city had been guilty. After Cyrus had thus taken possession of the capital, Nabonidus surrendered himself to the conqueror. The captive monarch was kindly treated, and life was granted to him on condition that he would consent to reside in the province of Carmania, at a distance from his own country; it was in that region that he died. The historian Herodotus-although his account of the conquests of Cyrus is in many respects so full-says little about the affairs of Babylonia at the time of the Persian invasion. He tells us, however, that the name of the native sovereign who was overcome by the great conqueror was Labynetus, and this is evidently the same name as Nabonidus, or Nabonnedus. Labynetus, says Herodotus, was not only the name borne by the last native king of Babylon, but it was also that of his father, the prince who, many years before, had made a treaty with the Lydians, and whose wife, Nitocris, had done much to beautify the capital city. This earlier Labynetus of Herodotus is evidently Nebuchadnezzar, whose name, indeed, begins with the same element as Nabonidus- that is to say, that is to say, the name of the god Nebo. The works which Herodotus attributes to Nitocris were in reality those of her husband, Labynetus or Nebuchadnezzar--if, indeed, this princess be an historical personage at all. It is interesting, however, that Herodotus states that the last king of Babylon was the son of the great Nebuchadnezzar―to give that monarch his true name-for in so doing he bears out, so far as his testimony is of any value, the words of the Book of Daniel, which not only calls Belshazzar son of Nebuchadnezzar, but also introduces the wife of the latter monarch as being the mother of the ill-fated prince who closed the long line of native rulers. Such being the only testimony of secular writers, there was no alternative but to identify Belshazzar with Nabonidus or Labynetus, the last king of Babylon, according to the extracts from Berosus, whose history, it must be repeated, does not seem to have been actually seen by any of the authors of ancient works now extant. Berosus was, in this particular, borne out by the celebrated Canon of Ptolemy, already spoken of, the accuracy of which there was every reason to believe. Yet the name Nabonidus stood in no sort of relation to that of Belshazzar; and the identification of the two personages was, undoubtedly, both arbitrary and difficult. The cuneiform inscriptions brought to Europe from the site of Babylon and other ancient cities of Chaldæa soon changed the aspect of the problem. The historical extracts, given by Josephus and Eusebius, from the annals composed by the priests of Bel, were indeed fully confirmed, and the Canon of Ptolemy retained its reputation for accuracy. Nabonidus, or, in the native form, Nabu-naïd, that is to say, "Nebo exalts," is the name given to the last native king of Babylon in the contemporary records inscribed on clay. This monarch, however, was found to speak of his eldest son as bearing the very name preserved in the Book of Daniel, and hitherto known to us from that source alone. The following is one of the inscriptions in which the name occurs; it was discovered in four copies inscribed on clay cylinders, which were in receptacles constructed to contain them at the four corners of the platform which supported the great temple of the Moon-god, at Mukeyyer-identified, as we have already seen, with Ur of the Chaldees. This temple is one of the many sanctuaries restored by Nabonidus : "I am Nabonidus, king of Babylon, maintainer of the temples of Bit-Saggil and Bit-Zida, worshipper of the great gods. . "The temples of ., the tower of Egish-shir-gal, in the city of Ur, were built but not completed, by Ur-Uk, the ancient king; Dungi, his son, completed his work. I found it recorded in the inscriptions of Ur-Uk and of Dungi his son, that Ur-Uk had built that tower but had not completed it; and that Dungi, his son, had completed his work. "In my days that temple had become old. Upon the ancient foundation which Ur-Uk and Dungi, his son, had built, I undertook to erect that tower anew with bricks and bitumen,* as in former times; and I founded it and built it to the glory of the Moon-god, Lord of the gods of heaven and earth, king of the gods, god of the gods who inhabit the great heavens, lord of the temple of E-gishshir-gal, in the city of Ur. "O Moon-god, lord of the gods, king of the gods of heaven and earth, god of the gods who inhabit the great heavens; when thou enterest joyfully into this temple, may a blessing for the temples of thy great godhead, Bit-Saggil, Bit-Zida, and E-gish-shir-gal, be upon thy lips; and set the fear of thy great godhead in the hearts of the people, that they may not sin against thy great godhead. Let the foundations of the temples stand firm, like the heavens. "Save me, Nabonidus, who am king of Babylon, from sinning against thy great godhead, and give me a life of long days, as a gift. *Or "slime," as the Authorised Version says, in the account of the building of the Tower of Babel. "Set the fear of thy great godhead in the heart of Belshazzar, my firstborn son, my own offspring; and let him not commit sin, in order that he may enjoy the fulness of life." The name which the Hebrew writer gives us in the form Belshazzar is, in its native Babylonian form, Belshar-usur, and signifies "Bel protects the king." It occurs also in some of the legal deeds of the reign of Nabonidus. A passage, resembling that just quoted, is found in a longer inscription of the same period, also discovered among the ruins of Ur; but the clay cylinder is mutilated at that particular part where the words referring to Belshazzar are written. We are able to see, however, that Nabonidus is here concluding his prayer to the Moon-god with a similar petition in favour of his firstborn son : These passages provide us, in an unexpected manner, with the name which had hitherto been known from the Book of Daniel, and from that document alone; but we were still in the dark as to the reason which could have induced the author to represent Belshazzar as king of Babylon. The prince was indeed the eldest son of his father, but there was no occasion for inferring from the Babylonian records that he ever became king or exercised kingly power. On the contrary, the cylinder from Babylon, bearing a record of Cyrus, which was discovered in 1880, harmonised with the statements of Berosus in showing that Nabonidus was the monarch whom the Persians overthrew; some lines from this |