52 Facts About Nabonidus

Nabonidus was the last king of the Neo-Babylonian Empire, ruling from 556 BC to the fall of Babylon to the Achaemenid Empire under Cyrus the Great in 539 BC.

Nabonidus was the last native ruler of ancient Mesopotamia, the end of his reign marking the end of thousands of years of Sumero-Akkadian states, kingdoms and empires.

Nabonidus was, to his own apparent surprise, proclaimed king after the deposition and murder of Labashi-Marduk in a plot likely led by Nabonidus's son Belshazzar.

Belshazzar acted as regent in Babylonia during this period, while Nabonidus continued to be recognised as the king.

Nabonidus's reign came to an abrupt end with the quick victory over his empire by Cyrus the Great in 539 BC.

Several sources state that Nabonidus was captured but spared, and possibly allowed leave to the region of Carmania.

The origins of Nabonidus are obscure, with the scarce available details about him leaving much room for interpretation and speculation.

Curiously, no person named Nabu-balatsu-iqbi who can reasonably be identified as Nabonidus's father appears in documents prior to Nabonidus's reign, thus making his father's status and position unclear.

The repeated references of Nabu-balatsu-iqbi as "prince" in Nabonidus's inscriptions suggests some sort of noble status and political importance.

Nabonidus was influential at the royal Babylonian court, according to her own inscriptions claiming that she wielded influence with the kings Nabopolassar, Nebuchadnezzar II and Neriglissar.

The Dynastic Prophecy, a later document written after the conquest of Babylonia by Alexander the Great centuries later, corroborates that Nabonidus would have originated in Harran, as it regards Nabonidus as the founder, and sole representative, of the "dynasty of Harran".

Presumably, Nabonidus was already born at this point, though his exact year of birth is yet unknown.

Not only would such a connection explain Nabonidus's rise to the throne but it would explain later historical traditions in which Nabonidus's son, Belshazzar, is described as Nebuchadnezzar II's descendant; as in the Book of Daniel in the Hebrew Bible, where Belshazzar is referred to as Nebuchadnezzar II's son.

The name of Nabonidus is otherwise poorly attested in sources prior to his reign.

However, it is unlikely that king Nabonidus would have failed to mention being a son of Nebuchadnezzar II.

Whether this Nabonidus is the same person as the future king is unclear.

The Babylonian historian Berossus, active centuries later during the Hellenistic period, wrote that Nabonidus had been a 'priest of Bel'.

Nabonidus rose to the throne in the aftermath of the collapse of the direct dynastic line of the Chaldean dynasty.

Nabonidus enjoyed consistent support from the Babylonian military throughout his reign and it is possible that the army played a role in his rise to the throne.

In one inscription, Nabonidus describes himself as visiting the sanctuaries of Marduk and Nabu in search for guidance, with a troubled conscience and questioning if his accession was legitimate:.

That Nabonidus campaigned there so shortly after Neriglissar's campaign could suggest that Syria, which was under Bablyonian suzerainty, was threatened by raiders from Cilicia, or could point towards Nabonidus, in general, being concerned about the security of the empire.

One inscription suggests that Nabonidus went on a second successful campaign to Cilicia in 555 BC, on the way perhaps attacking the city Hama in Syria, but the record is fragmentary.

Nabonidus noted at the beginning of his reign that the date of the temple's destruction was a strange coincidence: it had been destroyed exactly 54 years before he became king.

Babylonian sources state that Nabonidus conquered Arabian lands as far south as Medina.

Beaulieu believes it possible that Nabonidus had encouraged Cyrus the Great to rebel and wage war against the Medes, and had even allied with him, seeing as the beginning of Nabonidus's stay in Tayma coincides with the beginning of Cyrus's reign.

Nabonidus has typically been characterised as attempting religious reforms in Babylonia, wishing to raise the moon god Sin to the status of supreme deity and demoting the Babylonian national deity Marduk.

One inscription states that Nabonidus had been destined for kingship by the deities Sin and Ningal in his mother's womb.

The exaltation of Sin reached its height after the rebuilding of the Ekhulkhul and Nabonidus's latest known text containing religious elements goes as far as to refer to Marduk's traditional dwellings in Babylon, the temples Esagila and Ezida, as the temples and dwellings of Sin.

Not all historians share the view that Nabonidus was a religious reformer.

Nabonidus himself considered the rebuilding of the temple to be the major achievement of his reign.

Nabonidus appears to have attributed it to a sign of Sin's wrath that the people were not responsive to the king's religious reforms, whereas the populace likely attributed it to Marduk's wrath with the king's heretical faith.

Zawadzki offered several possible explanations, including that Sippar wished to celebrate its traditional cultic rituals, which were close in time to the Persian invasion, and that there thus was not any time to transfer the statue to Babylon, or that perhaps Nabonidus himself had ordered the statue to remain in Sippar.

Nabonidus might have ordered this since he intended to stop the Persians a short distance north of Sippar, and removing the statue from Sippar could have been construed as Nabonidus not having faith in his own victory.

Ugbaru revolted against Nabonidus, joined Cyrus, and was made the primary general in the Babylonian campaign.

Nabonidus received the acclamation of the people, though whether it was as a liberator from oppression, as Cyrus presented himself, or as a conqueror, is open to interpretation.

Berossus wrote that Nabonidus surrendered to Cyrus at Borsippa after the fall of Babylon who dealt with him "in a gracious manner", sparing his life and allowing him to retire, or possibly appointing him to be a governor, in Carmania, where Nabonidus lived out the rest of his life.

The royal chronicle simply states that Nabonidus was captured in Babylon after retreating, leaving his subsequent fate unclear.

The Dynastic Prophecy corroborates Berossus's account, by stating that Nabonidus was removed from his throne and settled "in another land".

Nabonidus likely had a large family even prior to becoming king, seeing as his mother Adad-guppi in her inscriptions claims that she had great-great-grandchildren, and Nabonidus was presumably Adad-guppi's only child.

Adad-guppi having great-great-grandchildren means that Nabonidus would have had great-grandchildren early in his reign, though the names, lineage, number and genders of these descendants are not mentioned.

The prayer claims that Nabonidus was afflicted with a terrible skin disease for seven years, which he was cured of by praying to the god of the Jews.

When more of his inscriptions, combined with literary sources describing him and his time, were uncovered in the first half of the 19th century, Nabonidus came to be described in different eccentric ways.

Weiershauser and Novotny wrote that contrary to the overtly negative assessments from the Persian period, Nabonidus was a relatively successful ruler, undertaking many building projects, leading his armies in successful campaigns far away from the Babylonian heartland and ensuring that his empire prospered.

Weierhauser and Novotny considered Nabonidus to be "undoubtedly one of the most vibrant personalities of ancient Mesopotamia".

Nabonidus conducted excavations founded on the well-established Mesopotamian idea that in order to properly renovate and rebuild a temple, its foundations had to be excavated so that it could be restored in accordance with its original plans.

Nabonidus notably revived the office of entum-priestess in Ur and consecrated his daughter in that office, and his inscriptions as king mention previous Babylonian and Assyrian rulers, as far back as Eriba-Marduk.

Evidence that Nabonidus was more interested in history than his predecessors exists in that Nabopolassar and Nebuchadnezzar II were often very brief in their descriptions of items found during the excavations of the temples, only briefly mentioning finding the foundation deposits of temples and which king had deposited the stone.

Nabonidus's attempted dating of Naram-Sin's reign, based on what was found during the excavation of a temple built by the king, is the earliest known dating of an archaeological artifact, and though Nabonidus's proposed date is off by about 1,500 years, it was still a very good estimate considering the lack of accurate dating technology.

Nabonidus is the only Neo-Babylonian king to in his inscriptions provide historical insight into why the temples he restored had fallen into disrepair in the first place, such as explaining how the sack of Harran by the Medes had damaged the temples in the city.

Nabonidus restored the damaged statue because of his "reverence of the gods" and his "respect for kingship".

In contrast to preceding Neo-Babylonian kings, who had been largely silent about Assyria, Nabonidus clearly positioned himself and the Babylonian kings as the successors of the Assyrian kings, calling them his "royal ancestors", who had ruled as universal monarchs throughout the Near East.

In two of his known inscriptions, Nabonidus assumes the traditional titulary of the old Neo-Assyrian kings, in sharp contrast to the otherwise typically modest titularies of the Neo-Babylonian kings.