The last native dynasty of Babylon came to a quick and abrupt end. The Persian king Cyrus II (559–530), the very man who had 'liberated' the city Ḫarrān from the Medes when he defeated Astyages shortly after Nabonidus had become king, eventually set his eyes on Babylonia, once he had successfully concluded his war with the wealthy kingdom of Lydia and its famous king Croesus.[[98]] In 539, Nabonidus' seventeenth regnal year, the Persian king marched on Babylonia.[[99]] The beginning of that year, if the Nabonidus Chronicle is to be believed, started off as normal, that is, the king held the New Year's festival. However, by the middle of the year, the Babylonian king was on the defensive and started transferring Babylonia's gods and goddesses from their home cities into the fortified walls of the capital Babylon. Not all of the deities, including the revered gods of Borsippa and Sippar, made it to Babylon before the first clash between the Babylonian and Persian armies took place.
The war, as most textual sources seem to report, was very short and lasted less than thirty days. In the month Tašrītu (VII), on an unspecified day, Nabonidus' forces fought Cyrus' troops at Opis, a city located near the eastern bank of the Tigris River, where its course is not very far from that of the Euphrates River.[[100]] On the 14th of that same month, not far from Opis, the Persian army is reported to have captured the important city Sippar, the revered cult center of the god Šamaš, without a fight; Nabonidus is said to have fled (south).[[101]] Two days later, on the 16th of Tašrītu, Ugbaru, the governor of Gutium, an important ally of Cyrus, together with (part of) the Persian army, took Babylon, also allegedly without battle.[[102]] Nabonidus was captured, but it is unclear where this took place; the Nabonidus Chronicle states that it was in Babylon, whereas the much later account of Berossos records that the on-the-run king of Babylon surrendered near Borsippa.[[103]] According to Berossos, the captured Babylonian king was exiled to Carmania, in southern Iran, where Nabonidus is said to have eventually died.[[104]] As to the fate of Belshazzar, that is unknown since no sources record it; he might have died in battle, been executed, or been exiled together with his father. Cyrus II ruled Babylonia until his death in 530 and, as far as we can tell, there was peace throughout Babylonia during that time.
98 For the translations of the primary sources dealing with the events of Cyrus' reign, see Kuhrt, Persian Empire pp. 56–103. For Cyrus' war against Astyages of Media, see op. cit. pp. 56–60 §C nos. 6–11; for his conquest of Lydia and western Asia Minor, see op. cit. pp. 60–70 §D nos. 12–20; and for the Persian conquest of Babylonia, see op. cit. pp. 70-87 §E nos. 21–28. A. Kuhrt divides the sources dealing with Cyrus' defeat of Nabonidus into three broad categories: (a) the Babylonian evidence (the Cyrus Cylinder [no. 21], the Verse Account [no. 23], the Dynastic Prophecy [no. 24], Berossus' Babyloniaca [no. 25 = FGrH 680 F10a]); (b) Old Testament writers (Isaiah 41:1–5, 25, 42:1–7, 28–45:7 [no. 26]; and Ezra 6:2–5 [no. 27]), and (c) Greek sources (Herodotus I 177–178 and 188–192). The Nabonidus Chronicle (see pp. 24–25) also records the details of the end of Nabonidus' reign. The fall of Babylon is also mentioned by Xenophon in his Cyropaedia (VII 5). For a detailed analysis of the accounts of the classical authors, see Heller, Spätzeit pp. 212–220; and Briant, From Cyrus to Alexander pp. 41–43.
99 Hostilities between the two kings may have begun already in 540, Nabonidus' 16th regnal year, as the Nabonidus Chronicle (iii 1´–4´) might indicate. That passage in the Nabonidus Chronicle is not sufficiently preserved for scholars to be able to properly analyze its contents. For interpretations of the events of 540, see, for example, Beaulieu, Nabonidus pp. 219–220; Heller, Spätzeit p. 208; and Briant, From Cyrus to Alexander pp. 42–43. According to the Dynastic Prophecy, an Akkadian text written in the Hellenistic Period, Cyrus is portrayed as the aggressor/instigator of the war. For a translation of that text, which 'foresaw' Cyrus' victory, see, for example, Kuhrt, Persian Empire p. 80.
100 The city of Opis is where the Assyrian king Sennacherib famously had Syrian-built ships dragged overland on rollers from the Tigris River to the Euphrates River in 694 (Grayson and Novotny, RINAP 3/1 p. 12, with n. 23). Sippar and Sippar-Anunītu are situated between the Tigris and Euphrates at the point where those two rivers are the closest.
101 It is difficult to know whether or not Sippar was actually seized without bloodshed since many of the extant sources recording Cyrus' conquest of Babylonia are biased, anti-Nabonidus pieces of propaganda or later works inspired or influenced by them, for example, the Cyrus Cylinder (http://oracc.org/ribo/babylon8/Q006653/ [2020]). Since those sources want their intended audience to believe that Babylonia's deities and people abandoned Nabonidus completely and allowed Cyrus, the god Marduk's new earthly representative, to take control of Babylon and all of its territory without having to resort to violence, it is difficult for modern historians to be certain which 'facts' are authentic and which are not. Therefore, even with a source such as the Nabonidus Chronicle, which is supposed to be an unbiased witness to the events that unfolded in Babylonia at that time, we cannot be absolutely certain that Sippar, and later Babylon, were taken without a fight.
102 Nabonidus Chronicle iii 15´–16´ and Cyrus Cylinder line 17 ("without a fight or battle, he (Marduk) allowed him (Cyrus) to enter Šuanna"; http://oracc.org/ribo/babylon8/Q006653/ [2020]). Herodotus (I 191) states that the city was taken without a fight because Cyrus had his army redirect the course of the Euphrates River and had his army secretly enter Babylon via the dried-out river bed. For a study of Herodotus' account, see Rollinger, Herodots Babylonischer Logos pp. 19–28.
103 Nabonidus Chronicle iii 16´ and Cyrus Cylinder line 17 ("He (Marduk) delivered Nabonidus, the king who did not revere him, into his (Cyrus') hands"). According to early third-century-BC Babylonian scholar Berossos (Babyloniaca = FGrH 680 F10a), Nabonidus surrendered to Cyrus at Borsippa, after the Persian king is said to have razed Babylon's walls. A. Kuhrt (Persian Empire p. 82 n. 4) suggests that Borsippa is a mistake for Sippar, however, this need not be the case since that city was captured by Persian forces before Nabonidus retreated. A likely scenario, if Berossos' account is correct about where Nabonidus surrendered to Cyrus, is that the Babylonian king fled south from Sippar on the 14th of Tašrītu (VII) to Babylon, but failed to reach Babylon before its capture by Ugbaru on the 16th. With nowhere to run, Nabonidus fled to the nearest city, Borsippa. Since Nabonidus was well aware that Borsippa was not as well fortified as Babylon, he chose to surrender rather than to endure a siege. The text of the Cyrus Cylinder does not record where Nabonidus was captured. Furthermore, the sources contradict one another on the order of events. The Nabonidus Chronicle states that the Babylonian king was captured in Tašrītu (sometime after the 16th and before the end of the month) and that Cyrus only entered Babylon on the 3rd of Araḫsamna (VII). The Cyrus Cylinder (line 17) and Berossos both record that the Persian king entered Babylon and then captured Nabonidus.
104 The Dynastic Prophecy (Kuhrt, Persian Empire p. 80) also reports that Cyrus had Nabonidus exiled, although the place where this Babylonian king spent his final days is not recorded in that text. U. Moortgat-Correns (SMEA 38 [1996] pp. 153–177) has argued that Nabonidus was buried in the South Palace in Babylon. As H. Schaudig (Inschriften Nabonids pp. 16–17) has already pointed out, Moortgat-Correns' proposed location for Nabonidus' grave is highly unlikely.
Frauke Weiershäuser & Jamie Novotny
Frauke Weiershäuser & Jamie Novotny, 'End of Nabonidus' Reign: Cyrus' Conquest of Babylonia', RIBo, Babylon 7: The Inscriptions of the Neo-Babylonian Dynasty, The RIBo Project, a sub-project of MOCCI, 2024 [/ribo/babylon7/RINBE2Introduction/Nabonidus/EndofNabonidus'Reign:Cyrus'ConquestofBabylonia/]