THE REIGN OF NABONIDUS (556-538 B.C.)
On the death of Neriglissor in 556, he was succeeded, according to Berosus, by his son Labassarachos or Labarosoarchodos (in inscriptions Labashi-Marduk), but it appears that a Babylonian of high rank, Nabu-naidu (“Nabu is glorious”), the son of Nabu-balatsu-iqbi (“Nabu hath foretold his life”), was immediately proclaimed king by an opposition party, and although Labashi-Marduk made head against Nabu-naidu (or Nabonidus, as he is usually known) for nine months, the latter dates the beginning of his reign from the death of Neriglissor. According to Berosus, Labashi-Marduk was a child, and fell victim to a conspiracy, having already betrayed tokens of a bad disposition.
According to the Ptolemaic canon, Nabonidus reigned seventeen years, which agrees with the circumstance that the latest of the numerous contract tablets belonging to his reign up to this time discovered are dated the 5th of Ulul (the middle of August) in his seventeenth year. He concerned himself chiefly with the restoration of old temples elsewhere than in Babylon, as those at Ur, Larsa, Sippar, and even at Kharran in Mesopotamia, that is, the oldest sanctuaries in the country; while in Babylon, where he certainly resided, if only at intervals, he seems to have done nothing except to proceed with the building of the walls on the river bank.[29] Nabonidus was actuated not merely by religious motives, but by an interest in history and archæology, which grew to be an absolute mania with him. His inscriptions give us minute information as to how he dug and hunted for the foundation cylinders of these primitive temples, nor does he fail to deal many a sly hit at his predecessors (Nebuchadrezzar, for example), who had not always conscientiously done this, and had consequently many a time built something that was not in the original plan. When, after long search, Nabonidus found these cylinders, often buried deep down in the ground, he reproduced the tenor of them exactly, frequently giving the precise number of years between his own reign and that of the ancient Babylonian king in question, and so providing us with the most valuable data for determining the earliest periods of Babylonian history. In this way we have learned the date of Naram-Sim, the ancient king of Agade, of Shagarakti-Buriash [sometimes read Shagarakti-Shuriash], and lastly, as it would appear, of Khammurabi (although in this case the computation is incorrect), together with many other data of historical importance. For this reason the reign of Nabonidus is to us among the most important in Babylonian history, but his passion for archæology—which seems to have made him forget the world entirely, and, in particular, overlook the danger with which the victories of Cyrus menaced Babylonia—was of less service to himself, and ultimately cost him his throne and liberty.
[555-547 B.C.]
We have already mentioned the fragment of the Babylonian chronicle treating of the reign of Nabonidus and the conquest of Babylon and the whole Babylonian empire by Cyrus. We will now regard the public events of the reign of the last native king of Babylonia in the light of this text. In the first year mention is made of a military expedition with the object of subjugating a prince of whose name, unfortunately, nothing (or at most the termination, shu’ishshi) has been preserved, but whom we should, perhaps, be justified in regarding as the chieftain of a Median tribe.
From the first section of the cylinder-inscription of Abu-Habba we see that if, after the deliverance of Kharran, Nabonidus summoned his troops from the frontier of Egypt and onward to the Gulf of Issus and the Persian Gulf, to the work of building, or the collection of building material; these were not military enterprises in the strict sense of the term (and this is characteristic), but merely expeditions for peaceful ends, which were all the easier for Nabonidus to achieve, because, since the reign of Nebuchadrezzar the Babylonians had held undisputed possession of the “Occident” right up to the Egyptian frontier. The only exception to this rule seems to be the account of the beginning of the first year (or the beginning of his reign) given in the chronicle, where, among other things, it is said, “the king summoned his warriors.” But this expedition was, in all likelihood, only the less laborious gleaning left to Nabonidus after the conquest of the Medes by Cyrus.
The next event narrated in the chronicle is the final defeat of the Medes by Cyrus, which cannot, therefore, have taken place later than the sixth year of the reign of Nabonidus, that is, 550 B.C., and may have been earlier.
The account of the seventh year is difficult to understand, but this much is plain, that in those years Nabonidus was not present at the New Year’s celebration at E-sagila, nay, that the festival in question did not take place at all. We do not know why this was so, but we may conjecture that the reason was a hierarchical revolution, a kind of vote of want of confidence in the king, who was pursuing his works and researches in the temples of Sippar, Ur, Larsa, and other cities, heedless of the danger that menaced the country from Cyrus.
[547-538 B.C.]