By V. V. Minaeva
Nabonidus [Akkadian – “[the god] Nabu is exalted”], the last king of the Neo-Babylonian Empire, reigned from 556 to 539 BCE and was overthrown by the Persian king Cyrus II the Great. He is not directly mentioned in the Bible; perhaps he is mentioned once in the Book of Daniel as the father of Belshazzar, but is mistakenly called Nebuchadnezzar. Several biblical narratives related to Babylon also seem to reflect the memory of this ruler.
Nabonid/Nabonidus was born after 610 BCE; date of death is unknown. His father, Nabu-balassu-iqbi, is called a prince (Akkadian) and a ruler (Akkadian) in inscriptions; he may have been the leader of an Aramaic tribe. Nabonid’s mother, Adda-guppi, is known from inscriptions as a devotee of the Harran moon gods Sin, Ningal, Nusku, and Sadarnunna.
Nabonidus usurped royal power in his old age, at the end of June 556 BC. He was elected king after a military coup by conspirators against King Labashi-Marduk (556 BC), whose father, Neriglissar, had in turn ended the dynasty of Nebuchadnezzar II.
Nabonidus reigned for 17 years (556-539 BC; for the Babylonian calendar, see the article Nebuchadnezzar II). In the first year of his reign (555-554 BC), he retreated to the southern part of his realm, where he perhaps hoped to find support among the locals. According to a stele from Babylon, the king of Uruk, Larsa, and Ur brought precious gifts to the gods Sin, Shamash, and Ishtar and visited Kish, the city of the goddess Belet-ili. He began to dispose of the temple property himself, without the consent of the temple administration. That same year, Nabonid set out on a campaign against the state of Hum in Cilicia.
In 554-553 BC (Year 2), N. rebuilt the temple of the god Shamash in Sippar; during the work, a statue of King Sargon of Akkad was discovered. One of the king’s daughters became a priestess in the temple of Sin in Ur, where the king also rebuilt the temple of the goddess Ningal Aegipar. That same year, the king led an army against the country of Hamat in Syria.
By 553-552 BC, the reform of the Eanna temple administration in Uruk and successful military campaigns in the Ammananu mountains (Aman or Nur in southern modern Turkey) and Edom date back to the 1st century.
Nabonidus arrived in Tema between the 3rd and 6th years of his reign; according to his inscription from Harran, he remained there for 10 years. In the king’s absence, his successor, Belshazzar, ruled in Babylon. During his stay in Tema, Nabonid led a military campaign and ordered active construction in Babylonia, but the exact completion dates of these works are unknown. The king restored the temples of the god Bunene in Sippar (between the 4th and 13th years of his reign) and the goddess Annunitum in Sippar-Amnanum (possibly in the 16th year of his reign). In Ur, the Enunmah (part of the Temple of Sin Ekishnugal) and the ziggurat (after the 13th year, possibly in the 16th or 17th year of his reign) were restored. According to the Babylonian historian Berossus of the Hellenistic period, Nabonid built a defensive wall on the banks of the Euphrates in Babylon; several sealed bricks found there support this assertion, although there is no evidence to date these works.
In the 10th year of Nabonidus’s reign (546-545 BCE), the temple of the sun god Shamash, Ebabbar, in Larsa and the ziggurat in the temple complex dedicated to the same god in Sippar were restored. In the 17th year of his reign (539-538 BCE), Nabonid began collecting statues of gods from other cities in Babylon for celebrations in honor of the god Sin. The chronicles describe the celebration of spring and the New Year in Babylon and a military clash with the Persians. In August 539 BC, the Persians defeated the Babylonian army at Upi (Opis in Greek sources) on the banks of the Tigris. They then began the siege of Sippar, where Nabonid was located. The city fell without resistance, and Nabonid fled to Babylon. The Persian army entered Babylon without a fight, and the king was captured. The chronicles tell of the defense of the temple in Babylon by a detachment of Gutian warriors, thanks to which the performance of rituals in the temple was not interrupted. In October, Cyrus entered Babylon, where he was greeted with honors. Persian administration was established in the country. According to Berossus, Nabonidus was captured in Borsippa and Cyrus settled him in Carmania (a region in the south of modern Iran). Religious Policy
Nabonidus’s inscriptions reveal his belief in the divine legitimization of his reformist rule. Many royal inscriptions from ancient times contain references to the king, the intermediary between gods and people, receiving orders from the gods. In Nabonid’s ideology, the moon god Sin (Akkadian), or Nannar (Sumerian), occupies the position of the supreme Babylonian god Bel (also known as Marduk). This god differed from the Sin familiar to the Babylonians in attributes and even in the name of the temple. Sin’s temple in Ur was called Ekishnugal, and in Harran, Ehulhul. Sin is believed to be of West Semitic origin. It is possible that this cult began to emerge in Harran, based on the cult of the West Semitic moon god She, and then spread to East Semitic culture. direction, since Mesopotamian traditions are traced in his mythology (see Mesopotamian religion). Another feature of Nabonid’s ideology is the idea of Assyria and Babylonia as a single kingdom, a single culture.
Many scholars see in Nabonidus’s inscriptions the king’s almost obsessive passion for rebuilding temples in Babylonia according to their ancient plans, he even excavated the sites of ancient temples and, exposing the earlier foundations, rebuilt them on them without altering them more than a finger’s breadth. During his excavations, he uncovered antiquities, such as a statue of Sargon of Akkad, which he restored and established regular sacrifices. This type of activity was generally typical of Mesopotamian kings of all times: temples were built from quickly crumbling adobe, so Nabonidus’s distinctive construction methods can be explained by the Mesopotamian belief that truth has its origins in antiquity. Inscriptions describing Nabonidus’s construction projects have been found in numerous places.
The Image of Nabonidus in Various Traditions
Babylonian sources (the Chronicles, the Cyrus Cylinder with cuneiform texts, and the so-called Babylonian Pamphlet on Nabonidus) were created after Nabonidus’s reign, most likely in the circles of the priests of Marduk, and contain a justification for the Persian conquests. The sources refer to the contents of Nabonidus’s inscriptions and present the last Babylonian king in a less than favorable light. Cyrus, however, is portrayed as a liberator and is seen as the legitimate successor to the Babylonian throne. The texts on the Cyrus Cylinder and the Babylonian Pamphlet on Nabonidus characterize Nabonidus as a blasphemer, and Cyrus as the executor of the gods’ plan. Listing Nabonidus’s atrocities, it is stated in particular that he caused the people’s misfortunes, impoverishing the country and leading to famine. Although the inscriptions on royal stelae generally indicate prosperity, as is evident from Nabonidus’s Harran inscription, Babylonia experienced years of famine during his reign (e.g., in the 11th year of Nabonidus’s reign (545-544 BC)).
During the 10 years Nabonidus spent in Tema, Babylon did not celebrate the New Year—an important ritual in honor of the supreme god Marduk, which could not be performed without the king. The priests were dissatisfied with Nabonidus’s disregard for tradition. The Babylonian Pamphlet states that Nabonidus’s memory was erased (e.g., the Greeks knew almost nothing about him, and he is not mentioned in the Bible); Nabonidus’s claims to knowledge and wisdom are condemned. He is accused of creating a terrifying image of the Harran moon god and even of attempting to convince the priests of the Temple of Marduk in Babylon that their temple actually belonged to Sin, as it contained symbolic images of the crescent moon (this episode is also reflected in Nabonidus’s inscriptions).
But the Babylonians’ memory of Nabonidus was not entirely negative. Perhaps this explains why the usurpers who appeared in Babylon at the beginning of the reign of Darius I took the throne name of Nabonidus’s sons, Nebuchadnezzar III and IV.
Greek Sources
The idea that Cyrus conquered Babylon is first reflected in Greek historiography. The negative image of Cyrus may have arisen precisely during the time of Herodotus—under Darius I and during the period of anti-Persian propaganda—and likely originated in the legends of the Babylonian rebels. Traditions about N. may not have reached Herodotus, or he may not have taken them into account. The tradition of transmitting the name (Labinathus), followed by Herodotus, could have been reflected in the text of the Book of Daniel, where Nebuchadnezzar is the main Babylonian king. Xenophon, without naming the last Babylonian king, confidently describes him as an impious man. Historical details in the works of Greek historians seem like vague recollections.
Nabonidus is mentioned by the Babylonian priest Berossus, who wrote in Greek. Unlike earlier priestly historiographic texts, Berossus’s description of N.’s reign is impartial and extremely laconic: Cyrus pardoned Nabonidus after his capture, but for the first time in known Babylonian sources, the Persian king is held responsible for the destruction of Babylon.
Jewish Tradition
Nebuchadnezzar is not mentioned in either the Bible or rabbinic literature. Among the Qumran manuscripts is a work that likely formed the basis of the biblical legend of Nebuchadnezzar’s madness—the so-called Prayer of Nabonidus (4QPrNab=4Q242). Memories of Nabonidus are apparently preserved in biblical legends about Nebuchadnezzar’s prophetic dreams and his adoption of monotheism (Daniel 2). Belshazzar, called Nebuchadnezzar’s son in the Bible, was Nabonidus’s son.
The story in the Book of Daniel about Nebuchadnezzar’s sudden madness, his animal-like transformation, and his flight from human society originates from an episode in Nabonidus’s biography, when he lived in Tema. In the Bible, God transforms Nebuchadnezzar into a half-beast for his pride and heals him seven years later to demonstrate His omnipotence. The idea of Nebuchadnezzar’s actual madness comes later.
“The Prayer of Nabonidus” is based on the belief in the universality of rule and the uniqueness of the Hebrew God, who demonstrates benevolence toward the Jews. According to the story, Nebuchadnezzar, while in Tema, suffers from a terrible skin disease for seven years until he turns to the God of the Jews. The work ends with a letter from the king, composed by order of a Hebrew soothsayer, confirming the superiority of the Almighty God over Babylonian idols. Some scholars see a parallel between the description of the king’s skin disease in the “Prayer of Nabonidus,” which forced him to isolate himself from people, and the standard curse formula found in cuneiform sources from the 3rd and 2nd millennia BC, which contain prayers to Sin asking him to afflict a criminal with a skin disease and send him to wander the arid steppes like a wild ass. Cuneiform chronicles from Uruk, dating to the Hellenistic period, associate a similar curse with Shulgi (c. 2093-2047 BCE), the second and most successful ruler of the Third Dynasty of Ur (c. 2109 or 2104-2004 BCE).
It is possible that this story was borrowed from the Book of Daniel. Perhaps the Jews living in Babylonia interpreted Shulgi’s stay in Tema as a forced quarantine due to the king’s illness. According to Jewish law, a person with leprosy must live outside the community to avoid infecting others (Lev 13:45-46; Lamentations 4:15; Numbers 5:2-3; 2 Kings 7:3; cf. Luke 17:12).
The Old Testament contains rather vague recollections of historical events associated with Nabonidus Prophetic texts of the Bible, such as the prediction to Babylon in Isaiah 13 and 21, Jeremiah 50-51, and especially the prediction to Cyrus in Isaiah 44:28-45:4, are based directly or indirectly on events in Babylonia during the N. and the Persian occupation.
Literature: Frame, G., “Nabü-sarra-usur, and the Eanna Temple,” in ZA. 1991, vol. 81, pp. 37-86; Theuer, G., “The Mondgott in the Religion of Syrian-Palestine Jews: Unter besonderer Berücksichtigung von KTU 1.24,” in Freiburg (Switzerland), 2000; Dandamayev, M. A., “Nabonidus,” in Reallexikon der Assyrologie. 2001. Bd. 9.s. 6-11; Roaf M. Nabonid: Archäologisch // Ibid. s. 11-12; Kratz R. From Nabonidus to Cyrus // Ideologies as Intercultural Phenomena / Ed. A. Panaino, G. Pettinato. Mil., 2002. p. 143-156; Müller W. W., Al-Said S. F. Der babylonische König Nabonid in taymanischen Inschriften // Neue Beiträge zur Semitistik / Hrsg. N. Heavens. Wiesbaden, 2002. s. 105-121; Beaulieu P.-A. Nabonidus the Mad King: A Reconsideration of His Steles from Harran and Babylon // Representations of Political Power: Case Histories from Times of Change and Dissolving Order in the Ancient Near East / Ed. M. Heinz, M. H. Feldman. Winona Lake, 2007. p. 137-166.
Source in Russian: V. V. Minaeva, Nabonid. – Orthodox Encyclopedia, vol. 48, pp. 219-221.
Illustrative Photo by Essi Sani: https://www.pexels.com/photo/ancient-wall-decoration-5624531/
