A History of Babylon, from the Foundation of the Monarchy to the Persian Conquest

by L. W. King

Nebuchadnezzar appears in his inscriptions as a mighty builder, and we have already seen how he transformed the city of Babylon. He entirely rebuilt and enlarged his father's royal palace,[13] and in the course of his reconstructions raised its terraced platform to so great a height above the surrounding city and plain, that its Hanging Garden became one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.[14] He rebuilt the great temples of E-zida at Borsippa and of E-sagila at Babylon, and the Sacred Procession-street within the city he sumptuously paved, spanning it between the temple of Ninmakh and his own palace with the famous Ishtar Gate, adorned with bulls and dragons in enamelled relief.[15] The fortifications of the city he also greatly strengthened by the extension of its double line of walls and the erection of new citadels.[16] During his long reign of forty-two years he devoted his energies and the new wealth of his kingdom to this work of rebuilding, both in the capital and in the other ancient religious centres of Babylonia.[17] The decoration of the façade of Nebuchadnezzar's own palace reflects the influence of the West upon Babylonian art; and we may picture her markets and quays as thronged with foreign caravans and merchandise. Evidence of her extended horizon at this period may also be traced in the interest which Nebuchadnezzar showed in the sea-traffic on the Persian Gulf, which doubtless led him to construct a harbour in the swamps, and to protect it against Arab raids by the erection of the town of Teredon to the west of the Euphrates, as an outpost on the desert frontier.[18]

Nebuchadnezzar's son, Amêl-Marduk, was an unworthy successor to his father. During his short reign he was restrained neither by law nor decency,[19] and it is not surprising that in less than three years the priestly party should have secured his assassination and have set Neriglissar, his brother-in-law, in his place, a man of far stronger character and a soldier.[20] The son of a private Babylonian, Bêl-shum-ishkun, Neriglissar had married a daughter of Nebuchadnezzar, and we may certainly identify him with Nergal-sharezer, the Rab-mag or Babylonian general who was present at the siege of Jerusalem.[21] A striking proof that Neriglissar enjoyed high military rank in Nebuchadnezzar's reign has recently been obtained in a letter from Erech, which was written by a captain in charge of a body of troops stationed in the neighbourhood of that city.[22] The date of the letter is certain, since the captain refers to soldiers on the roll of Nebuchadnezzar and Neriglissar; and incidentally it gives us a glimpse of the unsatisfactory condition of the Babylonian army during Nebuchadnezzar's closing years. The captain is anxious that the depleted state of his company, and the measures he contemplates in order to fill its ranks, should not be known to Gubaru, who exercised a high command in Nebuchadnezzar's army. It is possible that we may identify this general with the governor of Gutium, who played so prominent a part in the Persian conquest. Knowing, as he doubtless did, the unsatisfactory condition of his country's forces, he may perhaps have regarded the task of opposing the invaders as quite beyond their powers.[23] Neriglissar's death, less than four years after his accession, must certainly have been the death-blow to any hopes his generals may have entertained of placing the country's military organization and defence upon a sound footing. For his son was little more than a child, and after nine months' reign the priestly party at the capital succeeded in deposing him in favour of one of their own number, Nabonidus, a man of priestly descent[24] and thoroughly imbued with the traditions of the hierarchy. The new king carried on Nebuchadnezzar's tradition of temple-reconstruction with enthusiasm, but he had none of his great predecessor's military aptitude. To his own priestly detachment he added the unpractical character of the archæologist, loving to occupy himself in investigating the past history of the temples he rebuilt, in place of controlling his country's administration. The bent of his mind is well reflected in the account he has left us of the dedication of his daughter, Bêl-shalti-Nannar, as head of the college of votaries attached to the Moon-temple at Ur.[25] It is clear that this act and the accompanying ceremonial interested him far more than the education of his son; and any military aptitude Belshazzar may have developed was certainly not fostered by his father or his father's friends. It was only when the enemy was at the frontier that the king must have realized his own fatuity.

Thus with the accession of Nabonidus the close of Babylon's last period of greatness is in sight. But the empire did not crumble of its own accord, for in one of his foundation-records the king boasts that the whole of Mesopotamia and the West, as far as Gaza on the Egyptian border, continued to acknowledge his authority.[26] It required pressure from without to shatter the decaying empire, which from the first must have owed its success in no small measure to the friendly and protective attitude of Media. When that essential support was no longer forthcoming, it lay at the mercy of the new power before which Media herself had already gone down.

The Persian kingdom of Cyrus, rising on a new wave of the Indo-European migration, had had little difficulty in absorbing that of the Medes.[27] Five years after the accession of Nabonidus, Cyrus had deposed Astyages, and, uniting his own followers from the south of Iran with their Median kinsfolk, he proceeded to deal with Croesus of Lydia. Under her last king, the successor of Alyattes, the power of Lydia had risen to its greatest height, and the fame of Croesus' wealth had attracted many of the more cultured Greeks to his court at Sardis. But when Cyrus made himself master of the Median empire, Croesus began to fear his growing power. In 547 b.c. he fought an indecisive battle with the Persians at Pteria in Cappadocia, near the site of the old Hittite capital, and he then retreated on Sardis. Here he sent for assistance to Sparta, Egypt and Babylon. But Cyrus did not delay before renewing his attack, and he appeared unexpectedly before the capital. The Lydian army was now signally defeated; Sardis, in which Croesus had taken refuge, was captured after a siege, and the Lydian empire brought to an end. Cyrus was then free to turn his attention to Babylon.

I. BAKED CLAY FOUNDATION CYLINDER OF NABONIDUS, REFERRING TO THE DEFEAT OF ASTYAGES BY CYRUS (Brit. Mus., No. 91109.)

II. BAKED CLAY FOUNDATION CYLINDER OF CYRUS RECORDING HIS ENTRY INTO BABYLON WITHOUT BATTLE AND WITHOUT FIGHTING.
(Brit. Mus., No 90920.)

If we should be right in identifying Gobryas or Gubaru, the governor of Gutium, with the Babylonian general of that name, who had held high position under Nebuchadnezzar,[28] we may trace the speed and ease of the Persian conquest of Babylonia directly to his action in espousing the cause of the invader. Foreseeing that the only hope for his country lay in its speedy submission, he may have considered that he would be acting in its best interests if he did not oppose its incorporation within the Persian empire, but rendered the revolution so far as possible a peaceful one. That would explain the action of Cyrus in entrusting the invasion largely to his hands; and the subsequent revolt of Sippar is the more easily accounted for if a Babylonian general with Gubaru's reputation had appeared as the envoy of the Persian king. In any case we must assume that a large section of the Akkadian population was of that way of thinking, quite apart from the opposition to himself that Nabonidus had aroused in the priestly party of the capital.

The defence of the country was entrusted by Nabonidus to his son Belshazzar, who met the advancing Persians at Opis, where he was defeated; and, as often as he attempted to rally his forces, they were again dispersed.[29] Sippar then opened its gates without fighting, Nabonidus fled, and Gubaru advancing on the capital secured its peaceful surrender. The native chronicler of these events records that, during the early days of the Persian occupation of the city, the shields of Gutium surrounded the doors of E-sagila, so that no man's spear entered the sacred shrines and no military standard was brought in.[30] The record gains fresh meaning if we may assume that the governor of Gutium was himself of native origin and a former general of the Babylonian army. On the third day of the following month Cyrus made his state entry into the capital, being received by all classes, and especially by the priesthood and the nobles, as a liberator. He appointed Gubaru his governor of Babylon, and the latter appears to have stamped out further resistance by pursuing Belshazzar and putting him to death.[31] Nabonidus had already been taken, when the capital surrendered.