Fall of Babylon

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Speaker 14 Hey guys, I hope you're doing well. I'm all good here.
I'm just getting my gear together for the next episode. I'm recording all about Zoroastrianism.

Speaker 14 Really, really interesting, something I know nothing about, and I'm looking forwards to recording and then sharing it with you in the next few weeks.

Speaker 14 Now, today, we're kind of keeping in that area of the world because we're talking about the fall of Babylon in the 6th century, these large-than-life figures like the absent Babylonian king Nabonidus, Belshazzar, famous from the Bible, the writing on the wall, and also Cyrus the Great, the founder of the Persian Empire.

Speaker 14 It's a really cool story, and who best to talk through it than the one and only Reverend Professor Lloyd Llewellyn Jones. Lloyd, as always, he did not disappoint.

Speaker 14 And what's really exciting about this episode is that it's going to be on our Ancients YouTube channel.

Speaker 14 That's right, we've just launched the YouTube channel, so you can also watch this episode too if that is potentially of interest. Now, that all being said, let's get into the episode.

Speaker 14 I really do hope you enjoy.

Speaker 14 539 BC, and the greatest city in the ancient world, has opened its mighty gates to a new power.

Speaker 14 In came the Persian king and conqueror Cyrus with his army, fresh from an incredibly bloody victory against the city's previous ruler. This city was Babylon.

Speaker 14 For the past few few decades, Babylon had been the heart of its own powerful empire. But now, that empire was no more.

Speaker 14 This is the story of the fall of Babylon, with our guest, Reverend Professor Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones.

Speaker 14 Lloyd, great to have you back. Hello, fabulous to be with you again.

Speaker 14 And is this one of the big pivotal moments in Mesopotamian history, this transition from the Babylonian Empire to the Persian Empire? Yes, I think so.

Speaker 14 I mean, generally, you know, if you look at popular histories of Babylon that have been written over, you know, generations, the beginning of the Persian period is usually the cut-off point for most Babylonian historians.

Speaker 14 I would argue that we need to see a longevity of Babylon. You know, it goes into the Persian period.

Speaker 14 We shouldn't stop thinking about Babylon there because it still has, you know, a lot of life left in it yet. But generally, yeah, I would say, you know, this is the end of a great Mesopotamian Empire.

Speaker 14 And Babylon, of course, is incorporated into the bigger Persian Empire, which is a world empire. So, there is a shift.
Do we have many types of sources to tackle the subject?

Speaker 14 We do.

Speaker 14 Not all of them particularly reliable, of course. But the good thing is we do have indigenous Mesopotamian sources, indigenous Babylonian sources.
That's a good thing.

Speaker 14 Not necessarily fulsome in terms of narrative, but certainly we can create a chronology out of the cuneiform sources.

Speaker 14 And we also have a series of sort of conquest literature, if you like, created by the new Persian overlords of Babylon too, which are kind of reflecting back on what happened and obviously therefore needs to be read quite carefully, because this is propaganda literature.

Speaker 14 Do we also have the Bible as well? Can the Bible be a source for us?

Speaker 14 The Bible certainly shouldn't be dismissed, but the Bible doesn't really account in any way, again, a narrative of Babylon's fall and takeover.

Speaker 14 But the key players are virtually all there, Nebuchadnezzar, Cyrus the Great. But the Bible misses out a person who is really integral to all of this, and that's Narbonidas.
Nabonidas.

Speaker 14 Who is the last indigenous Babylonian monarch? And I think, you know, he's worth a lot more attention than is usually given to him. Well, absolutely.

Speaker 14 We've got some some big names to cover in this topic today, don't we? So let's set the scene first of all. The mid-sixth century BC.

Speaker 14 What does Babylon look like? How powerful is Babylon at the city of the world? Okay, so this is the point that Babylon is in all of its glory.

Speaker 14 Okay, so Nebuchadnezzar II's campaigns following his father's campaigns into...

Speaker 14 into Mesopotamia, into especially the Levant, made Babylon an incredibly wealthy city. And that that wealth was utilized by Nebuchadnezzar on an industrial scale to make Babylon great again.

Speaker 14 That was his aim, essentially, all right? So Babylon, you know, had experienced ups and downs in its long 2,500-year history, where it had shone and then declined, shone and declined.

Speaker 14 So it's not one rise and fall scenario in Babylonian history at all. But here we have under Nebuchadnezzar II this idea of making Babylon into a super city, really.

Speaker 14 And And the essential kind of structure of Babylon changes under Nebuchadnezzar. So, during his reign, we have the final formation of the state architecture of the city.

Speaker 14 So, a great processional route, which went from the river Euphrates across a bridge into the heart of Babylon.

Speaker 14 The mighty Ishtar Gate, which we now see in the Pergamon Museum in Berlin, is staggeringly beautiful.

Speaker 14 The great walls of Babylon, the huge, vast walls of Babylon itself, the great ziggurat of the god Marduk.

Speaker 14 This is an imperial

Speaker 14 edifice, really, for the Babylonian state as a whole. So I think that Babylon in the sixth century was probably the biggest city the world had ever seen at that point.

Speaker 14 You know, before your Alexandrias and your Rome's,

Speaker 14 there was Babylon, and there was nothing to compare with it. It was also a really rich, multicultural society as well.

Speaker 14 So there were, you know, peoples from all over the ancient world living in Babylon or visiting Babylon.

Speaker 14 And it's no surprise, really, is it, that that idea of the mixture of languages that could be heard on the city streets is there in the Hebrew Bible.

Speaker 14 Remember the Tower of Babel story that we've talked about in the past. I mean, that, I think, you know, really captures this kind of multiplicity of ethnics there in the city.

Speaker 14 So, do we think the origins of the word Babel and to babble about and babbling could come from Babylon? Unfortunately, not. I'd love to say, yeah, that's exactly the way it was.
Through root.

Speaker 14 Now, unfortunately, not Babel, the Tower of Babel, comes from the old Akkadian name for Babylon, which was Babil. So it simply comes from that.
Okay, but that's strong.

Speaker 14 I also want to mention quickly the bridges, because of course you've got the Euphrates River running through the heart of Babylon.

Speaker 14 And another monumental piece of architecture to really show the prominence was it was the great bridges that crossed over this river, wasn't it? Absolutely, absolutely.

Speaker 14 we should think of ancient babylon more akin to venice than anything else you know it was punctuated with canals and these waterways were the main communication channels for the babylonians so how do we get from nebuchadnezzar and this golden age of babylon the greatest city in the world the center of the world how do we get from his reign to the reign of the figure who's going to be a key person in this story Nabonidus.

Speaker 14 Yes, so Nabonidus follows Nebuchadnezzar to the throne. Nebuchadnezzar doesn't leave any apparent heirs.

Speaker 14 So whether he didn't have children at all or his children had died, we really don't know, but there's a gap. Nabonidus seems to have been part of the collateral branch of the royal family.

Speaker 14 He wasn't, you know, core to it at all. But he comes to power thanks to his mother.

Speaker 14 Her name is Adad Gupi. And we know a lot about her because she left an autobiography.

Speaker 14 Now, it was probably written after her death, so it's not exactly her own words, but I think there's enough there to convince us that she kind of gave it an authority.

Speaker 14 And Adad Gupi is probably the ultimate stage mother in ancient history because she engineers

Speaker 14 her son's succession to the throne.

Speaker 14 This isn't unusual per se, you know, very often wives of kings do that for their sons, but the fact that she's not part of the inner court, you know, she's not the wife of Nebuchadnezzar or something, makes this a little bit unusual.

Speaker 14 So her background is needed before we can really understand what Nabonidus was all about. So she was born and bred in a city called Haran, which is in Syria.

Speaker 14 And Haran was the chief cult center for the worship of the moon god. And the moon god was named Sin.

Speaker 14 Now, you know, Babylonians worshiped many, many gods. In Babylon, the chief god there was Marduk, and his temple dominated the whole city.

Speaker 14 And the cult of Marduk was the most important one in the land. But in Haran, we have not exactly a rival center, but an alternative center where it just happened to be Sin who was the chief god.

Speaker 14 And it would seem that in her youth,

Speaker 14 this Adad Guppi was a priestess within the temple. And she became an absolute devotee of this god.

Speaker 14 You know, it's very easy when we think about people from the ancient world to disassociate them from the idea of faith.

Speaker 14 You know, when we talk about, you know, the gods being worshipped, we all think it's all rather sort of facile and, you know, on a surface.

Speaker 14 What we see with Adad Guppi is a real belief in this god i mean she dedicates her life to the worship of this deity that whom she regards as being an active presence in her life faith is is how the only word we can use for it you know she's got a deep faith in this god now when she's in her teens she she marries a local nobleman

Speaker 14 and he's of some status but he's not not really of of of any great political importance. She claims later on on in her autobiography that she was born in the reign of King Ashabanipal of Assyria.

Speaker 14 So that is before the fall of Nineveh in 612. That's right, because we know she died at about the age of 95.
Wow. A very long-lived woman for antiquity.
That's good going, yeah.

Speaker 14 Most people were dead by 40 in antiquity, okay? So this is a long-lived woman. So you can understand why she puts her faith in a god as well.
You know, it gives her this longevity.

Speaker 14 So, it's highly likely she was. And some historians have said, well, actually, she could have come from the family of Ashobanipal.
So, was she of royal Assyrian stock? That's a tantalizing thing.

Speaker 14 Certainly, she sort of sees herself as somebody of consequence. There's no doubt in that.

Speaker 14 She has a son when she's in her late teens, and she calls him Nabonidus, Nabu, after the god of wisdom nabonidas

Speaker 14 and she like many mothers you know wants the best for her boy

Speaker 14 and in her autobiography she tells us in great detail how she pleaded with sin every day to make something of her son you know that he would be something special make nabonidus great yeah again

Speaker 14 there must be something there must be something in this boy you know she says you know and to that end she says i i dedicated myself to sin to the god and she she's really interesting she says um i cast off my luxuries i wore hair garments i i ate only bread and onions you know so she she lives a kind of convent life almost putting all of her passions all of her devotion to this god with the hope that as a consequence he would support Narbonidas.

Speaker 14 It's quite incredible, isn't it?

Speaker 14 Well, anyway,

Speaker 14 when when Nabonidas is in his mid-teens,

Speaker 14 his mother takes him to Babylon from the first visit from Haran to Babylon. And I suppose because of her status, she is welcomed at court by Nebuchadnezzar.

Speaker 14 And this is Nabonidus's first introduction, essentially, to court society in Babylon. And you get the impression that Adal Guppi, you know, has her finger in several pies at court as well.

Speaker 14 So she maneuvers her son into high circles, including circles of governance and also of the military as well. And he becomes essentially a kind of indispensable asset to Nebuchadnezzar II.

Speaker 14 So as far as Adad Guppi is concerned, you can see that, you know, this is all starting to pay off. He becomes somebody.

Speaker 14 And to the point that when Nebuchadnezzar dies, Narbonidas, almost without opposition,

Speaker 14 almost without opposition, inherits the throne. So it's strange.

Speaker 14 Now,

Speaker 14 Adad Guppy would say, well, faith moves mountains, all right? And this is exactly what has happened. You know, it's all come to be.

Speaker 14 So this is why you've always got to take things with a pinch of salt. And given that it was written, of course, you know, in retrospect, hindsight is a great thing.
Okay.

Speaker 14 So, you know, she can create her narrative that way. But I do believe she was a woman of great resolve and great piety as well.
So yes, he becomes king.

Speaker 14 And shortly after his accession to the throne, he begins to rule in the manner of Nebuchadnezzar. He kind of sets an agenda, you know, to continue Nebuchadnezzar's policies.

Speaker 14 But like his mother, he too is an acolyte of sin. Interesting.
So that precedes his actual arrival.

Speaker 14 And you can understand it. I mean, he's been brought up in, you know, basically what is a zealot's household.
Okay. I mean, how would you get away from that?

Speaker 14 You know, you know, it's a cult that he's been brought up in, okay? And he cannot move away from that. And he makes no attempt to move away from that.
And that's a kind of

Speaker 14 a little bit upsetting in a Babylonian context because the chief duty of the Babylonian king from Hammurabi, way, way in the past. Yeah, more than a thousand years ago.
More than a thousand years.

Speaker 14 was to worship and placate the chief god of Babylon Marduk.

Speaker 14 So every year in particular, at the New Year festival, which would take place in sort of March, April, the king of Babylon would process through the Ishtar gate, down this great avenue, which is lined with Ishtar's lions, to the temple of Marduk.

Speaker 14 And there he would

Speaker 14 meet the high priest of Marduk, and they'd go through this ritual, quite a bizarre ritual, where the priest, the high priest, would slap the king's face so hard that tears would come to his eyes.

Speaker 14 That was the whole point. Once those tears were here, it would be read as the king was acquiescing to the will of the God, and therefore the God would protect Babylon again.

Speaker 14 So this New Year's ritual was a vital component of Babylonian life. And in fact, you could almost say that the whole architecture of Babylon was created by Nebuchadnezzar for that purpose.

Speaker 14 It all leads to this kind of inner chamber in the ziggurat, you know, for that kind of beating to go on.

Speaker 14 And of course, early on in his reign, Narbonidas began to neglect those duties. He just wasn't into it.
It's almost like, you know, he couldn't quite see the value of Marduk. You know,

Speaker 14 sin had done all the work for him so far. Why would he turn attention away from it? It's really strange in the world of polytheism, you know, where you could go from one God to another.

Speaker 14 It's very monotheistic.

Speaker 14 You know, it's something is going on there, you know, and that I think think we can only blame really his mother for making him feel that way.

Speaker 14 Well, it comes to a point, really, where Narbonidas is so kind of

Speaker 14 obsessed with the idea

Speaker 14 of the moon god that he decides to leave Babylon. He thinks, I've no role here, really.

Speaker 14 And the context is, so he's only been ruling for about three years or so now. Three or four years

Speaker 14 ago.

Speaker 14 So he's got a son already. And the son is, he must be in his his early 20s by this point.

Speaker 14 His name is much better known than his father, actually, Belshazzar.

Speaker 14 So

Speaker 14 we look at him in the book of Daniel, for instance. The writing on the wall is absolutely, absolutely.
So Belshazzar,

Speaker 14 he's left behind to be the regent of Babylon. Now, Nabonidus himself takes himself away from Babylon and he goes down south to Arabia.
And he goes to a place called Timer,

Speaker 14 which is today in the sort of Saudi Arabia area. And it was an oasis, it was a beautiful place.
And apparently, lots of archaeological work has been done in the last decade there.

Speaker 14 And we've discovered a palace of Narbonidas that he built for himself there. And he built for himself a temple to the god Sin as well.
So he kind of goes into voluntary religious exile, really.

Speaker 14 and kind of gives up the rule of Babylon to his son. And Belshazzar seems to

Speaker 14 rule very effectively. Interestingly,

Speaker 14 the name Belshazzar, of course, has that compound Bel in it, which is an alternative name for Marduk.

Speaker 14 So we can really see that this regent king gave a great deal of emphasis on the traditional rights of Marduk. Is it linked to Baal at all? No, no, no, no different tribes.

Speaker 14 Well, I suppose you could say yes in a way, in that they both actually mean lord.

Speaker 14 So yes, in a way, yeah, you could see that. I'll give you that.
Okay, thank you.

Speaker 14 So now there's an interesting quandary here. Do we really have Narbonidas going into voluntary exile

Speaker 14 or was there really a kind of usurpation going on? Oh, if I fed up with him already, absolutely.

Speaker 14 I get a feeling that is what's really going on here, that Narbonidas doesn't put up a fuss and in a way perhaps is quite happy to abandon Babylon.

Speaker 14 But Belshazzar is not really there as a caretaker king. He is there as king.

Speaker 14 So I think really we have the situation of, you know, king in exile and king on the throne, and they're both being called in those terms.

Speaker 14 Belshazzar seems to be a very competent, very competent ruler indeed.

Speaker 14 And I suppose it's no surprise, therefore, that, you know, the biblical authors kind of don't remember Narbonidas, but they do remember Belshazzar because he's present.

Speaker 14 You know, don't forget when the Jews are in Babylon, you know, they're there during their exile, he would have been ruling them at this period.

Speaker 14 And is it the Bible that calls Belshazzar actually the son of Nebuchadnezzar? Yes,

Speaker 14 so they write out entirely, they write out Narbonidas, probably out of innocence.

Speaker 14 I don't think it's a kind of like an attempt to write out, you know, to demonize him or give him Dominatio Memoria or anything.

Speaker 14 I just don't think they realized that there was a king in between at all. So he's down in Arabia, you know, worshiping his God and living in this beautiful oasis.

Speaker 14 And then, out of the blue, when things seem to be going really well for Belshazzar, news is brought to Babylon that there is an army advancing on them. Interesting.

Speaker 14 And this is the last thing they expected. Right.

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Speaker 14 And so before we get more to that army, shall we talk also Nabonidus' mum? Is she now out of the picture? Has she died? Yeah, she doesn't feature in the sources any longer.

Speaker 14 Her goal has been completed. We should imagine that she, I mean,

Speaker 14 when would she have died then if she's about 94? She would have died sort of relatively early in the reign of Nabonidus in that case. So maybe she went with him to the oasis in Arabia.

Speaker 14 Maybe she's there with him. She disappears from the records.
Disappears from the records. Yeah, absolutely.
And it's her grandson then who's now reigning in Babylon.

Speaker 14 So what is this army that has appeared on the scene? Well, this is the army of Cyrus the Great. This new king of Persia, who you know,

Speaker 14 I have some admiration for. He goes from taking the disparate tribes of Persia and unifies them into one fighting force.

Speaker 14 He marches them from the south of Iran to the north, where they absolutely obliterate the Medes. It's the Medes, isn't it? Yeah.

Speaker 14 So then the Persians take over the Median Empire which stretched all the way into Anatolia to the Hylas River.

Speaker 14 And then Cyrus led his army across Anatolia to Sardis and the great kingdom of Lydia fell to him. So within a decade the Persians are suddenly ruling half of the ancient Near East.

Speaker 14 But then rather than doubling back and going home, Cyrus decides he's going to go for the ultimate prize, and that is he's going to see if he can't take Babylon as well.

Speaker 14 And in the idea of like mapping the territory, so it almost feels like Persia is almost a shroud on top of what's right. It's like a great archway, I suppose, that sits over Babylon.

Speaker 14 Yes, and Babylon's control is the Mesopotamian Valley and maybe a bit into Syria. And into Syria and into the Levant, all of that.

Speaker 14 Okay, so yeah, it sits, it's a good analogy, actually, like a dark cloud hovering above Babylon. Now, obviously, news is being brought to Belshazzar of these new conquests that are going on.

Speaker 14 You know, there's a new boy on the block, and it's a bit frightening as well.

Speaker 14 You know, even though the Greeks, for instance, regard in later years Cyrus as this great paragon of kingship, you know, of kind rule and authority, we can't deny the fact that you build an empire on bloodshed, okay, you know, at sword point.

Speaker 14 So there would have been a lot of killing and a lot of grief and a lot of hurt in the creation of this empire.

Speaker 14 So, without a doubt, you know, this was a cause of concern for the Babylonians, but they still think, well, you know,

Speaker 14 we are still the main power here. Who are these upstarts, you know?

Speaker 14 So, Cyrus marches his armies from the coast of Asia Minor, modern-day Turkey, into North Syria, and he begins to march down the Euphrates,

Speaker 14 inching towards Babylon. Now, about 50 miles outside of Babylon is the city of Oppis, which was an important trading center.

Speaker 14 You know, it looked to the north of Iraq, so it was kind of a hopskip and a jump from Babylon, but a big commercial center in itself.

Speaker 14 And there, Cyrus surrounds the city with his army, and with that, Belshazzar leaves Babylon. and goes to Opis and sets up his own camp outside the city as well.
So he's prepared for a battle there.

Speaker 14 Cyrus's men completely capture the city and they annihilate it. They kill every man that they find.
Most women and children and those who do survive are sold into slavery.

Speaker 14 It is a brutal attack on this city. And killed in the conflict itself is Belshazzar.
Oh, right. So his army does take part in that.
Absolutely. Absolutely.
So they try.

Speaker 14 They try to push back against this new force, but they're too weak. They're They're far too weak.
You have to ask the question, why does Cyrus do this?

Speaker 14 Well, he puts all of his energies into the sack of opis because he doesn't want to do that to Babylon. He wants to take Babylon

Speaker 14 as a prized possession, untarnished by any of this.

Speaker 14 He knows that Babylon has got these new grand buildings. He doesn't want to see those sacked and burned to the ground.

Speaker 14 So he uses opis as a kind of propaganda piece saying to the Babylonians, you know, this is what I will do to you if I have to. So I suggest that you open your gates to me.

Speaker 14 Okay, so it's a really pragmatic way of doing this. But, you know, we tend in our historiography of Cyrus to overlook this, the brutality of that attack.
And it really was quite terrifying.

Speaker 14 So much so that

Speaker 14 Nabonidus, down in Arabia, was actually terrorized enough to take up arms and return to Babylon. So now he comes back to the camera.
So he comes back. He comes back.

Speaker 14 So, which is something to be praised, you know, I mean, he doesn't abandon his duties. You know, he could easily have stayed well out of the conflict at all.
So he comes back.

Speaker 14 What kind of support he has, we don't know. We really don't know.
And of course, his son

Speaker 14 has been slaughtered. We know that.

Speaker 14 And so Cyrus and his army begin to move closer to Babylon. Now, Cyrus has a plus card on his side as well.
And that is local Babylonian military generals and nobles tend to come over to his side.

Speaker 14 They see that really the future lies with Cyrus. And so some very prominent Babylonian nobles turn and become part of

Speaker 14 the Persian brigade as well. And therefore, of course, can provide Cyrus with intelligence.
It's what he needs, you know.

Speaker 14 So he marches his army to Babylon, and as they approach the gates, the great gates of Babylon, indeed they open peacefully for Cyrus. It's an amazing scene, really.

Speaker 14 And apparently, you know, he promises the Babylonians that they will not be put to the sword. No harm will be done to them, to their families, or to their gods.

Speaker 14 And he rides on a horse into the city center, right up to the temple of Marduk, which he then goes and visits. Where Nabonidas is in all of this, we don't know.
He's conspicuous by his absence.

Speaker 14 Maybe he's already been taken prisoner, which is my opinion. I think that's probably what goes on there.
And in the temple of Marduk,

Speaker 14 essentially, Cyrus establishes himself as the king of Babylon. the new king of Babylon.

Speaker 14 So in some respects, I mean, if we follow our chief source for this, which is an incredible clay cylinder, which we call the Cyrus Cylinder,

Speaker 14 it's in the British Museum. It's one of the most important documents from the ancient world, I think.

Speaker 14 What we have there is this story from Cyrus's point of view of what happened at that time. And of course, it's a lot of spin-doctoring going on.

Speaker 14 If there was any resistance in Babylon itself, it's completely overwritten.

Speaker 14 I get the feeling there wasn't, to be honest. I really think that the basis of the Cyrus Cylinder is factual.

Speaker 14 But what he says in that cylinder is of real importance to us because he portrays himself as an authentic Babylonian king. Interesting.

Speaker 14 So he opens by saying, I am Cyrus, king of Babylon. king of Summa and Akkad, which are the titles that have been used, you know, since, again, Hammurabi.
Sargon as well. Oh, way, way, way back.

Speaker 14 Okay, so this is him understanding what Mesopotamian kingship is all about. And we must make the difference here between kind of Iranian Persian identity and Mesopotamian identity.

Speaker 14 They were not the same things at all. You know, the Iranians were a completely different people.
This is the valley over.

Speaker 14 So to speak.

Speaker 14 You know, we've got the Zagros Mountains cutting between these two.

Speaker 14 This was a very different way of thinking about ideology.

Speaker 14 You know, the idea that the Mesopotamian king was a shepherd of his people, that kind of shepherd imagery meant nothing to the Persians, but they adopt it in Babylon.

Speaker 14 So Cyrus, in this incredible document, and it must have been written with the cooperation of the religious elite,

Speaker 14 he writes how

Speaker 14 the god Marduk was frustrated that the Babylonian peoples were not being well looked after after by their king. And he says Narbonidas, this

Speaker 14 misfit, you know, had completely abandoned the gods. And moreover, he lays at Nabonidas' feet this idea that he was enslaving the Babylonian people.
There's no evidence for that whatsoever. But

Speaker 14 Cyrus has constructed that document to say that Nabonidus was a bad king.

Speaker 14 I doubt very much if Cyrus knew anything about Narbonidas, but it's the priests, of course, who are writing that. And you can see that they've got an axe to grind as well.

Speaker 14 So they're probably willing to do it too.

Speaker 14 But it's interesting, do you then think that alongside those generals that went over to Cyrus, that maybe some of the priests also went over to Cyrus before he even approached the walls?

Speaker 14 I'm quite convinced of that. Absolutely.
Because, yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 14 You get no sense of pushback at all, you know, even from the elites. Now, kind of interesting that...
you know, in the document, the priests who are writing this thing make Marduk speak, you know.

Speaker 14 And so Marduk says, you know, I'm looking out for a new champion. Narbonidas has done me no good whatsoever, so I need somebody else.
And he says, I looked around the world and my eye fell upon Cyrus.

Speaker 14 And he says, I will make him the shepherd of my people. And then this is incredible line.
He says, I took him by the hand and I brought him into Babylon.

Speaker 14 So here, Cyrus becomes completely and utterly, you know, the son of Marduk, really. He becomes his chief priest and his most beloved as well.

Speaker 14 And Cyrus is very, obviously very keen to be seen in that kind of way. We don't actually know anything about Cyrus's indigenous religion, you know, what God he worshiped.

Speaker 14 Did he worship Ahura Mazda, who becomes really important later on in the Achaemenid period? We simply don't know.

Speaker 14 But what we're seeing is that he's very pragmatic and is willing to accept local gods, more than just accept. He's actually willing to be seen as, you know, the heir, the chosen one of these gods.

Speaker 14 And incidentally i should say as well that those words i took you by the hand and led you are echoed of all places in the hebrew bible in the book of isaiah so there it is yahweh the hebrew god who says i was looking for a champion for my people i looked around the world and my eye fell upon cyrus and i made him the shepherd of my people and i took him by the hand and i brought him to babylon what suggests to me is that there is kind of like one core text that's being used you know, and it's being disseminated to different religious groups in Babylon.

Speaker 14 And it's with the kind of instruction, insert your God here.

Speaker 14 You know, so Cyrus is playing to a big crowd and they're all basically using this idea that he is the chosen one of whatever God is appropriate.

Speaker 14 But it shows he really understood, didn't he, the multicultural nature of Babylon at that time. And he played to their different beliefs.
Absolutely. He really gets it.

Speaker 14 Which is remarkable because when you think, you know, he comes from this tiny tribe in southwest Iran, you know, which was hardly multicultural, you know, and he just, he just gets it.

Speaker 14 And that's, I think, one of the things that makes him great. It really does, you know, he understands those kind of processes.
So what we have there then is this huge propaganda thing. And

Speaker 14 about a year later, he

Speaker 14 installs his son. as the regent of Babylon.
So he is,

Speaker 14 Cyrus leaves, or has intentions to leave to keep on conquering, of course, but he wants Babylon to be well looked after, and he appoints his son, Cambyses, to be

Speaker 14 the viceroy of Babylon, essentially. Now, there's a really, really fascinating little section of the Cyrus Cylinder, which,

Speaker 14 unfortunately, it's really full of lacunae. You know, it breaks off.
It's really badly damaged at this point. But there's enough to see that in a big ceremony of state in the temple of Marduk,

Speaker 14 Cyrus appoints Cambyses as the regent in this big ceremonial and there's this tiny little detail cyrus says cambyses wore elamite dress now that's a really odd detail but it's actually let's unpack it the elamites were the kind of neighbors of the persians in iran and i think that now we understand that the early persians were heavily influenced by the elamites you know they were the kind of like the the lost link really of understanding where persian society society and culture came from.

Speaker 14 So Elam, that's near the Persian Gulf. So Elam is on the bottom of the Zagros Mountains in the flat plains, that now very sort of oil-rich area that straddles today Iran and Iraq.

Speaker 14 Its chief city was Susa, the ancient city of Susa. So this was a very important area for the Persians.
The Elamites had been the constant enemies of Babylon throughout its history.

Speaker 14 And Babylon had been invaded by the Elamites many times. So it's kind of interesting here that Cyrus presents his son in the costume of a people who had conquered Babylon in the past.

Speaker 14 So this idea that

Speaker 14 there's this pure sort of loving

Speaker 14 between Cyrus and the Babylonians is kind of altered, ruptured by this appearance of Elamite dress.

Speaker 14 It's rather like, you know, when the British went into India and at these state ceremonies, everybody was wearing, wearing, you know, British court dress to be on parade, to make their presence felt.

Speaker 14 And I think that's what's going on there. So it's not exactly, as it's presented in most of the Cyrus Cylinder, this kind of harmonious transference of power.

Speaker 14 There is an element of one-upmanship going on there, too. However, what is fascinating is you would think that in...

Speaker 14 a period like this where there's a change of regime that things will all fall apart in babylon but it it doesn't babylon's life just keeps on going as normal and that's because cyrus made no attempt whatsoever to change the governance of babylon he didn't change the administrators he doesn't change the the priesthood which kind of suggests you know he has the the idea if it ain't broken don't fix it you know it just it just is maintained which again kind of suggests that the priests and the bureaucrats and the nobles were in on the change.

Speaker 14 You know, we're probably more than happy to see Narbonidas go.

Speaker 1 Hi, folks. It's Mark Bittman from the podcast, Food with Mark Bittman.

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Speaker 14 So the story of the fall of Babylon in 339, I mean, the bloodsletting, the destructive part of it isn't at Babylon itself, it's at Opus, it's Opus Castle, completely destroyed. Absolutely.

Speaker 14 And yet, you know, the takeover of Babylon itself, even though at that time Babylon, you know, is more fortified than it's ever been before in its history with its incredible walls and so on, you know, it seems to be bloodless.

Speaker 14 You know, Cyrus taking over with the nobles.

Speaker 14 Absolutely.

Speaker 14 text that we have that talks about Babylonian insurrection at this period. So that is really fascinating, I think.

Speaker 14 I mean, you know, blood is shed at Opus, lots of blood, and the royal family suffers that way. And I think, you know, Narbonidas disappears from the scene.
He must have been executed.

Speaker 14 There's no chance that he survived. Because it symbolizes the end of the Neo-Babylonian Empire dynasty, doesn't it? Exactly, exactly.
And another thing

Speaker 14 is in the Cyrus Cylinder as well, towards the rear of the inscription, the back of the inscription, is that Cyrus says, I rebuilt the city walls, which were in decay not from attack, just because they hadn't been upkept, you know, by Nabonidas and Belshazzar.

Speaker 14 He kind of let them go into disrespair. So he builds them up and he says, and I found an inscription that belonged to an ancient king whose name was Ashabanipal.

Speaker 14 And so he links himself then as well to this longevity of Mesopotamian kingships. Assyrian kings.
Assyrian kings, yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Who, of course, had ruled Babylon themselves as well.

Speaker 14 So he, you know, he's playing the antiquarian there as well, which is, which is really fascinating. Interesting, I should say as well,

Speaker 14 for justification, Nabonidus was also very interested in Babylon's past history.

Speaker 14 And in fact, his daughter was kind of like an amateur archaeologist, and he allowed her to set up her own little museum in Babylon. Wow.

Speaker 14 Yeah, we get the first ever kind of real sort of suggestion of ancient artifacts being gathered together and put on display. And that's by this Babylonian princess.

Speaker 14 So it kind of, you know, cut him his dues. I mean, he was interested in Babylon's kind of history and Babylon's culture, I suppose.

Speaker 14 I'd like to ask about one more story. And this brings us back to the Bible and the story of Belshazzar.
Because can you explain to us the writing on the wall story and how it could link?

Speaker 14 to the real story of Balshazzar and his demise. Yeah, yeah.
So, I mean, this has puzzled scholars, rabbis and priests for centuries.

Speaker 14 It's a very strange thing. So part of it is, of course, because there's this hubris that's going on.
Belshazzar is holding this enormous feast, this great banquet, and he's using

Speaker 14 the tableware that had come from the temple of Yahweh in Jerusalem, you know, his Nebuchadnezzar II sacking of Jerusalem, stripped the temple bare.

Speaker 14 So, you know, they're using drinking cups and gold plate that actually belonged in the cult center, in the treasury of the temple so that's an abomination to god of course and so what happens there in the narrative that we get in daniel is this hand suddenly appears out of nowhere with a pointed finger you know and it writes down basically what is a kind of a kind of equation, a sort of monetary equation, really.

Speaker 14 It says kind of like in the equivalent for us, it would be a fiver, a fiver, 10 pounds and 20. All of that will bring about your destruction.

Speaker 14 Five plus five plus ten plus

Speaker 14 equals your death. It equals equals your death, basically.
That's the sort of equivalent of it. It is the most cryptic kind of

Speaker 14 thing.

Speaker 14 But I suppose it's there in the Bible because it does foreshadow

Speaker 14 Belshazzar's death in battle, which is not mentioned then in the Bible. So it's very, very cryptic.
And I think this is because the problem is, of course, with the dating of the book of Daniel.

Speaker 14 Daniel certainly preserves court stories set in Babylon, and this is a very popular sort of genre.

Speaker 14 From the 4th century BC to about the 1st century BC, the genre of the Jewish man

Speaker 14 in a foreign court is very important.

Speaker 14 So we have the book of Esther, where we have the story of Mordechai, the Jew in the court of the Persian king. We have at the same time the story of Joseph.

Speaker 14 in the book of Genesis, very late part of the Bible, actually, that Joseph in the technical

Speaker 14 from the technical dream coach. It's a Persian period.
Yeah, yeah. It has more to do with Esther than it has to do with the book of Genesis.
That's inserted at this point as well.

Speaker 14 And there again, of course, we have a Jewish boy in the court of the Pharaoh. So

Speaker 14 Daniel's story, again, is a Jewish guy in the court of, well, Nebuchadnezzar, dot, dot, dot, Belshazzar.

Speaker 14 The trouble is that probably Daniel had its final kind of editing in the Hellenistic period.

Speaker 14 And during, you know, the sort of 300 years of the Hellenistic period, what happens in Babylon and Persia, it all tends to get a little bit mixed up, you know, in the mind.

Speaker 14 And so this is why we get this kind of assimilation of kings sometimes. You know, is Nebuchadnezzar a good guy or a bad guy?

Speaker 14 You know, he saves Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-Nigo from a fiery furnace, but at the same time, he makes this mammoth gold statue of himself and gets people to worship him um god punishes him by turning him into a kind of like an animal and then returns him to sanity and to a human appearance so there are all these kind of like mythic legendary stories around them and it's almost as though like the editor hasn't quite made sense of what's going on there so we get this kind of blurring of periods in in the book of Daniel.

Speaker 14 So that's why, you know, Belshazzar does make this appearance. Somehow he gets linked to the treasury from the temple and this warning that the doom is going to come on Babylon.

Speaker 14 But then the doom is never really played out in the book.

Speaker 14 Because, of course, then the latter part of the book of Daniel deals with the rise of the Ptolemaic and Seleucid empires, you know, and these animals that come forward, you know, with many horns and so forth and clash.

Speaker 14 So, you know, it's a book which is apocalyptic and full of mystery. We'll have to do another episode all on that.
Oh, we should do Daniel's. idea.
Yeah, we should. It's quite remarkable.

Speaker 14 But it's interesting how you have the Belshazzar mentioned, but actually knowing what actually happens to him, you have to look at other sources. You have to go out and do that.
Absolutely.

Speaker 14 Because you get no payoff in the book of Daniel at all, which is really strange.

Speaker 14 Lastly, so the Babylonian Empire falls, and Persia is the superpower now.

Speaker 14 But we should mention, shouldn't we, that Babylon, it doesn't fall from grace. Oh, no, no.
It remains incredibly powerful and prestigious for centuries following.

Speaker 14 It's extremely important in the the Persian Empire.

Speaker 14 I think actually Babylon is the jewel in the Persian crown. You know,

Speaker 14 they appreciate its longevity, its cultural center.

Speaker 14 The Achaemenids not only occupy the former palaces of Nebuchadnezzar, the kings live there, but they also built their own Apadanas as well at Babylon too. So they are putting their own stamp on it.

Speaker 14 Babylon becomes one of the centers of royal life. The Persian kings traveled around their empire all the time.
So

Speaker 14 in the wintertime,

Speaker 14 they tended to be in Susa and Babylon. In the spring in Persepolis, in the summer, they went to the north to Ekbatana for the cool summers.

Speaker 14 So Babylon was always part of the kind of visiting place for royal retinues. And we know that Persian queens had their own estates in Babylon as well.

Speaker 14 Parasatis, the wife of Darius II, had huge estates in Babylonia. In fact, her mother was a Babylonian concubine.
So the Persians keep Babylon very, very close to them. They value this place.

Speaker 14 They really do. And many of the great campaigns, you know, against Alexander, for instance, you know, originate from Babylon, of course.
You know, it's closer to the hub

Speaker 14 of

Speaker 14 where it's all happening than Persepolis or Sousa in that respect. Yes, Babylon retains its power.
There are rebellions in Babylon under Darius has to put down two rebellions, Xerxes as well.

Speaker 14 Babylon always pushes for its independence. It remembers its prestigious power.
It certainly does.

Speaker 14 Yes, absolutely. It certainly does.
But every time there is a rebellion and even sometimes, you know, replacement kings, we hear of a Nebuchadnezzar III and a Nebuchadnezzar IV.

Speaker 14 They are always crushed by

Speaker 14 the Persian powers. Until, of course, Alexander...
takes Babylon from them. And really, Alexander's dream was to make Babylon the center of his empire as well.

Speaker 14 And he will ultimately die in the royal palace there. Absolutely.
He died there too. Absolutely.

Speaker 14 You know, I always think that the real litmus test about Babylon's importance to Alexander is the fact that his mother Olympias realized it as well, because she writes him a letter and says, Bring me to Babylon.

Speaker 14 Because she realizes that's where all the power is going to be. They start with Antipater.
Absolutely.

Speaker 14 Well, Lloyd, that is also another chat for another time. Anything else you'd like to mention about Nabonidus, Cyrus, the fall of Babylon in 539?

Speaker 14 Well, if you want to hear more about it, then I can recommend

Speaker 14 that you look at my new book, which will be coming out in the spring of 2026. It's called Babylon, the Mother of All Cities.

Speaker 14 And it's a really chunky book, which goes from the creation of Babylon right the way to its fall.

Speaker 14 And to basically its legends in the Hebrew Bible and in Western culture, Tower of Babel, the whore of Babylon in the book of Revelation and so on as well.

Speaker 14 So so much yeah please take a look at that book

Speaker 14 the hanging garden

Speaker 14 yes yeah absolutely lloyd only a few more months then to go before that is released and i think it's going to be a big book when it does finally launch uh it just goes for me to say thank you so much as always my friend for coming back on the podcast oh you're so very welcome

Speaker 14 well there you go there was the brilliant reverend professor lloyd llewellyn jones returning to the show to talk through the great story of the fall of babylon i hope you enjoyed the episode an episode that is also kick-starting our brand new Ancients channel on YouTube.

Speaker 14 So you can also watch this episode. You can watch Lloyd and I talking through it on YouTube if that tickles your fancy.

Speaker 14 And it's just the beginning because every week from now on we will be releasing a new episode on YouTube. Of course also on audio as well.

Speaker 14 But one of our two weekly episodes will also be filmed so you can get to see us talking about it in the flesh as well. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Ancients.

Speaker 14 Please follow the show on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. That really helps us, and you'll be doing us a big favor.

Speaker 14 If you'd be kind enough to leave us a rating as well, we'd always appreciate that.

Speaker 14 And don't forget, you can also listen to us and all of History Hit's podcasts at free and watch hundreds of TV documentaries when you subscribe at historyhit.com/slash subscribe.

Speaker 14 Now, that's all from me. I'll see you in the next episode.

Speaker 1 Hi, folks, it's Mark Bittman from the podcast Food with Mark Bittman.

Speaker 4 You know, whether you are doing traditional Thanksgiving, a friend's giving, or something in between, Whole Foods Market has great everyday prices on all the things you need for Thanksgiving.

Speaker 10 No way antibiotics ever birds bring quality to your table at a great price.

Speaker 11 You can enjoy so many ways to save on your Thanksgiving spread at Whole Foods Market.

Speaker 13 And remember, Prime gives you shop online and delivery or pickup as you like.

Speaker 14 Banking with Capital One helps you keep more money in your wallet with no fees or minimums on checking accounts and no overdraft fees. Just ask the Capital One Bank Guy.

Speaker 14 It's pretty much all he talks about. In a good way, he'd also tell you that this podcast is his favorite podcast, too.
Ah, really? Thanks, Capital One Bank Guy. What's in your wallet? Terms apply.

Speaker 14 See capital1.com/slash bank, capital One NA member FDIC.