was taken prisoner in Babylon. To the end of the month the shield (-bearer)s 17 of the country of Guti guarded the gates of E-sagil1: no one's spear approached E-sagil, or came within the sanctuaries, 18 nor was any standard brought therein. On the 3rd day of Marcheshvan [November], Cyrus entered Babylon. 19 Dissensions (?) were allayed (?) before him. Peace for the city he established: peace to all Babylon 20 did Cyrus proclaim. Gubaru, his governor, appointed governors in Babylon. From the month of Kislev [December] to the month of Adar [March-viz. in the following year, 537], the gods of the country of Akkad, whom Nabu-na'id had brought down to Babylon, 22 returned to their own cities. On the 11th day of Marcheshvan, during the night, Gubaru made an assault (?), and slew 23 the king's son (?) 2. From the 27th of Adar [March] to the 3rd of Nisan [April] there was lamentation in Akkad: all the people smote their heads, etc. The stages in the conquests of Cyrus are here traced by a contemporary hand. First, in 549, he appears as king of Anshan (or Anzan)-evidently his native home-in the S. of Elam3: in that capacity, the troops of Astyages desert to him, and he gains possession of Ecbatana. In 546 he is called 'king of Persia': it is reasonable therefore to infer that in the interval since 549 he had effected the conquest of this country. We thus learn incidentally that though Cyrus and his successors are commonly spoken of as 'Persian' kings, he was not a Persian by origin; he and his ancestors were kings of 'Anshan,' a district of Elam, and he only became king of Persia by right of conquest. In 538 his attack upon Babylon begins. His approach is made from the North. First, he secures Opis and the surrounding parts of N. Babylonia; then he advances to Sippar, which he takes without striking a blow: two days afterwards his general, Gubaru, enters Babylon, which likewise offers no resistance; Nabu-na'id is taken prisoner, but otherwise everything proceeds peaceably; the victors respect the property of 1 The great temple of Marduk in Babylon. 2 The tablet is injured at this point; but the king's son' is the reading which those who have most carefully examined the tablet consider the most probable. 3 See the Map in Maspero's Struggle of the Nations, p. 31. the citizens and of the temples, and a strong guard is placed round the temple E-sagil to protect it from plunder. Shortly afterwards, Cyrus himself enters Babylon, and proclaims peace to the city. He entrusts the government of the city to Gubaru, who in his turn appoints subordinate governors. Belshazzar, however, more energetic-or successful--than his father, still held out,—perhaps in a fortified palace,—but is slain by Gubaru in a night assault. After this, Cyrus formally assumed the title of 'king of Babylon' as well as the other grandiloquent titles borne by the Babylonian kings; and (as contract-tablets of the time shew) was at once recognized as the legitimate sovereign. The story told by Herodotus (i. 191), and Xenophon (Cyrop. VII. v. 15-31), of the stratagem by which Babylon was taken by Cyrus, the waters of the Euphrates being diverted, and the city entered during the night—according to Xenophon, by Gobryas and Gadates—from the river-bed, while the people were all celebrating a festival,-which has been supposed to fall in with the representation in Dan. v. and with Is. xxi. 5 (cf. xliv. 27; Jer. li. 36),—is shewn by the inscription to be unhistorical: Babylon, it is clear, offered no resistance to the conqueror. At the same time, it is worth observing, Xenophon and the inscription both agree in assigning a prominent part to Gubaru (Gobryas) in gaining possession of the city. The ease with which the transference of power from Nabuna'id to Cyrus was effected, was no doubt due largely to the unpopularity of Nabu-na’id, who not only year after year lived in retirement at Tevâ, and neglected to discharge the public duties devolving upon him, but also gave great offence by removing arbitrarily the images of many local deities from their shrines and transferring them to Babylon. It is probable that the priests, who were both numerous and influential, were in particular adverse to the ruling dynasty. Cyrus, in a proclamation (the so-called 'Cylinder Inscription') issued by him shortly after his entry into the city, shewed that he understood how to utilize the popular disaffection; he represented himself as the favoured servant of Marduk, specially chosen by him to become sovereign of Babylon, in order to undo the evil deeds of Nabuna'id, and to redress the grievances of its people1. It may be of interest to the reader to compare the account given by Berosus (who had access to native records), preserved by Josephus (c. Ap. i. 20):— In the 17th year of his reign Cyrus, advancing out of Persia with a great army, and having already subdued all the rest of Asia, advanced against Babylonia. Nabonnēdus, hearing of his approach, met him with his forces, but joining battle, was defeated, and fleeing with only a few companions was shut up in the city of Borsippa [the suburb of Babylon, on the S.W.]. Cyrus having taken Babylon, gave directions for the walls outside the city to be destroyed, because the city appeared to him to be very strong, and difficult to take; after which he marched against Borsippa, intending to force Nabonnēdus to surrender. As Nabonnēdus, however, did not await the siege, but delivered himself up beforehand, Cyrus treated him kindly, and giving him Carmania [the country E. of Persia] as a residence, sent him out of Babylonia. Nabonnēdus accordingly spent the rest of his life in that country, and there ended his days. The two centuries of subjection to Persia (B.C. 538-333), which now followed, may be passed over rapidly. Cyrus continued to reign till B.C. 529,-for the first year or so after his accession in conjunction with his son Cambyses2. In his first year (Ezr. i. 1) he gave permission to the Jewish exiles to return to Palestine; and a considerable number under Zerubbabel availed themselves of the permission. The nucleus of a restored community was thus formed, which, though it did not realize the ideal glories promised by the great prophet of the exile, the author of Is. xl.—lxvi., nevertheless gave vitality again, in their 1 The inscription is translated in Ball's Light from the East, pp. 224 f.; the principal parts of it may be found also in Hogarth's Authority and Archaeology, p. 128; cf. Prince, pp. 92—104. 2 Maspero, Passing of the Empires, p. 636. Contract-tablets exist dated in the first year of Cyrus king of countries, and of Cambyses king of Babylon,' or 'of Cambyses, king of Babylon, in the days of Cyrus, his father, king of countries': see KB. iv. 261—3, or more fully Prášek, Forschungen zur Gesch. des Alterthumes (1897), i. 25-29, 34-5. ancient home, to the institutions and traditions of the past. Judah became part of a province of the Persian empire, under the authority of the governor (peḥāh) of what, spoken from the Babylonian standpoint, was called 'the other side of the river' (); and its people, provided they paid their appointed taxes, and did nothing calculated to arouse suspicion upon political grounds, enjoyed full social and religious freedom. The restoration of the Temple under Darius, son of Hystaspes (522 -485), the return of a second body of exiles under Ezra in 458, the re-building of the city-walls by Nehemiah in 444, and the reforms introduced by these two leaders, need only be alluded to.in passing. The reign of Artaxerxes I (465-425) is followed by a period which, so far as the recorded history of the Jews is concerned, is almost without incident; but under Artaxerxes Ochus (359-339) a revolt of Jews is reported (c. 350), followed by reprisals on the part of the Persians, and the transportation of many captives into Hyrcania and Babylonia, which have been supposed by some recent scholars to have been the occasion of certain prophecies and psalms. In the fourth year of Darius Codomannus (336—333), the Persian empire was brought to its close by the conquests of Alexander the Great2. It was Alexander's ambition to build up a world-wide empire, which should be permeated in every part by the spirit and civilization of Greece. Struck down by fever in Babylon, in 323, when even the conquests that he was meditating were still incomplete, he necessarily left this design unrealized: nevertheless, the impulses which he set in motion did not cease to operate with his death, and under his successors, especially those who ruled at Antioch and Alexandria, the diffusion of Greek culture and manners was steadily maintained, and affected Palestine as well as other parts3. For the present, however, we may confine ourselves to the political history of Judah during the century and a half which now begins. Alexander, after his seven months' siege of Tyre (332), had 1 See L. O. T. pp. 222, 246, 321, 389. 2 See a summary of these conquests in the note on viii. 5. marched through Palestine, on his way to Egypt, but did not come into hostile collision with the Jews: in fact, though the story of his having offered sacrifice in the Temple is doubtless apocryphal1, he treated them with favour, and, according to Josephus (c. Ap. ii. 4), settled many of them as colonists in his new city of Alexandria. The Jews formed an industrious, peaceloving community, which, except when religious fervour stirred them up into rebellion, there was no motive to assail. After Alexander's death, the fiction of a united empire was still for a while maintained, the generals who ultimately became his heirs being at first administrators of particular provinces under Perdikkas, who acted as regent on behalf of Alexander's feeble brother, Aridaeus. As it happened, an ambiguous position was taken, almost from the beginning, by Coele-Syria, Phoenicia, and Palestine; and this, coupled with the fact that these provinces lay on the debateable border-land between the two powerful kingdoms of Syria and Egypt, caused Judah repeatedly to change hands during the century and a half which followed. On the whole, however, except during some brief intervals, Palestine remained subject to Egypt till Antiochus the Great, in 198, defeated the forces of Ptolemy Epiphanes at Paneion (under the foot of Hermon); after this date it passed permanently into the power of Syria. In the preliminary distribution of provinces arranged between Alexander's generals on the day after his death, Syria was assigned to Laomedon, and Egypt to Ptolemy Lagi. In 321 Perdikkas, having quarrelled with Ptolemy, led an army against him through Palestine, and advanced as far as Pelusium, where, however, he met with a repulse and was defeated. At the convention of Triparadisus, held shortly afterwards in the same year, Laomedon's title to Syria was confirmed. Ptolemy, however, in direct contravention of this agreement, sent in 320 an expedition through Palestine, and annexed Syria by force of arms. But Ptolemy did not hold it long. Antigonus, the general who had obtained Phrygia, Syria, and Pamphylia, cherished ambitious projects, and in 315 1 Ewald, v. 214 f. |