Babylonian chronicles

The slaughter of Apis, the sacred bull of Memphis, plays a pivotal role in Herodotus’ narrative about Cambyses’ death. The Persian monarch strikes the holy animal on its thigh with his sword; as a result, he becomes deranged and finally perishes in an accident, wounding himself on his thigh with the same sword and dying of gangrene. It has long been recognized that this incident is fictional: as transpires from the excavated sarcophagi of Apis bulls in Saqqara, no one of them was slain during Cambyses’ reign. Previous scholarship used to consider the story simply a piece of Egyptian propaganda, concocted by priestly elites dissatisfied with Cambyses’ measures which restricted temple revenues. Yet the episode teems with Persian motifs. Iranian religious and mythical figures (Mithra, Yima) are commonly presented as ritual slayers of bulls. As happens with other features in the Herodotean portrait of this king, an element of Iranian ritual myth has been transformed into an act of madness in order to denigrate Cambyses.

A glimpse of the kind of tradition lying behind Herodotus’ narrative is afforded by a Babylonian historical work, the so-called Weidner Chronicle, describing the death of Amar-Sin, the Sumerian ruler of Ur. This king impiously falsified the sacrifices of oxen at Marduk’s temple. Hence it was foretold that he would perish gored by an ox; in fact, he died because of a wound from his leather shoe (presumably made of ox-hide). This account presents notable similarities with Cambyses’ end: both monarchs commit sacrilege with regard to holy oxen, and both die from a wound on their foot or leg, inflicted in a manner distinctively reflecting their crime. In both cases an oracle predicting the king’s end comes true in an unexpected sense. Possibly a religious legend akin to that of Amar-Sin was used by Persian circles hostile to Cambyses (e.g. rebellious aristocrats or Darius’ successive regime) in order to fashion a defamatory fiction. After Cyrus’ conquest of Babylon (539 B.C.), Mesopotamian narrative material of this kind could easily have passed into Iranian tradition.

A close examination of two of the Babylonian Chronicles, namely ABC 4 " The Late Nabopolassar Chronicle, " and ABC 5 " Jerusalem Chronicle, " yields much information that supports events stated as fact in Daniel, II Kings, II Chronicles, Esther, Jeremiah and Matthew. It also provides verification of many prophesies of Jeremiah that were fulfilled. Items discussed include: 1. Nebuchadnezzar as Crown Prince and his Ascension year, as well as the subsequent numbering system for the years of his reign. 2. Nebuchadnezzar's defeat of the Egyptian army at Carchemis, as listed in Jeremiah 46:2, while

The Babylonian Chronicle  ABC 7, also known as the Nabonidus Chronicle, has not only the actions of King Nabonidus and Belshazzar the Crown Prince, but in Nabonidus' sixth  year  (550 BCE), there is a seemingly unrelated entry about Cyrus, king of Ansan, defeating Astyages, the last king of the Medes1.    This is not the only account of Cyrus in the ABC 7, for we see another entry about Cyrus in Nabonidus' ninth year, when he (Cyrus) defeats a king of another country,2 and another possible mention of him in Nabonidus' sixteenth year.    These entries are up to eleven years before Cyrus took over Babylon in Nabonidus' seventeenth year.  A possible reason the Babylonians started monitoring the actions of the Medes and Persians can be shown from Daniel 8:20, in which Daniel was told by an angel that his vision of the ram and the goat meant the Medes and Persians would be a world power that would fight with and be defeated by the Greeks.  In Daniel 8:27, Daniel says he went back to work doing the king's business, and talked with people about the dream, but no one understood it.  Daniel 8:1 records Daniel's vision of the ram and goat happened in the third year of Belshazzar's reign.

By close examination of the Nabonidus Chronicle, the Nabonidus Cylinder from Sippar, and the Verse Account of Nabonidus, we can show that the third year of Belshazzar was the fifth year of Nabonidus3.  Since the monitoring of the Medes and Persians on the Babylonian Chronicle started  in the sixth year of Nabonidus, which is the year after Daniel had the dream of the ram and the he goat, we can provide a reason why the Babylonians would start recording on their chronicle what the Medes and Persians were doing: Daniel had identified a threat to their status of world power, and they started monitoring the actions of this new coalition that was forming.  It would be another eleven years before the Medes and Persians took over Babylon, in fulfillment of Daniel's vision.