It is to be supposed that he continued as he had begun, and that his rule was tolerated by the people. According to the contract-tablets, he associated his son with him on the throne during part of his first year, Cambyses becoming king of Babylon, whilst Cyrus retained the wider title of “king of countries.” Probably Gobryas had died, hence this change. Cyrus died in 529 b.c., and Cambyses took the throne. During his reign the Babylonians seem to have become discontented, desiring, perhaps, to have a ruler elected by themselves. Whilst, therefore, Cambyses was absent in Egypt, which country he conquered in the year 527 b.c., a Median, who was a Magian named Gomates, taking advantage of the dissatisfaction which prevailed, gave out that he was Bardes or Smerdis (called by the Babylonians Barzia), declared himself the son of Cyrus, whom Cambyses had murdered, and mounted the throne. Media, Persia, and Babylonia at once went over to him, and Cambyses hastened from Egypt to meet the pretender. Whilst in Syria, on the way home, he killed himself (521), perhaps by accident, though it is not impossible that it was a case of suicide, and the pretender retained for a very short period possession of the throne.
Another prince of the same family, Darius son of Hystaspes, now came forward, and after defeating Bardes and a number of other pretenders, among them Nidintu-Bêl, son of Aniru, who claimed to be Nebuchadnezzar the son of Nabonidus, mounted the throne. In fact, almost every province of the Persian empire had a pretender of its own, so that Darius found plenty of work ready to his hand. One by one, however, they were defeated, and “the lie” was put [pg 425] down in all the countries acknowledging Persian rule—Darius was sole and undisputed king.
It is unfortunate that no historical records referring to the reigns of Cyrus and Cambyses exist, except the Chronicle, which, however, ends with the accession year of the former. We have, therefore, no independent records of what took place in Syria, though it must be confessed, that there is great doubt whether the composer of the Chronicle at the time would have considered the return of the Jews and the rebuilding of the Temple as of sufficient importance to place on record there. The Bible and Josephus give circumstantial accounts of what occurred, but the official view of the circumstances of the granting of the permission to rebuild the Temple and the city by Cyrus, and its countermanding, at the instance of the Samaritans, during the reign of Cambyses, would be interesting in the extreme.
To find something about Zerubbabel, who is said to have been the friend of Darius (Jos., Ant. xi. iii. 1), would also be welcome, but this we can hardly dare to hope for. Zerubbabel (better Zeru-Babel, without the doubling of the b) is a name which is far from uncommon in the contracts of Babylonia. One, for instance, lived during the time of Nabonidus, and dwelt at Sippara. He was to all appearance of Assyrian origin. Another, the descendant of a smith, was the father of a man named Nabû-âḫê-bulliṭ, who lived in the third year of Darius. A third bearing the same name is he who is recorded as having acquired some ewes in the eleventh year of Darius. His father bore the unusual name of Mutêriṣu. For yet another example, see p. [441]. It will thus be seen that the name was far from rare in ancient Babylonia.
And in the published contract-tables of Darius's reign, of which nearly 600 have been made available for study, there is little bearing upon Old Testament history. The same may also be said of his historical [pg 426] inscriptions, of which that engraved on the great rock at Behistun in Persia is the most important. It is in his historical inscriptions, however, that the character of the man may be read. In the first lines, where he tells of his origin, you read of his pride of descent, just as, farther on, he tells the story of his conflicts—how, with the help of his father, Hystaspes, who seconded him loyally and (there is hardly any doubt) affectionately, he overcame all the rebels, and having annihilated the lie which he hated so intensely, he could say, after his successes, that “the land was his.”
And through it all shines at every point, as it were, his adoration of the god whom he worshipped, Ahuramazda, by whose grace and favour he had been successful. There is no doubt about his religious faith—in his inscriptions he appears as a monotheist of the severest type, and for this reason he must have had but little sympathy with the polytheism of the Babylonians, and the other nationalities over which he ruled, whose faith was in a plurality of gods. It is true that offerings seem to have been made in his name in the temples of Babylonia, but these must have been due to old grants which had not been rescinded, and which the king and his advisers probably would have regarded as bad policy to abolish.
Naturally there is every probability that such a ruler as Darius would have sympathies with the Jews, on account of their monotheism, and it may be supposed that such a feeling towards them would have led him to consent to the upholding of Cyrus's decree that the Temple at Jerusalem should be finished, as detailed in Ezra vi. 1 ff. Darius relates in the Behistun inscription, that he restored the temples of the gods (Bab. bêtê ša îlāni, Median ziyan nappana, “temples of the gods,” Pers. āyadāna, “shrines”) which Gomates the Magian, the pseudo-Bardes [pg 427] or Smerdis, had destroyed. That a single word (āyadāna) is used in Persian, whilst the phrase “temples of the gods,” in the plural, is used in Babylonian and Median, shows merely the desire to speak to the latter nations in the language to which they were accustomed, and at the same time indicates that neither the one nor the other, unlike the Persians, were monotheists. Gomates was therefore not a monotheist, otherwise he would not have destroyed the temples, which would seem to have been those of Darius's own faith; for this king would hardly have thought it worth while to mention the fact of their destruction, had they been the sacred places of a creed which he despised, and it is only natural to suppose, from his very frequent mention of Ahuramazda, the god whom he worshipped, that he was proud of being a monotheist.
It may therefore be taken, that if Darius Hystaspis ordered the completion of the Temple at Jerusalem, and the giving of funds in aid of the work, it was out of sympathy with the Jews. As his reign was one of tolerance, he did not interfere with the religion of either the Babylonians or the Medians, but in all probability he did not imitate Cyrus by grants on his own account, and under a royal decree, to the temples of those, to him, heathen countries. There is considerable doubt, however, whether it is this king who is referred to in Ezra and Esdras, as Sir Henry Howorth has shown (Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archæology, 1901, pp. 147 ff., 305 ff., 1902, pp. 16 ff.), the ruler intended being in all probability Darius Nothus, whose position agrees with the chronology of these books, and does away with much difficulty as to their acceptance as historical authorities.
According to Darius, twenty-three countries owned his sway: Persia, Elam, Babylonia, Assyria, Arabia, Egypt, “by the sea,” Sarpada, Ionia, Media, Armenia, Cappadocia, Parthia, Drangiana, Aria, Chorasmia, [pg 428] Bactria, Sogdiana, Paruparaesana, Scythia, Sattagydia, Arachosia, and Maka. Palestine was evidently included in the district designated “by the sea.” After a most active reign, Darius died in the year 486 b.c., having appointed his son Xerxes as his successor.
The reign of this ruler, and his attempt to reduce Greece to submission, are well known. It was probably after his disastrous failure, when he had returned to Persia, that he took as one of his wives the Jewess Esther, as related in the book bearing her name. His inscriptions are short ones, referring to the buildings erected by his father and himself. In all probability he thought that his warlike exploits, overwhelmed as they were by misfortune, were not of a nature to bear recording. In his own inscriptions, his name is given as Ḫiši'arši or Ḫiši'arša'i in Babylonian, and Khshayarsha in Old Persian. In the contract-tablets, however, it appears as Aḫšiaršu, Aḫšiwaršu, Akšiaršu, Akkašiaršu, and Ḫišiarši. It is from one of the forms with prefixed a that the Hebrew Aḫashwērôs (A.V. Ahasuerus) has apparently come, the most probable original being one similar to the Aḫšuwaršu of a contract-tablet in the Museum at Edinburgh.