Cyrus Takes Babylon, 539 BCE
Investigate how Babylon passed into Persian rule and how its conquerors explained the change. Read the Cyrus Cylinder alongside accounts of Nabonidus, religious legitimacy, and imperial administration without treating royal propaganda as a modern rights charter.
Connections9
Achaemenid Empire: people, places, and context for the episode.
The Achaemenid Empire was an ancient Iranian empire founded by Cyrus the Great of the Achaemenid dynasty in 550 BC. 5 million square kilometres, making it the largest empire of its time.
Belshazzar: people, places, and context for the episode.
Belshazzar was the son and crown prince of Nabonidus, the last king of the Neo-Babylonian Empire.
Marduk: people, places, and context for the episode.
Marduk was a god from ancient Mesopotamia, patron deity of Babylon.
First sparsely attested in the 3rd millennium BC, Marduk slowly rose to prominence before being enshrined as leader of the Mesopotamian pantheon under Nebuchadnezzar I in the 2nd millennium BC.
Nabonidus Chronicle: people, places, and context for the episode.
The Nabonidus Chronicle is an ancient Babylonian text, part of a larger series of Babylonian Chronicles inscribed in cuneiform script on clay tablets.
Battle of Opis: people, places, and context for the episode.
The Battle of Opis was the last major military engagement between the Achaemenid Empire and the Neo-Babylonian Empire, which took place in September 539 BC, during the Persian invasion of Mesopotamia.
Babylon: people, places, and context for the episode.
Babylon was an ancient city located on the lower Euphrates river in southern Mesopotamia, within modern-day Hillah, Iraq, about 85 kilometres south of modern-day Baghdad. Babylon functioned as the main cultural and political centre of the Akkadian-speaking region of Babylonia.
Cyrus Cylinder: people, places, and context for the episode.
The Cyrus Cylinder is an ancient clay cylinder, now broken into several pieces, on which is written an Achaemenid royal inscription in Akkadian cuneiform script in the name of the Persian king Cyrus the Great.
Nabonidus: people, places, and context for the episode.
Nabonidus was the last king of the Neo-Babylonian Empire, ruling from 556 BC to the fall of Babylon to the Achaemenian Empire under Cyrus the Great in 539 BC.
Cyrus the Great: people, places, and context for the episode.
Cyrus II of Persia, commonly known as Cyrus the Great, was the founder of the Achaemenid Empire.