Fall of Babylon

The year is 539 BC. The greatest city of the ancient world has fallen. Babylon has opened it's gates to a new conqueror: the mighty Persian king Cyrus the Great. In this episode of The Ancients, Tristan Hughes is joined once again by friend of the show Professor Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones to uncover the dramatic fall of Babylon and the ascent of Persia’s Achaemenid empire. From the final decades of Babylonian rule to Cyrus’ blood-stained triumph and the city’s remarkable survival under a new regime, they discover how one of history’s most iconic capitals lost its crown - a seismic chapter in the tumultuous story of the Ancient Near East. Watch this episode on our NEW YouTube channel: @TheAncientsPodcast https://www.youtube.com/@TheAncientsPodcast MORE The Walls of Babylon https://open.spotify.com/episode/0XBGgXjkgKO7ha1EKrCi1Z?si=lJFgjM3ISdCdO-lIWyFPrA Cyrus the Great https://open.spotify.com/episode/0Mu2t7PemMitCtmP2KvbkK?si=XSxpLFpmRsKARMRYk8FI6w Presented by Tristan Hughes. Audio editor is Aidan Lonergan, the producer is Joseph Knight. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff. All music courtesy of Epidemic Sounds The Ancients is a History Hit podcast. Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can take part in our listener survey here https://insights.historyhit.com/history-hit-podcast-always-on: https://insights.historyhit.com/history-hit-podcast-always-on Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Tristan Hughes?

  Ever wondered why the Romans were defeated in the Teutoburg Forest? What secrets lie buried in prehistoric Ireland? Or what made Alexander truly great? With a subscription to History Hit, you can explore our ancient past alongside the world's leading historians and archaeologists. You'll also unlock hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a brand new release every single week, covering everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com/subscribe.

• 0:32Speaker 01

  Hey, we're Nick and Jack, hosts of The Best One Yet. Behind every episode, there's research, emails, spreadsheets, and our shared Google Doc, the Headline Hammer. With Google Workspace with Gemini, Google's AI is built right into the premium versions of tools we already use, like Gmail, Docs, and Sheets. No new tools or extra logins, just personalized AI for the way we work. That means less time on the work around the work and more time finding the stories worth talking about. Get AI tools for work. Upgrade to Google Workspace with Gemini at goo.gle/workspacewithGemini. That's goo.gle/workspacewithGemini.

• 1:08Tristan Hughes?

  Hey guys, I hope you're doing well. I'm all good here, I'm just getting my gear together for the next episode I'm recording, all about Zoroastrianism. Really, really interesting, something I know nothing about and I'm looking forward to recording and then sharing it with you in the next few weeks. Now, today, we're kind of keeping in that area of the world because we're talking about the fall of Babylon in the 6th century, these larger-than-life figures like the absent Babylonian king Nabonidus, Bel Shazar, famous from the Bible, the writing on the wall, and also Cyrus the Great, the founder of the Persian Empire. It's a really cool story, and who better to talk through it than the one and only Reverend Professor Lloyd Llewellyn Jones? Lloyd, as always, he did not disappoint. And what's really exciting about this episode

• 1:51Tristan Hughes?

  is that it's going to be on our Ancient YouTube channel. That's right, we've just launched the YouTube channel, so you can also watch this episode too, if that is potentially of interest. Now, that all being said, let's get into the episode. I really do hope you enjoy.

• 2:18Tristan Hughes?

  539 B.C. And the greatest city in the ancient world has opened its mighty gates to a new power. In came the Persian king and conqueror Cyrus with his army, fresh from an incredibly bloody victory against the city's previous ruler. This city was Babylon. For the past few decades, Babylon had been the heart of its own powerful empire, but now that empire was no more. This is the story of the fall of Babylon, with our guest Reverend Professor Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones.

• 2:57Tristan Hughes?

  Lloyd, great to have you back.

• 2:58Speaker 02

  Hello, fabulous to be with you again.

• 3:00Tristan Hughes?

  And is this one of the big pivotal moments in Mesopotamian history? This transition from the Babylonian empire to the Persian empire?

• 3:08Speaker 02

  Yes, I think so. I mean, generally, you know, if you look at popular histories of Babylon that have been written over, you know, generations, the beginning of the Persian period is usually the cutoff point for most Babylonian historians. I would argue that we need to see a longevity of Babylon, you know, it goes into the Persian period. We shouldn't stop thinking about Babylon there because it still has, you know, a lot of life left in it yet. But generally, yeah, I'd say, you know, this is the end of a great Mesopotamian empire, and Babylon, of course, is incorporated into the bigger Persian empire, which is a world empire, so there is a shift.

• 3:44Tristan Hughes?

  Do we have many types of sources to tackle this subject?

• 3:47Speaker 02

  We do. Not all of them particularly reliable, of course, but the good thing is, we do have indigenous Mesopotamian sources, indigenous Babylonian sources, and that's a good thing. Not necessarily fulsome in terms of narrative, but certainly we can create a chronology out of the Cuneiform sources. And we also have a series of sort of conquest literature, if you like, created by the new Persian overlords of Babylon too, which are kind of reflecting back. On what happened and obviously therefore needs to be read quite carefully because

• 4:32Speaker 02

  this is propaganda literature.

• 4:34Tristan Hughes?

  Do we also have the Bible as well? Can the Bible be a source for us?

• 4:37Speaker 02

  The Bible certainly shouldn't be dismissed, but the Bible doesn't really account in any way, again, a narrative of Babylon's fall and takeover. But the key players are virtually all there, Nebuchadnezzar, Cyrus the Great. But the Bible misses out a person who is really integral to all of this, and that's Narbonidus.

• 5:01Tristan Hughes?

  Narbonidus, yes.

• 5:02Speaker 02

  Who is the last indigenous Babylonian monarch. And I think, you know, he's worth a lot more attention than is usually given to him.

• 5:09Tristan Hughes?

  Well, absolutely. We've got some big names to cover in this topic today, don't we? So let's set the scene first of all, the mid 6th century B.C. What does Babylon look like? How powerful is Babylon at this time?

• 5:21Speaker 02

  So this is the point that Babylon is in all of its glory. Okay, so Nebuchadnezzar the Second's campaigns, following his father's campaigns into Mesopotamia, into especially the Levant, made Babylon an incredibly wealthy city. And that wealth was utilized by Nebuchadnezzar on an industrial scale to make Babylon great again. That was his aim essentially, right? So Babylon, you know, had experienced ups and downs in its long 2,500 year history, where it shone and then declined, shone and declined. So it's not one rise and fall scenario in Babylonian history at all. But here we have under Nebuchadnezzar the Second, this

• 6:05Speaker 02

  idea of making Babylon into a super city, really. And the essential kind of structure of Babylon changes under Nebuchadnezzar. So during his reign, we have the final formation of the state architecture of the city. So a great processional route, which went from the river Euphrates across a bridge into the heart of Babylon, the mighty Ishtar Gate, which we now see in the Pergamum Museum in Berlin, is staggeringly beautiful.

• 6:38Tristan Hughes?

  The great walls of Babylon, isn't it?

• 6:40Speaker 02

  Huge, vast walls of Babylon itself, the great ziggurat of the god Marduk. This is, this is an imperial. Edifice really for the Babylonian state as a whole. So I think that Babylon in the sixth century was probably the the biggest city the world had ever seen at that point. You know, before your Alexandrias and your Rome's, there was there was Babylon and there was nothing to compare with it. It was also a really rich multicultural society as well. So there were, you know, peoples from all over the ancient world, living in Babylon or visiting Babylon. And it's no surprise really, is it, that that idea of of, you know, the mixture of languages that could be heard on the on the city streets is there

• 7:25Speaker 02

  in the Hebrew Bible. Remember the Tower of Babel story that we've talked about in the past? I mean, that that I think, you know, really captures this kind of multiplicity of ethnics there in the city.

• 7:36Tristan Hughes?

  So do we get, do we think the origins of the word Babel and to babble about and babbling could come from Babylon?

• 7:41Speaker 02

  Unfortunately not. I'd love to say, yeah, that's exactly the way it was through route. No, unfortunately not. Babel, the Tower of Babel comes from the Old Akkadian name for Babylon, which was Babil. So it simply comes from that.

• 7:54Tristan Hughes?

  Okay.

• 7:54Speaker 02

  But I know that's strong but wrong.

• 7:56Tristan Hughes?

  I also want to mention quickly the bridges, because of course you've got the Euphrates River running through the heart of Babylon. And another monumental piece of architecture to really show the prominence was it was the great bridges that that crossed over this river, wasn't it?

• 8:10Speaker 02

  Absolutely, absolutely. We should think of ancient Babylon more akin to Venice than anything else, you know, it was punctuated with canals. And these waterways were were the main communication channels for the Babylonians.

• 8:26Tristan Hughes?

  So how do we get from Nebuchadnezzar and this golden age of Babylon, the greatest city in the world, the centre of the world? How do we get from his reign to the reign of the figure who's going to be a key person in this story, Nabonidus?

• 8:41Speaker 02

  Yes, so Nabonidus follows Nebuchadnezzar to the throne. Nebuchadnezzar doesn't leave any apparent heirs. So whether he didn't have children at all, or his children had died, we we really don't know. But there's a gap. Nabonidus seems to have been part of the collateral branch of the royal family. He wasn't, you know, core to it at all. But he comes to power thanks to his mother. Her name is Adad Gupi. Ah. And we know a lot about her because she left an autobiography. Now, it was probably written after her death, so it's not exactly her, her own words.

• 9:26Speaker 02

  But I think there's enough there to convince us that, you know, she kind of gave it an authority. And Adad Gupi is probably the ultimate stage mother in ancient history because she engineers her son's succession to the throne. This isn't unusual per se, you know, very often wives of kings do that for their sons. But the fact that she's not part of the inner court, you know, she's not, she's not the wife of Nebuchadnezzar or something, makes this a little bit unusual. So her background is needed before we can really understand what Nabonidus was all about. So she was born and bred in a city called Haran, which is in Syria.

• 10:08Speaker 02

  And Haran was the chief cult centre for the worship of the moon god. And the moon god was named Sin. Now, you know, Babylonians worshipped many, many gods. In Babylon, the chief god there was Marduk, and his temple dominated the whole city. And the cult of Marduk was the most important one in the land. But in Haran, we have not exactly a rival centre, but an alternative centre where it just happened to be Sin who was the, the chief god. And it would seem that in her youth, this Adad Gupi was priestess within the temple. And she became an absolute devotee of this god.

• 10:52Speaker 02

  You know, it's very easy when we think about people from the ancient world to disassociate them from the idea of faith. You know, when we talk about, you know, the gods being worshipped, we all think it's all rather sort of facile and, you know, on a surface. What we see with Adad Gupi is a real belief in this god. I mean, she dedicates her life to the worship of this deity that, whom she regards as being an active presence in her life. Faith is, is how, the only word we can use for it. She's got a deep faith in this god. Now, when she's in her teens, she she marries a local nobleman.

• 11:32Speaker 02

  And he's of some status, but he's not not really of of any great political importance. She claims later on in her in her autobiography that she was born in the reign of King Ashurbanipal of Assyria.

• 11:50Tristan Hughes?

  So that is before the fall of Nineveh in six twelve.

• 11:53Speaker 02

  That's right, because we know she died at about the age of ninety five.

• 11:58Tristan Hughes?

  Wow.

• 11:59Speaker 02

  A very long-lived woman for antiquity.

• 12:01Tristan Hughes?

  That's good going, yes.

• 12:02Speaker 02

  Most people were dead by forty in antiquity, okay, so this is a long-lived woman. So you can understand why she puts her faith in a god as well, you know, it gives her this longevity. So it's highly likely she was, and and some historians have said, well, actually, she could have come from the family of Ashurbanipal. So was she of royal Assyrian stock? That's a tantalizing thing. Certainly, she sort of sees herself as as somebody of consequence, there's no doubt in that. She has a son when she's in her late teens and she calls him Nabonidas, Nabu after the the the god of wisdom, Nabonidas. And she, like many mothers, you know, wants the best for her boy.

• 12:48Speaker 02

  And in her autobiography, she tells us in great detail how she pleaded with sin every day to make something of her son, you know, that he would be something special.

• 13:00Tristan Hughes?

  Make Nabonidas great.

• 13:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, again, there must be some, there must be something in this boy, you know, she says, you know. And to that end, she says, I I dedicated myself to sin, to the god. And she she's really interesting, she says, I cast off my luxuries, I wore hair garments, I I ate only bread and onions. You know, so she she lives a kind of convent life, almost, putting all of her passions, all of her devotion to this god, with the hope that as a consequence, he would support Nabonidas. It's quite incredible, isn't it, you know? Well, anyway. When Nabonidus is in his mid teens,

• 13:44Speaker 02

  his mother takes him to Babylon from the first visit, from Haran to Babylon. And I suppose because of her status, she is welcomed at court by Nebuchadnezzar. And this is Nabonidus's first introduction essentially to court society in Babylon. And you get the impression that that Adal Guppy, you know, has her finger in several pies at court as well. So she maneuvers her son into high circles, including circles of of governance and also of the military as well. And he becomes essentially a kind of indispensable asset to Nebuchadnezzar the second.

• 14:27Speaker 02

  So as far as Adal Guppy is concerned, you can see that, you know, this is all starting to pay off. He becomes somebody. And to the point that when Nebuchadnezzar dies, Nabonidus, almost without opposition, almost without opposition, inherits the throne. So it's strange, you know, now, you know, Adal Guppy would say, well, faith moves mountains, all right? And this is exactly what has happened, you know, it's all come to be. So this is why you've always got to take things with a pinch of salt. And given that it was written, of course, you know, in retrospect, hindsight is a great thing. Okay. So, you know, she can create a narrative that way. But I do believe she was a woman of of great resolve and great piety as well. So, yes, he he becomes king.

• 15:12Speaker 02

  And shortly after his accession to the throne, he begins to rule in the manner of Nebuchadnezzar. He he kind of sets an agenda, you know, to continue Nebuchadnezzar's policies. But like his mother, he too is an acolyte of sin. Interesting. So that precedes his actual arrival to Babylon. And you can understand it. I mean, he's been brought up in, you know, basically what is a zealot's household, okay? I mean, how do you get away from that? You know, it's it's a cult that he's been brought up in, okay? And he cannot move away from that. And he makes no attempt to move away from that. And that's a kind of.

• 15:51Speaker 02

  A little bit upsetting in a Babylonian context because the chief duty of the Babylonian king from Hammurabi way, way in the past. Yeah, more than a thousand years. More than a thousand years was to worship and placate the chief god of Babylon, Marduk. So every year in particular, at the New Year Festival, which would take place in sort of March, April, the king of Babylon would process through the Ishtar Gates, down this great avenue, which is lined with Ishtar's lions, to the temple of Marduk. And there he would meet the, the high priest of Marduk and they'd go through this ritual,

• 16:33Speaker 02

  a bizarre ritual, where the priest, the high priest, would slap the king's face so hard that tears would come to his eyes. That was the whole point. Once those tears were here, it would be read as the king was acquiescing to the will of the god and therefore the god would protect Babylon again. So this New Year's ritual was a vital component of Babylonian life. And in fact, you could almost say that the whole architecture of Babylon was created by Nebuchadnezzar for that purpose. It all leads to this kind of inner chamber in the ziggurat, you know, for, for that kind of beating to, to go on.

• 17:12Speaker 02

  And of course, early on in his reign, Narbenidus began to neglect those duties. He, he just wasn't into it. It's almost like, you know, he couldn't quite see the value of Marduk. You know, it, sin had, had done all the work for him so far. Why would he turn attention away from him? It's really strange in the world of polytheism, when you know, when you could go from one god to another. It's very monotheistic thinking, isn't it? You know, it's, something is going on there, you know, and that, I think we can only blame really his mother for, for making him feel that way. Well, it comes to a point really where Narbenidus is so kind of.

• 17:51Speaker 02

  Obsessed with the idea of of of the moon god, that he decides to leave Babylon. He thinks I I've no role here really, you know.

• 18:00Tristan Hughes?

  And the context is, so he's only been ruling for about three years or so.

• 18:04Speaker 02

  Three or four years, that's that's all, absolutely. So he's got a son already, and the son is, he must be in his early twenties by this point. He's, his name is much better known than his father, actually, Belshazzar.

• 18:17Tristan Hughes?

  Ah.

• 18:17Speaker 02

  So we look at him in the book of Daniel, for instance.

• 18:21Tristan Hughes?

  The writing on the wall, isn't it?

• 18:22Speaker 02

  Absolutely, absolutely. So Belshazzar, he's left behind to be the regent of Babylon. Now, Nabonidus himself takes himself away from Babylon and he goes down south to Arabia. And he goes to a place called Timur, which is today in the sort of Saudi Arabia area. And it was an oasis. It was a beautiful place. And apparently lots of archaeological work has been done in the last decade there. And we've discovered a palace of Nabonidus that he built for himself there. And he built for himself a temple to the god sin as well. So he kind of goes into voluntary religious exile, really, and kind of gives up

• 19:07Speaker 02

  the rule of Babylon to his son. And Belshazzar seems to

• 19:14Speaker 02

  rule very effectively. Interestingly, let's, the the name Belshazzar, of course, has that compound bell in it, which is an alternative name for Marduk.

• 19:23Tristan Hughes?

  Okay, yeah.

• 19:24Speaker 02

  So we can really see that this regent king gave a great deal of emphasis on the on the traditional rites of Marduk.

• 19:31Tristan Hughes?

  Is it linked to Baal at all?

• 19:33Speaker 02

  No, no, not, not, well, I suppose you could say yes, in a way, in that they they both actually mean lord.

• 19:39Tristan Hughes?

  Right.

• 19:39Speaker 02

  So, yes, in a way, yeah, you could see that. I'll give you that.

• 19:41Tristan Hughes?

  Okay, thank you.

• 19:43Speaker 02

  So now there's an interesting quandary here. Do we really have Nabonidus going into voluntary exile? Or was there really a kind of usurpation going on?

• 19:56Tristan Hughes?

  Are they fed up with him already?

• 19:57Speaker 02

  Absolutely. I get a feeling that is what's really going on here, that. Nabonidus doesn't put up a fuss and in a way perhaps is quite happy to abandon Babylon. But Belshazzar is not really there as a caretaker king. He is there as king. So I, I think really we, we have the situation of, you know, king in exile and king on the throne. And they're both being called in those terms. Belshazzar seems to be a very competent, very competent ruler indeed. And I suppose it's no surprise therefore that, you know, the biblical authors kind of don't remember Nabonidus, but they do remember Belshazzar because he's, he's present. You know, don't forget when the, when the Jews are in Babylon, you know, they're there during their exile.

• 20:41Speaker 02

  He would have been ruling them at, at this period.

• 20:43Tristan Hughes?

  And is it the Bible that calls Belshazzar actually the son of Nebuchadnezzar?

• 20:47Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 20:47Tristan Hughes?

  Right.

• 20:48Speaker 02

  So they write out entirely.

• 20:50Tristan Hughes?

  Interesting.

• 20:50Speaker 02

  They write out Nabonidus, probably out of innocence. I don't think it's a kind of like an attempt to write out, you know, to demonize him or give him domnatio memoria or anything. I just don't think they realized that there was a king in between at all. So he's down in Arabia, you know, worshiping his god and, and living in this beautiful oasis. And then out of the blue, when things seem to be going really well for Belshazzar, news is brought to Babylon that there is an army advancing on them.

• 21:20Tristan Hughes?

  Interesting.

• 21:21Speaker 02

  And this is the last thing they expected.

• 21:22Tristan Hughes?

  Right.

• 21:31Speaker 01

  Hey, we're Nick and Jack, hosts of the best one yet. Behind every episode, there's research, emails, spreadsheets and our shared Google Doc, the headline hammer. With Google Workspace with Gemini, Google's AI is built right into the premium versions of tools we already use, like Gmail, Docs and Sheets. No new tools or extra logins, just personalized AI for the way we work. That means less time on the work around the work and more time finding the stories worth talking about. Get AI tools for work. Upgrade to Google Workspace with Gemini at goo.gle/workspacewithGemini. That's goo.gle/workspacewithGemini.

• 22:06Speaker 03

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• 23:06Tristan Hughes?

  And so, before we get more to that army, shall we talk also Nabonidus's mum? Is she now out of the picture? Has she died by this point?

• 23:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, she doesn't feature in the sources any longer. Her goal has been completed. We should imagine that she, I mean, when would she have died then? If she's about 94. She would have died sort of relatively early in the reign of Nabonidus, in that case. So maybe she went with him to the oasis in Arabia? Maybe she's there with him. She disappears from the records.

• 23:36Tristan Hughes?

  She disappears from the records.

• 23:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely. And it's her grandson then, who is now reigning in Babylon.

• 23:43Tristan Hughes?

  So what is this army that has appeared on the scene?

• 23:45Speaker 02

  Well, this is the army of Cyrus the Great, this new king of Persia, who you know, I have some admiration for. He goes from taking the disparate tribes of Persia and unifies them into one fighting force. He marches them from the south of Iran to the north, where they absolutely obliterate the Medes.

• 24:09Tristan Hughes?

  It's the Medes, isn't it?

• 24:10Speaker 02

  Yeah. So then the Persians take over the Medean Empire, which stretched all the way into Anatolia to the High Lass River. And then Cyrus led his army across Anatolia to Sardis, the great kingdom of Lydia fell to him. So within a decade, the Persians are suddenly ruling half of the ancient Near East. But then, rather than doubling back and going home, Cyrus decides he's going to go for the ultimate prize. And that is, he's going to see if he can't take Babylon as well.

• 24:44Tristan Hughes?

  And an idea of like mapping the territory. So it almost feels like Persia is almost a shroud on top of what.

• 24:50Speaker 02

  That's right. It's like a great archway, I suppose, that sits over Babylon.

• 24:54Tristan Hughes?

  Yes, and Babylon's control is the Mesopotamian Valley and maybe a bit into Syria.

• 24:59Speaker 02

  And into Syria and into the Levant, all of that. Okay. So, yeah, it's, it sits, it's a good analogy, actually, like a dark cloud hovering above Babylon. Now, obviously, news is being brought to Belshazzar of these new conquests that are going on. You know, there's, there's a new boy on the block. And it's a bit frightening as well. You know, even though the Greeks, for instance, regard in later years, Cyrus as this great paragon of kingship, you know, of kind rule and authority. We can't deny the fact that you build an empire on bloodshed. Okay. You know, at sword point. So there would have been a lot of, of killing and a lot of grief and a lot of hurt in the, in the creation of this empire.

• 25:43Speaker 02

  So without a doubt, you know, this was a cause of concern for the Babylonians, but they still think, well, you know, we are, we are still the main power here. Who are these upstarts, you know? So Cyrus marches his, his armies from the coast of Asia Minor, modern day Turkey, into North Syria, and he begins to march down the Euphrates, inching towards Babylon.

• 26:09Speaker 02

  Now about fifty miles outside of Babylon is the city of Opis, which was an important trading centre, you know, it looked to the north of Iraq. So it was kind of a hop, skip and a jump from Babylon, but a big commercial centre in itself. And there Cyrus surrounds the city with his army. And with that, Belshazzar leaves Babylon and goes to Opis and sets up his own camp outside the city as well. So he's prepared for a battle there. Cyrus's men completely capture the city and they annihilate it. They kill every man that they find, most women and children, and those who do survive are sold into slavery.

• 26:51Speaker 02

  It is a brutal attack on this city. And killed in the conflict itself is Belshazzar.

• 27:01Tristan Hughes?

  Oh, right. So his army does take part in the.

• 27:03Speaker 02

  Absolutely, absolutely. So they try, they try to push back against this this new force. But they're too weak, they're far too weak. You have to ask the question, why does Cyrus do this? Well, he puts all of his energies into the sack of Opis because he doesn't want to do that to Babylon.

• 27:20Tristan Hughes?

  Right, so Mr. Warning, okay.

• 27:22Speaker 02

  You know, as a prized possession and un tarnished by any of this, you know, he knew and he knows that Babylon has got this, these new grand buildings, you know, he doesn't want to see those sacked and burned to the ground. So he uses Opis as a as a kind of propaganda piece, saying to the Babylonians, you know, this is what I will do to you if I have to. So I suggest that you open your gates to me. Okay. So it's a really pragmatic way of doing this. But, you know, we tend in our historiography of Cyrus to overlook this, the brutality of that attack. And it really was quite terrifying. So much so that Nabonidas down in in Arabia

• 28:06Speaker 02

  was actually terrorised enough to take up arms and return to Babylon.

• 28:11Tristan Hughes?

  Oh, so now he comes back onto the scene.

• 28:13Speaker 02

  He comes back. So, which is something to be praised, you know, I mean, he doesn't abandon his duties. Now, he could easily have stayed well out of of the conflict at all. So he comes back. What kind of support he has, we don't know, we really don't know. And of course, his, his son has, has been slaughtered, we know that. And so Cyrus and his army begin to move closer to Babylon. Now Cyrus has a plus card on his side as well. And that is local Babylonian military generals and nobles tend to come over to his side. They see that really the future lies with Cyrus.

• 28:55Speaker 02

  And so some very prominent Babylonian nobles turn and become part of the, the, the Persian Brigade as well. And therefore, of course, can provide Cyrus with, with intelligence is what he needs, you know? So he marches his army to Babylon and as they approach the gates, the great gates of Babylon. Indeed, they open peacefully for Cyrus. It's, it's an amazing scene really. And apparently, you know, he, he promises the Babylonians that they will not be put to the sword. No harm will be done to them, to their families or to their gods.

• 29:33Speaker 02

  And he rides on a horse into the city centre, right up to the temple of Marduk, which he then goes and visits. Where Abinida is in all of this, we don't know. He's, he's conspicuous by his absence. Maybe he's already been taken prisoner, which is my opinion. I think that's probably what goes on there. And in the, the temple of, of Marduk, essentially Cyrus establishes himself as the king of Babylon. The new king of Babylon. So in some respects, I mean, if we follow our chief source for this, which is an incredible clay cylinder, which we call the Cyrus Cylinder. It's in the, it's in the British Museum.

• 30:17Speaker 02

  It's, it's one of the most important documents from the ancient world, I think. What we have there is is this story from Cyrus's point of view of what happened at that time. And of course, it's a lot of spin doctoring going on. If there was any resistance in Babylon itself, it's completely overwritten. Okay, I get the feeling there wasn't, to be honest. I really think that the basis of the Cyrus Cylinder is factual. But what he says in that cylinder is of real importance to us because he portrays himself as an authentic Babylonian king.

• 30:55Tristan Hughes?

  Interesting. Okay.

• 30:56Speaker 02

  So he opens by saying, I am Cyrus, king of Babylon, king of Sumer and Akkad, which are the titles that have been used, you know, since again Hammurabi's day.

• 31:07Tristan Hughes?

  Sargon as well.

• 31:07Speaker 02

  Oh, way, way, way back. Okay, so this is him understanding what Mesopotamian kingship is all about. And we must make the difference here between kind of Iranian Persian identity and Mesopotamian identity. They were not the same things at all, you know, the Iranians were a completely different people.

• 31:27Tristan Hughes?

  This is the valley over, so to speak.

• 31:29Speaker 02

  Absolutely. Yeah, precisely. You know, we've got the Zagros Mountains cutting between these two. This was a very different way of thinking about ideology. You know, the idea that the Mesopotamian king was a shepherd of his people, that kind of shepherd image, he meant nothing to the Persians, but they adopted it in Babylon. So Cyrus in this incredible document, and it must have been written with the cooperation of the religious elite, he writes how the god Marduk was frustrated that the Babylonian peoples were not being well looked after by their king. And he says, Nabonidas, this

• 32:13Speaker 02

  this misfit, you know, had completely abandoned the gods. And moreover, he lays at Nabonidas' feet this idea that he was enslaving the Babylonian people. There's no evidence for that whatsoever. But it, you know, Cyrus has constructed that document to say that Nabonidas was a bad king. I don't very much if Cyrus knew anything about Narbenidus, but it's the priests, of course, who are writing that. You can see that they've got an axe to grind as well, so they're probably willing to do it too.

• 32:43Tristan Hughes?

  But it's interesting, do you then think that alongside those generals that went over to Cyrus, that maybe some of the priests also went over to Cyrus before he even approached the walls?

• 32:53Speaker 02

  I'm quite convinced of that, absolutely. Because, yeah, absolutely, you get no sense of pushback at all, you know, even from the leads. Now, kind of interesting that, you know, in the document, the priests who are writing this thing, make Marduk speak, you know? And so Marduk says, you know, "I'm looking out for a new champion. Narbenidus has done me no good whatsoever, so I need somebody else." And he says, "I looked around the world and my eye fell upon Cyrus." And he says, "I will make him the shepherd of my people." And then, this is incredible line, he says, "I took him by the hand and I brought him into Babylon." So here, Cyrus becomes completely and utterly, you know, the son

• 33:36Speaker 02

  of Marduk, really, you know? He becomes his chief priest and his most beloved as well. And Cyrus is very, obviously, very keen to be seen in that kind of way. We don't actually know anything about Cyrus's indigenous religion, you know, what god he worshipped. Did he worship Ahura Mazda, who becomes really important later on in the Achaemenid period? We simply don't know. But what we're seeing is that he's very pragmatic and is willing to accept local gods. More than just accept, he's actually willing to be seen as, you know, the heir, the chosen one of these gods. And incidentally, I should say as well that those words, "I took you by the hand and led you," are echoed of all places in the Hebrew Bible, in the

• 34:19Speaker 02

  Book of Isaiah. So there, it is Yahweh, the Hebrew god, who says, "I was looking for a champion for my people. I looked around the world and my eye fell upon Cyrus, and I made him the shepherd of my people. And I took him by the hand and I brought him to Babylon." What suggests to me is that there is kind of like one core text that's being used, you know, and it's been disseminated to different religious groups in Babylon. And it's with the kind of instruction, insert your god here, you know, so Cyrus is playing to a big crowd and they're all basically using this idea that he is the chosen one of whatever god is appropriate.

• 34:55Tristan Hughes?

  But it shows he really understood, didn't he, the multicultural nature of Babylon at that time and he played to their different beliefs.

• 35:03Speaker 02

  Absolutely, he really gets it, which is remarkable because when you think, you know, he comes from this tiny tribe in southwest Iran, you know, which was hardly multicultural, you know, and he just, he just gets it. And that's, I think, one of the things that makes him great, it really does, you know, he understands those kind of processes. So what we have there then is this, this huge propaganda thing. And about a year later, he installs his son as the regent of Babylon. So he is, Cyrus leaves, you know, as in intentions to leave to keep on conquering, of course, but he wants Babylon to be well looked after and he appoints his son Cambyses to be the, the viceroy of Babylon, essentially. Now, there's a really,

• 35:47Speaker 02

  really fascinating little section of, of the Cyrus cylinder, which unfortunately it's really full of lacunae, you know, breaks off, it's really badly damaged at this point. But there's enough to see that in a big ceremony of state in the temple of Marduk, Cyrus appoints Cambyses as the regent in this big ceremonial. And there's this tiny little detail, Cyrus says Cambyses wore Elamite dress. Now, that's a really odd detail, but it's actually, let's unpack it. The Elamites were the kind of neighbors of the Persians in Iran.

• 36:29Speaker 02

  And I think that now we understand that the early Persians were heavily influenced by the Elamites, you know, they were the kind of like the the lost link really of understanding where Persian society and culture came from.

• 36:40Tristan Hughes?

  So Elam, that's near the Persian Gulf.

• 36:41Speaker 02

  So Elam is is on the the the bottom of the Zagros Mountains, in the flat plains, that now very sort of oil-rich area that straddles today Iran and Iraq.

• 36:53Tristan Hughes?

  Ah, okay.

• 36:54Speaker 02

  Its chief city was Susa, the ancient city of Susa. So this was a very important area for the Persians. The Elamites had been the constant enemies of Babylon throughout its history, and Babylon had been invaded by the Elamites many times. So it's kind of interesting here that Cyrus presents his son in the costume of a people who had conquered Babylon in the past. So this idea that it's that that there's this pure sort of love in between Cyrus and the Babylonians is kind of altered, ruptured by this appearance of of Elamite dress. It's it's rather like, you know, when the British went into India and at these state

• 37:37Speaker 02

  ceremonies, everybody was wearing, you know, British court dress to be on parade, to make their presence felt. And I think that's what's going on there. So it's not exactly as it's presented in in most of the Cyrus cylinder, this kind of harmonious transference of power. There is, there is an element of one-upmanship going on there, too. However, what is fascinating is you would think that in a period like this, where there's a change of regime, that things would all fall apart in Babylon, but it doesn't. Babylon's life just keeps on going as normal, and that's because Cyrus made no attempt whatsoever to change the governance of Babylon.

• 38:18Speaker 02

  He didn't change the administrators, he doesn't change the the priesthood, which kind of suggests, you know, he he has the the idea, if it ain't broken, don't fix it, you know, it just, it just is maintained, which again, kind of suggests that the priests and the bureaucrats and the nobles were in on the change, you know, were probably more than happy to see Labanidas go.

• 38:49Speaker 01

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• 39:24Speaker 03

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• 40:24Tristan Hughes?

  So the story of the fall of Babylon in 339, I mean, the bloodletting, the destructive part of it, isn't at Babylon itself, it's at Opus.

• 40:31Speaker 02

  At Opus, yeah.

• 40:32Tristan Hughes?

  It's that battle, we're completely destroyed.

• 40:34Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 40:34Tristan Hughes?

  And yet, you know, the takeover of Babylon itself, even though at that time Babylon, you know, is more fortified than it's ever been before in its history with its incredible walls and so on, you know, it seems to be bloodless. You know, Cyrus taking over with the nobles.

• 40:50Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 40:51Tristan Hughes?

  It's really interesting.

• 40:51Speaker 02

  From what we do, I mean, there is not one text that we have that talks about Babylonian insurrection at this period. So that is really fascinating, I think. I mean, you know, blood is shed at Opis, lots of blood, and the royal family suffers that way. And I think, you know, Nabonidus disappears from the scene. He must have been executed. There's no chance that he survived.

• 41:14Tristan Hughes?

  Because it symbolizes the end of the neo-Babylonian empire dynasty, doesn't it?

• 41:18Speaker 02

  Exactly, exactly. And another thing, but you know, is in the Cyrus cylinder as well, towards the the rear of the inscription, the back of the inscription, is that Cyrus says, I rebuilt the city walls, which were in decay not from attack, just because they hadn't been upkept, you know, by Nabonidus and Belshazzar. He kind of let them go into disrespare. So he builds them up and he says, and I found an inscription that belonged to an ancient king, whose name was Ashurbanipal. And so he links himself then as well to this longevity of Mesopotamian kingship.

• 41:54Tristan Hughes?

  Assyrian kings.

• 41:55Speaker 02

  Assyrian kings, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Who of course had ruled Babylon themselves as well. So he, you know, he's playing the antiquarian there as well, which is, which is really fascinating. Interesting, I should say as well, for his, for justification, Nabonidus was also very interested in in Babylon's past history. And in fact, his daughter was kind of like an amateur archaeologist. And he allowed her to set up her own little museum in Babylon.

• 42:24Tristan Hughes?

  Wow.

• 42:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, we get the first ever kind of real sort of suggestion of art, ancient artifacts being gathered together and put on display. And that's by this Babylonian princess. So kind of, you know, kind of his dues. I mean, he was interested in Babylon's kind of history and Babylon's culture, I suppose.

• 42:41Tristan Hughes?

  I'd like to ask about one more story, and this brings us back to the Bible and the story of Baal Shazar. Because can you explain to us the writing on the wall story and how it could link to the real story of Baal Shazar and his demise?

• 42:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, this is pleasant scholars, rabbis and priests for centuries. It's a, it's a very strange thing. So, so part of it is, of course, because there's this hubris that's going on. Belshazzar is holding this enormous feast, this great banquet, and he's using.

• 43:12Speaker 02

  The the the tableware that had come from the temple of Yahweh in Jerusalem, you know, his Nebuchadnezzar the second sacking of Jerusalem, stripped the temple bare. So, you know, they're using drinking cups and gold plate that actually belonged in in the cult centre, in the treasury of the temple. So that's an abomination to God, of course. And so what happens there in the narrative that we get in Daniel is this hand suddenly appears out of nowhere with a pointed finger, you know, and it writes down basically what is a kind of a kind of equation, a sort of monetary equation, really. It says, kind of like in the equivalent for us, it would be a fiver, a fiver, ten pounds and twenty, all of that would bring about your destruction.

• 43:56Speaker 02

  Five plus five plus ten plus twenty. Yeah, you know, it was your death. Equals your death, basically. That's the sort of equivalent of it. It is the most cryptic kind of of thing. But I suppose it's there in the Bible because it does foreshadow Belshazzar's death in battle, which is not mentioned then in the Bible. So it's very, very cryptic. And I think this is because the the problem is, of course, with the dating of the book of Daniel. Daniel certainly preserves court stories set in Babylon. And this is a very popular sort of genre. From the fourth century B.C. to about the first

• 44:35Speaker 02

  century B.C., the the genre of the Jewish man in a foreign court is very important. So we have the book of Esther, where we have the story of Mordechai, the Jew in the court of the Persian king. We have, at the same time, the story of Joseph in the book of Genesis, very late part of of the Bible, actually, that. Joseph in the Technicolor Dreamcoat. Joseph in the Technicolor Dreamcoat. It's a Persian period. Yeah, yeah. It has more to do with Esther than it has to do with the book of Genesis. That's inserted at this point as well. And there again, of course, we have a Jewish boy in the court of the pharaoh. So.

• 45:14Speaker 02

  Daniel's story again is a Jewish guy in the court of, well, Nebuchadnezzar, dot, dot, dot Belshazzar. The trouble is that probably Daniel had its final kind of editing in the Hellenistic period. And during, you know, the sort of 300 years of the Hellenistic period, what happens in Babylon and Persia, it all tends to get a little bit mixed up, you know, in, in the mind. And so this is why we, we get this kind of a simulation of kings sometimes, you know, is Nebuchadnezzar a good guy or a bad guy? You know, he saves Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego from a fiery furnace, but at the same time, he makes this mammoth

• 45:58Speaker 02

  gold statue of himself and gets people to worship him. And God punishes him by turning him into a kind of like an animal and then returns him to sanity and to, to a human appearance. So there are all these kind of like mythic legendary stories around them. And it's almost as though like the editor hasn't quite made sense of what's going on there. So we get this kind of blurring of periods in, in the book of Daniel. So that's why, you know, Belshazzar does make this appearance. Somehow he gets linked to the, the treasury from, from the temple and this warning that the doom is going to come on Babylon. But then the doom is never really played out in the book. Because of course,

• 46:41Speaker 02

  then the, the latter part of the book of Daniel deals with the rise of the Ptolemaic and Seleucid empires, you know, and these, these animals that come forward, you know, with many horns and so forth and clash. So, you know, it's, it's a book which is apocalyptic and full of mystery.

• 46:56Tristan Hughes?

  We'll have to do another episode all on the book of Daniel.

• 46:59Speaker 02

  Oh, we should do Daniel. We should. It's, it's quite remarkable.

• 47:01Tristan Hughes?

  But it's interesting how you have the, that Belshazzar mentioned, but actually knowing what actually happens to him, you have to look at other sources to find out.

• 47:08Speaker 02

  Absolutely. Cause you, you get no payoff in the book of Daniel at all, which is really strange.

• 47:13Tristan Hughes?

  Lastly, so the Babylonian Empire falls and Persia is the superpower now. But we should mention, shouldn't we, that Babylon, it doesn't fall from grace.

• 47:23Speaker 02

  Oh, no, no.

• 47:24Tristan Hughes?

  It remains incredibly powerful and prestigious for centuries following.

• 47:27Speaker 02

  It's extremely important in the Persian Empire. I think, I think actually Babylon is the jewel in the Persian crown. You know, they, they, they appreciate its longevity, its, its cultural centre. The, the Achaemenids not only occupy the, the, the former palaces of Nebuchadnezzar, the kings live there. But they also built their own apodanas as well at Babylon too. So they are putting their own stamp on it. Babylon becomes one of the centres of royal life. The Persian kings travelled around their empire all the time. So in the, in the wintertime, they, they tended to be in Susa and Babylon. In the spring, in Persepolis. In the summer, they went to the north, to Ekbatana for the, for the cool summers.

• 48:11Speaker 02

  So Babylon was always part of the kind of visiting place for, for royal retinies. And we know that Persian queens had their own estates in Babylon as well. Parisartus, the, the wife of Darius the second, had huge estates in Babylonia. In fact, her mother was a Babylonian concubine. So the, the Persians keep Babylon very, very close to them. They value this place. They really do. And many of the great campaigns, you know, against Alexander, for instance, you know, originate from Babylon, of course. You know, it's, it's, it's closer to the hub of, of, of where it's all happening than, than Persepolis or, or Susa in that respect. Yes, Babylon retains its power. There are rebellions in Babylon.

• 48:56Speaker 02

  And Darius has to put down two rebellions, Xerxes as well. Babylon always pushes for its independence.

• 49:05Tristan Hughes?

  Remembers its prestigious past.

• 49:06Speaker 02

  It certainly does. Yes, absolutely. It certainly does. But every time there is a rebellion, and even sometimes, you know, replacement kings, we hear of a Nebuchadnezzar the third and a Nebuchadnezzar the fourth, they are always crushed by the, by the Persian powers. Until, of course, Alexander takes Babylon from them. And really, Alexander's dream was to make Babylon the centre of his empire as well.

• 49:31Tristan Hughes?

  And he would ultimately die in the royal palace there as well, wouldn't he?

• 49:35Speaker 02

  Died there too, absolutely. You know, I always think that the, the, the real Litmus test about Babylon's importance to Alexander is the fact that his mother Olympias realised it as well because she writes him a letter and says, bring me to Babylon because she realises that's where all the power is going to reside.

• 49:51Tristan Hughes?

  Fed up with Antipater and Macedon and all of that stuff. Well Lloyd, that is also another chat for another time. Anything else you'd like to mention about Naveenidas, Cyrus, the fall of Babylon in 539?

• 50:02Speaker 02

  Well, if you want to hear more about it, then I can recommend that you look at my new book, which will be coming out in the spring of 2026. It's called Babylon, the mother of all cities. And it's a really chunky book, which goes from the creation of Babylon right the way to its fall and to basically its legends in the Hebrew Bible and in Western culture. Tower of Babel, the whore of Babylon in the Book of Revelations and so on as well. So yeah, please take a look at that book when it comes out.

• 50:31Tristan Hughes?

  The Hanging Gardens mystery, yes.

• 50:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 50:34Tristan Hughes?

  Lloyd, only a few more months then to go before that is released and I think it's going to be a big book when it does finally launch. It just goes to me to say thank you so much, as always, my friend, for coming back on the podcast.

• 50:44Speaker 02

  You're so very welcome.

• 50:49Tristan Hughes?

  Well, there you go. There was the brilliant Reverend Professor Lloyd Llewellyn Jones returning to the show to talk through the great story of the fall of Babylon. I hope you enjoyed the episode, an episode that is also kickstarting our brand new Ancients channel on YouTube. So you can also watch this episode, you can watch Lloyd and I talking through it on YouTube if that tickles your fancy. And it's just the beginning because every week from now on, we will be releasing a new episode on YouTube, of course, also on audio as well. But one of our two weekly episodes will also be filmed so you can get to see us talking about it in the flesh as well. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Ancients. Please follow the show on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 51:33Tristan Hughes?

  That really helps us and you'll be doing us a big favour. If you'd be kind enough to leave us a rating as well, we'd always appreciate that. And don't forget, you can also listen to us and all of History Hit's podcasts ad free and watch hundreds of TV documentaries when you subscribe at historyhit.com/subscribe. Now, that's all from me. I'll see you in the next episode.

• 52:00Speaker 01

  Hey, we're Nick and Jack, hosts of The Best One Yet. Behind every episode, there's research, emails, spreadsheets, and our shared Google Doc, the headline hammer. With Google Workspace with Gemini, Google's AI is built right into the premium versions of tools we already use, like Gmail, Docs, and Sheets. No new tools or extra logins, just personalized AI for the way we work. That means less time on the work around the work and more time finding the stories worth talking about. Get AI tools for work. Upgrade to Google Workspace with Gemini at go.o.gle/workspacewithGemini. That's go.o.gle/workspacewithGemini.