beheld his good deeds and his righteous heart with joy. He commanded him to go to Babylon and he caused him to set out on the road to the city and like a friend and ally, he marched by his side; and his troops with our weapons girt about them, marched with him in countless numbers like the waters of a flood. Without battle and without fighting, Marduk made him enter into his city of Babylon; he spared Babylon tribulation and Nabonidus the king who feared him not, he delivered into his hands.”
The Babylonian sources of the British Museum also contain an amazing number of highly important documents which cover every year of the reign of Cyrus in Babylon, namely, B. C. 538 to 529. These records are concerned with commercial transactions, legal business and documents that deal with the personal and public life of the people. Such homely affairs as a deed recording a loan of three thousand bundles of onions from one man to another is legally dated by the year of the ascendency of Cyrus. The apprenticeship of slaves to various masters in the arts and sciences, the worship of the people, the blossoming of prosperity under the firm but kind rule of Cyrus, all make up a wonderful picture of those days and times. Therein are included apparently unconscious references to the historic events that are of such tremendous interest to those who today read the Word of God in the light of this historical illumination.