NEBUCHADREZZAR AND CYRUS.

Rise of the Babylonian Empire. — Media, — Pharaoh-Necho. — The battle of Carchemish. — Nebuchadrezzar ascends the throne. — The splendour of Babylon. — No monuments yet discovered recording Nebuchadrezzar’s Jewish and Syrian campaigns. — Evil-Merodach. — Clay documents recently discovered in Babylonia. — New light thrown on the Empire of Cyrus. — The cylinder of Cyrus. — Cyrus not a monotheist. — The Babylonian King of Isaiah xiv. — Cyrus not a King of Persia at all — Babylon not besieged by Cyrus. — How Cyrus came to let the Jews return. — Correspondence between the language of Cyrus and of Scripture. — “The god who raises the dead to life.” — Prayer after a bad dream. — Babylonian penitential psalms. — A translation of one of them. — Chronological table of the events of the chapter

The empire of Babylonia arose out of the ashes of the empire of Assyria. While the bands of the enemy were gathering round the doomed city of Nineveh, Nabopolassar, the viceroy of Babylonia, seized the opportunity for revolt. There were no armies now, as in former days, that could pour out of the gates of the Assyrian capital to punish the rebel, and Nabopolassar was allowed to establish his new monarchy undisturbed. But the fall of the imperial city left the other provinces of the Assyrian empire without a master or a defence. Its latest conquest, Elam, seems to have recovered its independence for a short time—at all events, Jeremiah (xxv. 25) in the year 606 B.C. speaks of “the kings of Elam”—but elsewhere its possessions became the battle-ground of the three rival powers of Babylon, of Media, and of Egypt.

Media was the name given by Persian and Greek writers to the kingdom of Ekbatana, a city now represented by Hamadan. Its native name, at all events in the time of Sargon, was Ellip, and the title of Media applied to it in later history seems to have been due to a confusion between the Assyrian words Madâ “Medes,” and Manda, “barbarian.” As we shall see, Astyages, the king of Ekbatana, is called “the king of the people of Manda,” or “barbarians,” by the Babylonian king Nabonidos. The tablets which describe the approach of the last enemies of Nineveh draw a careful distinction between Kaztarit, or Kyaxares, “lord of the city of Car-Cassi,” and Mamiti-arsu, “lord of the city of the Medes.” For the Assyrians, the Medes were only the small tribes which inhabited the regions eastward of Kurdistan. The error, however, which turned the kingdom of Ekbatana into a kingdom of Media has fixed itself in literature, and the Old Testament also has adopted in regard to it the current language of the day. It is now too late to disturb the time-honoured title, and we shall therefore continue to speak of a Median empire and a Median kingdom, even though we now know that the terms rest on an ancient mistake.

As the power of Assyria had dwindled, the power of Egypt had increased. The Egyptian kings began to dream again of an Asiatic empire, such as they had once held in days long gone by, and their first efforts were directed towards securing afresh the cities of the Philistines. Gaza and Ashdod were captured after a long siege;¹² Cyprus became an Egyptian province, and Pharaoh Necho, whose Phœnician fleet had circumnavigated Africa, set about the task of conquering Asia. Josiah was now on the throne of Judah. He still called himself a vassal of Assyria, and could not but see with alarm the rise of a new enemy, just as the old one had ceased to be formidable. In the name of his suzerain, therefore, he attempted to bar the advance of Necho; the two armies of Egypt and Judah met on the plain of Megiddo, where the battle ended in the death of the Jewish king and the slaughter of the flower of the Jewish soldiery. The death of Josiah proved an irremediable disaster to the Jewish state. He left behind him a family torn by jealousies and supported by rival factions, a people hostile to the religious reforms he had carried through, and an army which had lost both its leader and its veterans. From henceforth Judah was no longer able to defend itself from an invader, whether Egyptian or Babylonian; and even the strong walls of Jerusalem no longer proved a defence in days when the method of warfare had changed, and a victorious army was content to sit down for years before a fortress until its defenders had been starved out.

Necho's triumph, however, was short-lived. Three years after the battle of Megiddo (B.C. 606), he had to meet the Babylonian army, under its young general Nebuchadrezzar, the son of Nabopolassar, at the ford of the Euphrates, which was protected by the old Hittite city of Carchemish. Nabopolassar was now independent king of Babylonia, and his son had given evidence of great military capacities. He had disputed with the Median kingdom of Ekbatana the possession of Mesopotamia; and though the ruins of Nineveh and other Assyrian cities on the eastern bank of the Tigris continued to remain in the hands of the Median ruler, as well as the high road which led across Northern Mesopotamia into Asia Minor, and passed through the patriarchal city of Haran, he had secured for his father the southern regions enclosed between the Tigris and the Euphrates. The battle of Carchemish finally decided who should be the master of Western Asia. The Egyptian forces were completely shattered, and Necho retreated with the wreck of his army to his ancestral kingdom. Judah and the countries which adjoined it passed under the yoke of Babylonia.

Two years later, in B.C. 604, Nabopolassar died, and Nebuchadrezzar succeeded to the throne. His name is written Nabu-kudur-uzur, “O Nebo, defend the crown,” in the cuneiform, so that the form Nebuchadrezzar, which is found in the Book of Jeremiah, is the only correct one, Nebuchadnezzar being a corruption of it, like Asnapper for Assur-bani-pal. Nebuchadrezzar was not only a great general, he was also a great builder and an able administrator. Under him, Babylon, which had been little more than a provincial town, became one of the most splendid cities in the ancient world. In the middle of it rose the gigantic temple of Bel or Baal, in eight stages, now represented by a mound of ruins, which goes under the name of Babil. A winding road led from the foot of it to the shrine on the summit, wherein was a golden image of the god, forty feet high, and a golden table in front of it for the showbread. Nebuchadrezzar's palace, now called the Kasr mound, was on a scale equally vast, though the wall that surrounded it, according to the king's own statement, had been built in fifteen days; within were the famous hanging gardens, raised on lofty arcades, and watered by means of a screw. In the suburb of Borsippa, on the western side of the Euphrates, stood another temple, the modern Birs-i-Nimrud. This was dedicated to Nebo, and had been begun by an earlier king. But it was completed by Nebuchadrezzar, who called it “the temple of the seven lights of the earth,” and built it in seven stages, each coloured according to the supposed colours of the seven planets. The upper stages were artificially vitrified, wood having been piled up against the surfaces of the bricks of which they were composed, and then set on fire. Both Borsippa and Babylon were surrounded by a single line of fortification, consisting of a double wall. It was pierced by a hundred gates, all of bronze. So broad were the walls, that two chariots could pass one another upon them. Walls were also built on either side of the river, which flowed through the centre of the city, and was furnished with handsome quays. There were gates in these walls at the end of each of the wide and straight streets by which the city was intersected, and between every gate a ferry-boat plied. Besides the ferry-boats there was also a drawbridge, which was drawn up every night. Such was “great Babylon,” which Nebuchadrezzar boasted he had built “for the house of the kingdom, by the might of his power, and for the honour of his majesty.”

Records of Nebuchadrezzar's building operations exist in plenty, but of his annals only a small fragment has as yet been discovered. This, however, contains an allusion to his campaign in Egypt, of which Jeremiah and Ezekiel prophesied, and which an over-hasty criticism has denied. The campaign, we learn, took place in the thirty-seventh year of his reign. Other references to it have been detected on the Egyptian monuments, and we gather from these that the Babylonian army swept the whole of the northern part of Egypt, and penetrated as far south as Assouan, from whence they were forced to retreat by the Egyptian general Hor. Amasis was at this time king of Egypt, having dethroned and murdered Apries, the Pharaoh Hophra of the Bible, whose miserable end had been foretold by Jeremiah (xliv. 30).

No account has yet been discovered among the cuneiform documents of the campaigns of Nebuchadrezzar against Tyre and Judah. But a curious memorial of them was found two years ago on the northern bank of the Nahr el-Kelb, or Dog River, about eight miles to the north of Beyrût. The ancient high road from Damascus to the sea-coast led along the gorge through which this river makes its way to the sea, and traces of it can still be seen cut here and there in the rock. The foreign conquerors of Asia, whether Egyptian or Assyrian have left monuments of themselves carved by the side of this old road, where it winds round a promontory that forms the southern bank of the river. Ramses II, Sennacherib, Esar-haddon, all have recorded their names and deeds upon the face of the cliff; and the obliterated monuments of other and perhaps older kings may still be seen near to them. The existence of these monuments has long been known. But it was never suspected that a long inscription of Nebuchadrezzar also existed on the loftier cliff on the northern side of the river, completely concealed from view under a mass of luxuriant shrubs and drooping maiden-hair fern. It was brought to light by an accident, and though much injured by time and weather is still partly decipherable. Unfortunately, the royal author gives no history in it of his Syrian and Jewish campaigns; the clearest part of the text is occupied only with a list of the wines of the Lebanon, among which the wine of Helbon, near Damascus, was the most highly prized.¹³

Nebuchadrezzar had a long reign of nearly forty-three years. His son and successor, Evil-Merodach (“the man of the god Merodach”), lived hardly three years after his accession, and then was murdered by his brother-in-law, Nergal-sharezer, who seized the crown. The latter calls himself the son of “Bel-suma-iskun, king of Babylon”—a title to which his father could have had no right—and he seems to have been the Rab-Mag (a word of unknown signification) who is mentioned by Jeremiah (xxxix. 3) as among the princes of Babylon at the time of the capture of Jerusalem. The chief event of his short reign of four years and four months was the construction of a new palace. His son, who succeeded him, was but a mere boy, and was murdered after a brief reign of four months. The throne was then usurped by Nabu-nahid, the Nabonidos of the Greeks, who does not seem to have belonged to the royal family, and calls his father, “Nabu-balatsu-ikbi, the Rubu-emga,” which may possibly be the Rab-Mag of the Old Testament. Nabonidos reigned for seventeen years, and witnessed the rise of a new power in the east. This was the empire of Cyrus, about whom the cuneiform records have recently given us information of a most startling kind.

Among the clay documents lately discovered in Babylonia by Mr. Rassam are three inscriptions, which have been published and translated by Sir Henry Rawlinson and Mr. Pinches. The first of these is a cylinder, inscribed by order of Cyrus, the second a tablet which describes the conquest of Babylonia by Cyrus and the causes which led up to it, while the third is an account given by Nabonidos of his restoration of the temple of the Moon-god at Haran, and of the temples of the Sun-god and of Anunit at Sepharvaim. Haran, we are told in the last-mentioned record, had been taken and destroyed by the Manda, or “barbarians,” of Ekbatana, and the temple of the Moon-god had shared in the general ruin of the city. “Then,” says Nabonidos, “at the beginning of my long reign, Merodach, the great lord, and Sin (the Moon-god), the illuminator of heaven and earth, the strong one of the universe, revealed unto me a dream. Merodach spake with me (thus): ‘O Nabonidos, king of Babylon, go up with the horse of thy chariot; make bricks for the Temple of Rejoicing, and let the seat of Sin, the great lord, enter within it.’ Reverently I spake to Merodach, the lords of the gods: ‘I will build this house whereof thou hast spoken. The barbarians went about it, and their forces were terrible.’ Merodach answered me: ‘The barbarians of whom thou hast spoken shall not exist, neither they nor their lands, nor the kings their allies.’ In the third year when it came, when they (i.e., the barbarians) had caused Cyrus, the king of Elam, his young servant, to march amongst his army, they provoked him (to battle); the wide-spread barbarians he overthrew; he captured Astyages, king of the barbarians, and seized his treasures; to his own land he took (them).” After this Nabonidos carried out the will of the gods. His “vast army” was summoned from Gaza on the one side to the Persian Gulf on the other, and set to work to restore the temple of Haran, which had been built three centuries before by the Assyrian king, Shalmaneser II, and subsequently repaired by Assur-bani-pal.

Two statements will be noticed in the inscription which will appear strange to students of ancient history. Cyrus is called “the young servant” of Merodach, the patron-deity of Babylon, and “king of Anzan,” or Elam, not of Persia. But both statements will be found to be borne out by the two inscriptions of Cyrus himself, which we shall now quote. Both on his cylinder and in the annalistic tablet Cyrus, hitherto supposed to be a Persian and a Zoroastrian monotheist, appears as an Elamite and as a polytheist.

The annalistic tablet, which is unfortunately somewhat mutilated, begins with the first year of the reign of Nabonidos. The first three years after his accession seem to have been occupied with disturbances in Syria. Then, in the sixth year, we are informed, “Astyages gathered (his army) and marched against Cyrus, king of Elam. But the soldiers of Astyages revolted from him, and seized him and delivered him up to Cyrus. Cyrus (proceeded) to the land of Ekbatana, the royal city. The silver, the gold, the furniture, and the spoil of the land of Ekbatana he carried away, and brought the furniture and the spoil which he has taken to the land of Elam.—The seventh year the king (Nabonidos) was in the town of Tema (a suburb of Babylon). The king's son, the nobles, and his soldiers were in Accad (or Northern Babylonia). The king did not go to Babylon, neither did Nebo nor Bel. But they kept a festival; they sacrificed peace-offerings in the temples of Saggil and Zida to the gods for (the preservation) of Babylon and Borsippa. The governor inspected the garden and the temple.—In the eighth year (no event took place).—The ninth year Nabonidos, the king, was in Tema, the king's son, the nobles, and his soldiers were in Accad. Until the month of Nisan (March) the king did not go to Babylon, neither did Nebo nor Bel. But they kept a festival; they sacrificed peace-offerings to the gods in the temples of Saggil and Zida for the preservation of Babylon and Borsippa. On the fifth day of Nisan, the king's mother, who was in the fortress of the camp on the river Euphrates, above Sippara, died. The king's son and his soldiers mourned for her three days running. In the month Sivan (May), there was a mourning for the king's mother throughout the land of Accad. In the month Nisan, Cyrus, king of Persia, collected his soldiers and crossed the Tigris below Arbela, and the following month (marched) against the land of . . . . Its king took (his) silver and himself; he made his own children mount (the pyre); afterwards both king and children were (burnt) in the midst (of it)—The tenth year the king was in Tema; the king's son, the officers, and his soldiers were in Accad. Until (Nisan) the king (did not go to Babylon), neither did Nebo nor Bel. But they kept the festival; they sacrificed peace-offerings to the gods in the temples (of Saggil and Zida) for the preservation of Babylon and Borsippa. On the 21st day of Sivan (the soldiers) of Elam marched into Accad. A prefect (was appointed?) in Erech.—The eleventh year the king was in Tema; the king's son, the nobles, and his soldiers were in Accad. Until Elul (August), the king did not come forth (to worship) Bel, but they kept the festival; they sacrificed peace-offerings (to the gods in the temples of Saggil and Zida for the preservation of) Babylon and Borsippa.”

Here a break occurs in the record. When the inscription becomes legible again we find ourselves transported to the seventeenth year of Nabonidos, when the tribes on “the lower sea” or Persian Gulf were in revolt. Cyrus, who had failed to break through the Babylonian army in Accad, had spent his time in intriguing with a disaffected party—probably the Jews—within Babylonia itself, and at last, when all was ripe, prepared to attack his enemy from the south-east. Nabonidos now turned to the gods for help, and had the images of them brought to Babylon from their various shrines, in the vain hope that their presence would save the city from capture. “The gods of Marad, Zamama and the gods of Kis, Beltis and the gods of Kharsak-kalama, were brought to Babylon; up to the end of Elul, the gods of Accad which are above and below the sky were brought to Babylon but the gods of Borsippa, of Cuthah, and of Sippara, were not brought. In the month Tammuz (June) Cyrus gave battle to the army of Accad in the town of Rutum, upon the river Nizallat. The men of Accad broke into revolt. On the 14th day (of the month) the garrison of Sippara was taken without fighting. Nabonidos flies. On the 16th day Gobryas, the governor of Gutium (Kurdistan) and the army of Cyrus entered Babylon without fighting. Afterwards he takes Nabonidos, and puts him into fetters in Babylon. Up to the end of the month Tammuz, some rebels from Kurdistan kept the gates of the temple of Saggil closed, but there was nothing in the way of weapons in the temple of Saggil, nor was there an opportunity (for fighting). On the 3rd day of Marchesvan (October), Cyrus entered Babylon. The roads(?) before him were covered. He grants peace to the city, to the whole of Babylon Cyrus proclaims peace. Gobryas, his governor, was appointed over the (other) governors in Babylon, and from the month Chisleu (November) to the month Adar (February) the gods of Accad, whom Nabonidos had brought to Babylon, were restored to their shrines. On the 11th day of the previous Marchesvan, Gobryas (was appointed) over (Babylon), and the king (Nabonidos) died. From the 27th of Adar to the 3rd of Nisan, (there was) a mourning in Accad; all the people smote their heads. On the 4th day, Kambyses, the son of Cyrus, arranged the burial in the temple of the Sceptre of the World. The priests of the temple of the Sceptre of Nebo went (to it).” The rest of the text, which is very imperfect from this point, describes the honours paid by Cyrus and his son to the Babylonian gods, their sacrifices of victims to Bel, and their restoration of Nebo to his old shrine.

It is at this place that the cylinder of Cyrus comes in to complete the story. Cyrus here says that Nabonidos had neglected the worship of the gods, who accordingly were angry with him: “The gods dwelling within them left their shrines in anger when (Nabonidos) brought them into Babylon. Merodach went about to all men, wherever were their seats; and the men of Sumer and Accad, whom he had sworn should attend him (besought him to return). The favour he granted, he came back; all lands, even the whole of them, rejoiced and ate. And he appointed a king to guide aright in the heart what his hand upholds; Cyrus, king of Elam, he proclaimed by name for the sovereignty: all men everywhere commemorate his name. The men of Kurdistan and all the barbarians (of Ekbatana) he made bow down to his feet, the men of the black-headed race (the Accadians), whom he had conquered with his hand, he governed in justice and righteousness. Merodach, the great lord, the restorer of his people, beheld with joy the deeds of his vicegerent, who was righteous in hand and heart. To his city of Babylon he summoned his march, and he bade him take the road to Babylon; like a friend and a comrade he went at his side. The weapons of his vast army, whose number, like the waters of a river, could not be known, he marshalled at his side. Without fighting or battle he caused him to enter into Babylon; his city of Babylon feared; in a place difficult of access Nabonidos, the king, who worshipped him not, he gave into his hand. The men of Babylon, all of them, (and) the whole of Sumer and Accad, the nobles and priests who had revolted, kissed his feet, they rejoiced in his sovereignty, their faces shone. The god who in his ministry raises the dead to life, who benefits all men in difficulty and prayer, has in goodness drawn nigh to him, has made strong his name. I am Cyrus, the king of legions, the great king, the powerful king, the king of Babylon, the king of Sumer and Accad, the king of the four zones, the son of Kambyses the great king, the king of Elam; the grandson of Cyrus the great king, the king of Elam; the great-grandson of Teispes, the great king, the king of Elam; of the ancient seed-royal, whose rule has been beloved by Bel and Nebo, whose sovereignty they cherished according to the goodness of their hearts. At that time I entered Babylon in peace. With joy and gladness in the palace of the kings I enlarged the seat of my dominion. Merodach, the great lord, (cheered) the heart of his servant, whom the sons of Babylon (obeyed each) year and day . . . . My vast armies he marshalled peacefully in the midst of Babylon; throughout Sumer and Accad I had no revilers. The sanctuaries of Babylon and all its fortresses I established in peace. As for the sons of Babylon  . . . their ruins I repaired, and I delivered their prisoners. For the work (of restoring the shrine) of Merodach, the great lord, I prepared, and he graciously drew nigh unto me, Cyrus, the king, his worshipper, and to Kambyses, my son, the offspring of my heart, and to all my army, and in peace we duly restored its front (in) glory. All the kings who dwell in the high-places of all regions from the Upper Sea to the Lower Sea, who dwell in (the high-places) of the kings of Phœnicia and Sutar, all of them brought their rich tribute, and in the midst of Babylon kissed my feet. From (the city of)  . . . to the cities of Assur and Istar  . . . Accad, Marad, Zamban, Me-Turnat, and Duran as far as the border of Kurdistan, the fortresses (which lie) upon the Tigris, wherein from of old were their seats, I restored the gods who dwelt within them to their places, and I enlarged (for them) seats that should be long-enduring; all their peoples I assembled, and I restored their lands. And the gods of Sumer and Accad, whom Nabonidos, to the anger of the lord of gods (Merodach), had brought into Babylon, I settled in peace in their sanctuaries by the command of Merodach, the great lord. In the goodness of their hearts may all the gods whom I have brought into their strong places daily intercede before Bel and Nebo that they should grant me length of days; may they bless my projects with prosperity, and may they say to Merodach my lord that Cyrus the king, thy worshipper, and Kambyses his son (deserve his favour).”

Such are the records, which have risen up, as it were, out of the tomb, to revolutionise all our previous conceptions of that part of ancient history with which they are concerned. We must give up the belief that Cyrus was a monotheist, bent on destroying the idols of Babylon; on the contrary, from the time when we first hear of him, he is a worshipper of Bel-Merodach, the patron-god of Babylon, and the first care of himself and his son, after his conquest of Babylonia, is to restore the Babylonian gods to the shrines from which they had been impiously removed by Nabonidos. He asks the gods to intercede on his behalf with Bel and Nebo, the two supreme gods of Babylonian worship. It is clear, therefore, that Cyrus was a polytheist, who, like other polytheists in other ages, adopted the gods of the country he had conquered from motives of State policy. The Egyptian monuments give the same account of his son Kambyses. They show that the story told by Herodotus how Kambyses had scoffed at the gods of Egypt, had destroyed their images, and had finally stabbed the sacred bull Apis, was a mere Greek fable. Kambyses appears on contemporaneous monuments as the friend of the Egyptian priests, the adorer of their gods, and the benefactor of their temples. The very bull he was said to have murdered has been discovered in its huge sarcophagus of granite, with a sculpture above, wherein Kambyses is represented as kneeling before the bull-god, while an inscription states that the bull was honoured with the usual funeral, in which Kambyses himself took part.

The theory, accordingly, which held that Cyrus had allowed the Jews to return to their own land, because, like them, he believed in but one supreme god—the Ormazd or good spirit of the Zoroastrian creed—must be abandoned. God consecrated Cyrus to be His instrument in restoring His chosen people to their land, not because the king of Elam was a monotheist, but because the period of Jewish trial and punishment had come to an end. God's instruments may be unworthy as well as worthy; it was through the hardness of heart of an unbelieving Pharaoh that the deliverance from Egypt had been accomplished in days long before. Nor is there any contradiction between the treatment actually experienced by the Babylonians and that which is predicted for them in the Book of Isaiah. The language of the prophet is necessarily figurative, and when he declares (Isa. xlvi. 1, 2) that Bel and Nebo had gone into captivity, nothing more is meant than that the people whose gods they were, and whom they represented, had passed under the yoke of a foreign conqueror.

And yet, though the prophet's language was thus figurative, the prediction was eventually fulfilled in a very literal way. The empire of Cyrus was broken up after the death of Kambyses, and had to be reconquered by Darius the son of Hystaspes, the real founder of the Persian Empire. Darius was a Zoroastrian monotheist as well as a Persian, and under him and his successors polytheism ceased to be the religion of the State. Twice during his reign he had to besiege Babylon. Hardly had he been proclaimed king when it revolted under a certain Nidinta-Bel, who called himself “Nebuchadrezzar, the son of Nabonidos.” A cameo exists with his helmeted profile, engraved by a Greek artist, and surrounded by the words, “To Merodach, his lord, Nebuchadrezzar, the king of Babylon, has made (it) for his life;” unless, perhaps, Professor Schrader is right in referring the portrait, not to the pretender, but to the real Nebuchadrezzar of Biblical history. Babylon endured a siege of two years, and was at last captured by Darius only by the help of a stratagem. Six years afterwards it again rose in revolt, under an Armenian, who professed, like his predecessor, to be “Nebuchadrezzar, the son of Nabonidos.” Once more, however, it was besieged and taken, and this time the pretender was put to death by impalement. His predecessor, Nidinta-Bel, seems to have been slain while the Persian troops were forcing their way into the captured city. After the second capture of Babylon Darius pulled down its walls; and his son Xerxes completed the work of destruction by destroying the great temple of Bel, and carrying away the golden image of the god.

In Nidinta-Bel the line of independent Babylonian kings may be regarded as having come to an end, since the leader of the second revolt was not a native, but an Armenian settler. To him, therefore, we may apply the magnificent description of the death of the last Babylonian monarch on the battle-field, and his descent into the under-world, which we read in Isaiah xiv. Illustrations have been taken by the prophet from Babylonian mythology, in order to heighten the horror of the scene. The king of Babylonia is compared to the morning star, whose movements the Babylonians had been the first of mankind to record. He is represented as saying in his heart, “I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the (other) stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the assembly (of the gods) in the furthest regions of the north.” This mount, as we have seen in an earlier chapter, was the Olympos of the Accadians, by whom it was called Kharsak-kurra “the mountain of the east.” Its peak was the pivot on which the sky rested, and it was therefore also known as “the mountain of the world.” It lay far away in the regions of the north-east, the entrance, as it was supposed, to the lower world, and it was sometimes identified with the mountain of Nizir, the modern Rowandiz, on whose summit the ark of the Chaldean Noah was believed to have rested. From the heights of this mountain, where he had vainly dreamed of sitting among the gods, the Babylonian king was to be hurled into the world below. Here again the prophet borrows his illustration from the mythology of Accad. The heroes of the past are placed before us seated in Hades on their shadowy thrones, from which they rise to greet the arrival of their new comrade.

The best commentary on the description is to be found in the words of an old Babylonian poem, which tells of the descent of the goddess Istar into Hades, in search of her dead husband Tammuz. The poem opens as follows:—

“To Hades, the land whence none return, the land of darkness,
Istar the daughter of the Moon-god inclined her ear,
Yea, the daughter of the Moon-god inclined her ear.
To the house of darkness, the dwelling of the god Irkalla,
To the house out of which there is no exit,
To the road from which there is no return,
To the house from whose entrance the light is taken,
The place where dust is their nourishment, and mud their food;
Light is never seen, in darkness they dwell.”

Parallel with this is the description of Hades, supposed to be given by the dead friend of Gisdhubar, in the great Chaldean epic in which the account of the deluge is embodied. Here we read—

“To Hades, the land whence none return, I turn myself,
I spread like a bird my hands.
I descend, I descend, to the house of darkness, the dwelling of the god Irkalla.
To the house out of which there is no exit.
To the road from which there is no return,
To the house from whose entrance the light is taken,
The place where dust is their nourishment, and mud their food,
And its chiefs are like birds covered with feathers;
Light is never seen, in darkness they dwell.
In that house, O my friend, which I shall enter.
There is treasured up for me a crown.
With those wearing crowns, who from days of old ruled the earth.
To whom the gods Anu and Bel have given names of rule.”

But it is time for us to return to the inscriptions of Cyrus. Next to the fact that he was a polytheist, the most startling revelation they make is that he was not a king of Persia at all. Persia seems to have been acquired by him after his conquest of Astyages, at some time between the sixth and ninth year of Nabonidos. Both he and his ancestors were kings of Anzan or Elam. It is true, he could trace his descent back to a member of the royal Persian clan, Teispes, who appears to have taken possession of Elam during the troublous period that followed the fall of Assyria, and to have resigned his Persian dominions to his son Ariaramnes, the great-grandfather of Darius. It must be this conquest of Elam which was prophesied by Jeremiah at the beginning of Zedekiah's reign (Jer. xlix. 34-39), and the result of it was to make Cyrus an Elamite in education and religion. The empire which he founded was not a Persian one; Darius, the son of Hystaspes, was the real founder of that. It was only as the predecessor of Darius, and for the sake of intelligibility to the readers of a later day, that Cyrus could be called a king of Persia, as he is in the Book of Ezra, where the original words of his proclamation, “king of Elam” have been changed into the more familiar and intelligible “king of Persia” (Ez. i. 2.). Elsewhere in the Bible (Isa. xxi. 1-10), where the invasion of Babylonia is described, there is no mention of Persia, only of Elam and Media, that is to say, of the ancestral dominions of Cyrus and that kingdom of Ekbatana which he had annexed. This is in strict accordance with the revelations of the monuments, and is a most interesting testimony to the accuracy of the Old Testament records.

Another fact of an equally revolutionary kind which the inscriptions teach us is that Babylon was not besieged and taken by Cyrus. It opened its gates to his general long before he came near it, and needed neither fighting nor battle for its occupation. It thus becomes evident that the siege of Babylon described by Herodotus really belongs to the reign of Darius, and has been transferred by tradition to the reign of Cyrus, and that the late Mr. Bosanquet was right in asserting that the Darius of the Book of Daniel is Darius the son of Hystaspes. Belshazzar, as we know from an inscription of Nabonidos, which mentions him, was the eldest son of that monarch, and he is no doubt the “king's son” who commanded the Babylonian army, according to the tablet translated above.

But besides the main facts to be derived from these newly found inscriptions, there is much else in them which is worthy of regard. This is especially the case with the inscription on the clay cylinder, in which we find a reference to the restoration of the Babylonian captives to their several homes. The experience of Cyrus had taught him that the old Assyrian and Babylonian system of transporting conquered nations was an error, and did but introduce a dangerously disaffected people into the country to which they had been brought. Through this conviction, which seemed to Cyrus himself merely the result of his own experience and political sagacity, God worked to bring about the fulfilment of His promises to the Jewish exiles. Those who chose to return to Jerusalem were allowed to do so, and there rebuild a fortress which Cyrus considered would be useful to him as a check upon Egypt. The nations which had been brought from east and west were restored to their lands, along with their gods, whom they were henceforth to worship in peace. Among them, as we learn from the Old Testament, were the captives of Judah, the worshippers of the one true God.

Another fact which we gather from the words of Cyrus is that Nabonidos had offended the Babylonian priesthood, and had been accused by some of them of impiety. His removal of the images of the local deities from their shrines seems to have been regarded as a peculiar sin; and Cyrus goes so far as to assert that Nabonidos had brought them into Babylon, “to the anger of the lord of gods.” Indeed, he even says that the Babylonian king had not worshipped the patron god of his own capital. How little, however, this statement was really justified may be seen from the inscription of Nabonidos quoted above, in which reference is made for the first time to Cyrus, “the young servant” of Merodach.

The language used of himself by Cyrus reminds us sometimes of the inspired words in which he is spoken of in the prophecies of Isaiah. When he says that he “governed in justice and righteousness,” and that Merodach “beheld with joy the deeds of his vicegerent, who was righteous in hand and heart,” we cannot help thinking of God's declaration that He had “raised him up in righteousness,” (Isa. xlv. 13). When he says that “Merodach, who in his ministry raises the dead to life, who benefits all men in difficulty and prayer, has in goodness drawn nigh to him, has made strong his name,” we almost fancy we hear an echo of the words of Scripture: “For Jacob My servant's sake, and Israel Mine elect, I have even called thee by thy name; I have surnamed thee, though thou hast not known Me. I am the LORD, and there is none else, there is no God beside Me. I girded thee, though thou hast not known Me” (Isa. xlv. 4, 5).

The title given to Merodach—“the god who raises the dead to life”—is a remarkable one, but it was a title which was applied to the god as early as the Accadian epoch. In the religious hymns of the Accadians, Merodach plays the part of a mediator and intercessor; if the gods are angry, it is Merodach who intercedes for man. Mankind, in fact, are his especial care; he was supposed to heal their diseases and to raise them after death to life. Whether there was any reference here to the doctrine of the resurrection is doubtful: more probably nothing further was meant than that the spirit of the dead man, through the help of Merodach, was allowed to drink of “the waters of life,” that bubbled up in Hades beneath the golden throne of the spirits of earth, and so to ascend to the Accadian heaven, “the land of the silver sky,” where the heroes lay reclined among the gods on couches, feasting at banquets which knew no end.

Merodach was originally the Sun-god, and when Babylonia passed into the hands of the Semites he still continued to be worshipped, as the interceding god who hears prayers and “raises the dead to life.” But he was now more specially honoured as Bel or Baal, “lord” a title which properly belonged to an older deity, but which came in time to be almost confined to Merodach, alone. When Bel and Nebo are mentioned together in the Bible (Isa. xlvi. 1), it is Merodach, the tutelary divinity of Babylon, that is meant, Nebo, “the prophet,” to whom peculiar honour was paid at Babylon after the rise of the dynasty of Nebuchadrezzar, being usually associated with him.

A large number of prayers have been discovered addressed for the most part to Merodach, though there are some which are addressed also to the other deities. These prayers are written in Assyrian, and constitute a sort of manual of devotion. They are seldom of great length, one of the longest being a prayer after a bad dream, which is, however, addressed to the goddess Istar as well as to Merodach. Portions of it have been lost; what remains may be quoted as an example of this species of literature, and is as follows: “May the lord set my prayer at rest, (may he remove) my heavy (sin)! May the lord (grant) a return of favour. By day direct unto death all that disquiets me. O my goddess, be gracious unto me; when (wilt thou hear) my prayer? May they pardon my sin, my wickedness, (and) my transgression. May the exalted one deliver, may the holy one love. May the seven winds carry away my groaning. May the worm lay it low, may the bird bear it upwards to heaven. May a shoal of fish carry it away; may the river bear it along. May the creeping thing of the field come unto me; may the waters of the river as they flow cleanse me. Enlighten me like a mask of gold. Food and drink perpetually before thee may I get. Heap up the worm, take away his life. The steps of thine altar, thy many ones, may I ascend. With the worm make me pass, and may I be kept with thee. Make me to be fed, and may a favourable dream come. May the dream I dream be favourable; may the dream I dream be fulfilled, May the dream I dream turn to prosperity. May Makhir, the god of dreams, settle upon my head. Let me enter Beth-Saggil, the palace of the gods, the temple of the lord. Give me unto Merodach, the merciful, to prosperity, even to prospering hands. May thy entering be exalted, may thy divinity be glorious; may the men of my city extol thy mighty deeds.”

The tone of this prayer is not very high, and it reveals how much superstition was mixed with even the best aspirations of Assyrian spiritual life. It is, therefore, somewhat surprising that a series of penitential psalms exists, coming down from the earliest period of Babylonian history, which breathe a much more exalted and purer spirit. These psalms are not written in Accadian, but in the closely-allied dialect of Sumer or Shinar, and an Assyrian interlinear translation is attached to them. From time to time expressions that occur in them remind us of the Book of Psalms. No more suitable way can be found of concluding our review of the illustrations of the Old Testament Scriptures afforded by modern discovery, than by giving at full length a translation of one of these touching relics of old time. In reading it we do indeed feel that even in the darkest ages of ignorance and heathenism God was still moving the hearts of men, “that they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after Him and find Him:”

“My Lord is wroth in his heart; may he be appeased again.
May God be appeased again, for I knew not that I sinned.
May Istar, my mother, be appeased again, for I knew not that I sinned.
God knoweth that I knew not; may he be appeased.
Istar, my mother, knoweth that I knew not; may she be appeased.
May the heart of my God be appeased.
May the heart of Istar, my mother, be appeased.
May God and Istar, my mother, be appeased.
May God cease from his anger.
May Istar, my mother, (cease from her anger).
The transgression (I committed my God) knew.
                             [The next few lines are obliterated.]
The transgression (I committed Istar, my mother, knew).
(My tears) I drink like the waters of the sea.
That which was forbidden by my God, I ate without knowing.
That which was forbidden by Istar, my mother, I trampled on without knowing.
O my Lord, my transgression is great, many are my sins.
O my God, my transgression is great, many are my sins.
O Istar, my mother, my transgression is great, many are my sins.
O my God, who knowest that I knew not, my transgression is great, many are my sins.

O Istar, my mother, who knowest that I knew not, my transgression is great, many are my sins.
The transgression that I committed I knew not.
The sin that I sinned I knew not.
The forbidden thing did I eat.
The forbidden thing did I trample on.
My Lord, in the anger of his heart, has punished me.
God in the strength of his heart has received me.
Istar, my mother, has seized upon me and put me to grief.
God, who knoweth that I knew not, has afflicted me.
Istar, my mother, who knoweth that I knew not, has caused darkness.
I prayed and none takes my hand.
I wept and none held my palm.
I cry aloud; but there is none that will hear me.
I am in darkness and hiding, I dare not look up.
To God I refer my distress, I utter my prayer.
The feet of Istar, my mother, I embrace.
To God, who knoweth that I knew not, my prayer I utter.
To Istar, my mother, who knoweth that I knew not, my prayer I address.
[The next four lines are lost.]
How long, O God (shall I suffer)?
How long, O Istar, my mother (shall I suffer)?
How long, O God, who knoweth that I knew not, (shall I feel thy) strength?
How long, O Istar, my mother, who knoweth that I knew not, shall thy heart (be angry)?
Thou writest the number (?) of mankind, and none knoweth it.
Thou callest man by his name, and what does he know?
Whether he shall be afflicted, or whether he shall be prosperous, there is no man that knows.
O my God, thou givest not rest to thy servant.
In the waters of the raging flood take his hand.

The sin he has sinned turn into good.
Let the wind carry away the transgression I have committed.
Destroy my manifold wickedness like a garment.
O my God, seven times seven are my transgressions, my transgressions are (ever) before me.¹⁴

12) See Jer. xlvii. 1.

13) Compare Ezek. xxvii. 18.

14) The following chronological table will assist the reader in understanding the sequence of events in the preceding chapter:—

B.C.

609. Battle of Megiddo; Josiah slain; Pharaoh Necho overruns Western Asia.

606. Necho defeated at Carchemish by Nebuchadrezzar; foundation of the Babylonian empire.

604. Nebuchadrezzar succeeds his father Nabopolassar.

599. Jerusalem captured; Jehoiachin sent to Babylon.

588. Destruction of Jerusalem; murder of Gedaliah.

567. The Babylonians overrun Egypt, then governed by Amasis.

561. Nebuchadrezzar succeeded by his son Evil-Merodach.

559. Nergal-sharezer, son of Bel-sum-iskun, seizes the Babylonian crown.

555. Nergal-sharezer succeeded by Laborosoarchod.

555. The crown seized by Nabonidos, son of Nabu-balatsu-ikbi.

552. The dream of Nabonidos.

549. Conquest of Astyages of Ekbatana (Media) by Cyrus, king of Elam.

548. Death of “the king's mother” (Nitokris).

538. Overthrow and death of Nabonidos; Cyrus occupies Babylon.

529. Death of Cyrus and accession of Kambyses.

521. Darius, the son of Hystaspes, elected to the throne of Persia.

520-19. Revolt of Babylon under Nidinta-Bel.

513. Second revolt of Babylon under Arakha.