Conquest of Babylon by Cyrus. Biography
Meanwhile, in 550 BC. e. The Persian king Cyrus conquered Media. In preparation for the struggle, Babylonia, according to some reports, entered into an alliance with Egypt and Lydia (in Asia Minor).
But Cyrus managed in 546 to conquer all of Asia Minor, including Lydia, and his troops marched along the Babylonian border.
After the conquest of Lydia, the Persians began to clearly prepare a campaign against.
Nabonidus and Belshazzar apparently expected to sit behind the powerful fortifications built by Nebuchadnezzar. However, the decisive thing was that by the time of the Persian offensive in 538 they had lost all support in the country.
The trading and usurious elite of the slave owners and the priesthood did not see any benefit for themselves from the reign of Nabonidus; they imagined the vast markets of Cyrus's power, and they did not see anything bad in the fact that the mountain “barbarian” would eventually become the Babylonian king, as the Babylonian kings had been before him, for example, the Kassites and Chaldeans.
The Babylonian army, probably half mercenary, half recruited by force, and having been inactive for a long time, had neither the necessary combat training nor the desire to fight an army that had conquered two major powers in a few years.
The broad masses of the people were indifferent to the fate of the slave state, which brought them only unbearable hardships, ruinous duties and constant extortions.
In 538, the Persians and Medes began advancing down the Dpyala River valley. After the battle of Opis, at the confluence of this river with the Tigris, the Persians passed Nebuchadnezzar's Median wall without a fight and occupied Sippar.
A widely known legend, told in the Book of Daniel in the Bible, is that Belshazzar was feasting in the courtyard when letters appeared on the wall, inscribed with a fiery hand and foreshadowing the fall of Babylon that same night.
The image of a despot feasting in a palace and unable to understand the signs foreshadowing his imminent death entered the democratic and revolutionary poetry of the 19th and 20th centuries. n. e.
He was captured under the following circumstances: Nabonidus returned to Babylon and, together with Belshazzar, locked himself in the citadel. But when the Persian troops found themselves under the walls of Babylon, the gates were opened to them without a fight.
They fought only in the courtyards of the palace-citadel; Nabonidus was captured and later sent into honorable exile in Carmania, in eastern Iran; Belshazzar was killed. It is characteristic that the Persians took protection of the Babylonian sanctuaries, and the cult was performed all the time without hindrance.
When, after some time, Cyrus personally appeared in Babylon, an inscription-manifesto was drawn up, in which Cyrus appropriated to himself the traditional title of Babylonian kings and expressed censure of the “godless” rule of Nabonidus.
The statues of the gods, taken by Nabonidus to Babylon before the siege, were returned to their original places. The Persians provided all kinds of protection to the priesthood of Babylonia.
Formally, the Babylonian kingdom existed for some time after that, since the kings of the Persians continued to be called “kings of Babylon” at the same time. But the hopes of the Babylonian nobility for a leading role in the Persian state were not justified.
A tribute was imposed, which around 500 BC. e. amounted to more than 30 tons of silver per year; even Egypt paid less - 20 tons.
Otherwise, the economic and internal political life of Babylonia has changed little, but the ethnic composition of the population has become much more variegated: Asia Minor, Egyptian and Iranian warriors and merchants appeared; many Persians settled here, becoming one of the Babylonian landowners and slave owners.
The position of the masses was increasingly deteriorating under the double oppression of their own ruling class and Persian despotism.
Cyrus II (Karash or Kurush II) is a gifted commander and king of Persia, who during his lifetime received the nickname “The Great” when he founded the powerful Persian Empire, uniting disparate states from the Mediterranean Sea to the Indian Ocean. Why was the Persian king Cyrus called the Great? The name of the wise ruler and brilliant strategist is covered in legends, many facts are forever forgotten, but majestic monuments testifying to the victories of Cyrus have survived to this day, and in Pasargadae, the first capital of the Achaemenids, there is a mausoleum where his remains are supposedly buried.
Cyrus the Great: a short biography
The origin and exact years of life of Cyrus the Great are unknown. In the archives of ancient historians - Herodotus, Xenophon, Xetius - conflicting versions have been preserved. According to the most common of them, Cyrus was a descendant of Achaemen, the founder of the Achaemenid dynasty, the son of the Persian king Cambyses I and the daughter of the king of Media Astyages (Ishtuvegu) Mandana. He was born presumably in 593 BC.
From the first days of his life, the royal baby faced severe trials. Believing his prophetic dreams and the predictions of the priests about the future great conquests of the boy who was still in his mother’s womb, Astyages instructed one of his subjects to kill his newborn grandson. Out of pity or out of reluctance to deal with the monstrous deed himself, Harpagus, a dignitary of the Median king, handed the child over to a shepherd slave, ordering him to be thrown in the mountains to be devoured by wild animals. At that time, the slave’s newborn son died, whose body he dressed in the prince’s luxurious clothes and left in a secluded place. And Cyrus took the place of the deceased in the shepherd’s hut.
Years later, Astyages learned of the deception and cruelly punished Harpagus, killing his son, but left his grown-up grandson alive and sent him to his parents in Persia, because the priests convinced him that the danger had passed. Harpagus later went over to the side of Cyrus, leading one of the armies of the Persian king.
Revolt against Media
Around 558, Cyrus became king of Persia, which was dependent on Media, and a vassal of his grandfather Astyages. The first Persian uprising against Media occurred in 553. It was initiated by Harpagus, who organized a conspiracy of Median courtiers against Astyages and attracted Cyrus to his side. 3 years after the bloody battles, the Persian king captured Ecbatana, the capital of Media, deposed and captured the Median king.
Anti-Persian coalition
After the triumphant rise of the king of small and previously completely insignificant Persia, the rulers of the most powerful states of the Middle East and Asia Minor at that time - Egypt, Lydia, Babylon - formed a kind of coalition in order to prevent the advance of Persian troops in any direction. The coalition was supported by Sparta, the most militarily powerful Hellenic city. By 549, Cyrus the Great conquered Elam, located in the southwestern part of modern Iran, then conquered Hyrcania, Parthia, and Armenia, which were part of the King of Cilicia voluntarily went over to Cyrus's side and subsequently repeatedly provided him with military assistance.
Conquest of Lydia
The campaigns of Cyrus the Great will forever remain in history. In 547 BC. the legendary Croesus, king of prosperous Lydia, tried to capture Cappadocia, which was located in the territory subject to Cyrus. The Lydian army met fierce resistance; Croesus chose to withdraw his troops to regain strength and then recapture Cappadocia from Cyrus. But almost the next day the Persian army found itself at the walls of Sardis, the capital of Lydia and an impregnable fortress. Croesus was forced to throw his best cavalry into battle, but Cyrus and Harpagus, who by that time had become a military leader and one of the most reliable subjects of the king of Persia, came up with a brilliant tactical move: in the vanguard of the Persian army, instead of cavalry, there was a column of camels, on which armed warriors sat . The Lydian horses, sensing the unpleasant smell of camels, reared up, threw off their riders and fled. The Lydian horsemen had to fight by dismounting, which led to defeat. Sardis was under siege, but fell after just a couple of weeks, as the Persians conquered the steep walls of the fortress using a secret path. Croesus was captured by Cyrus, and Lydia, over which Harpagus received control, became part of the Persian Empire.
King Cyrus the Great, with the support of a former Median courtier who almost killed him in infancy, achieved incredible success. While Cyrus and his troops advanced deep into Central Asia, Harpagus captured Hellenic cities and suppressed the uprising against the Persians in Lydia. Gradually, the Achaemenid Empire expanded to all directions of the world. From 545 to 540 BC e. it included Drangiana, Bactria, Khorezm, Margiana, Sogdiana, Arachosia, Gandahara, Gedrosia.
Capture of Babylon by Cyrus the Great
Now the main threat to Cyrus the Great was concentrated in Babylonia, which united Syria, Mesopotamia, Palestine, Phenicia, eastern Cilicia, and the north of the Arabian Peninsula. The king of Babylon, Nabonidus, had enough time to prepare for a serious war with the Persians, while Cyrus's troops erected defensive earthen ramparts in the valleys of the Diyala and Gind rivers. The ancient world was famous for its powerful army, prepared for any battles, and a large number of impregnable fortresses scattered throughout the territory. The most complex defensive structure was the Babylonian fortress with a deep moat filled with water and thick walls 8 to 12 m high.
However, Cyrus the Great, the Persian king, whose biography is presented to your attention in the article, was approaching the capital. August 539 was marked by a crushing defeat and death of the stepson of the Babylonian king near Opis on the Tigris. Having crossed the Tigris, the Persians captured Sippar in October, and just a couple of days later Babylon was taken almost without a fight. Nabonidus, who was not popular or respected either by the inhabitants of Babylon itself, or by the countries he conquered, or by his own courtiers and soldiers, was deposed, but not only survived, but also received the post of satrap in Carmania.
King Cyrus the Great allowed the deported peoples to return home, retained the privileges of the local nobility, ordered the restoration of temples destroyed by the Babylonians and Assyrians in the occupied territories, and the return of idols there. It was thanks to Cyrus that the Jews had the opportunity to return to Palestine and restore their main shrine - the Jerusalem Temple.
How Egypt managed to maintain sovereignty
In 538, Cyrus proclaimed himself "king of Babylon, king of countries." All provinces of the Babylonian Empire voluntarily recognized the authority of the Persian ruler. Achaemenid Kingdom by 530 BC spread from Egypt to India. Before moving troops to Egypt, Cyrus decided to take control of the territory between the Caspian and Aral Sea, where the nomadic tribes of the Massagetae lived under the leadership of
Cyrus the Great, the Persian king, handed over the reins of Babylon to his eldest son Cambyses II and set out for the northeastern reaches of his kingdom. This time the campaign ended tragically - the great conqueror died. Cambyses was not immediately able to find his father’s remains and bury him with dignity.
An angry mother is the reason for the death of Cyrus the Great
What else was Cyrus the Great famous for? Interesting facts permeate his biography. Below is one of them.
At the first stage, Kira was lucky, as always. The king ordered a convoy loaded with wineskins to be placed in front of his army. A detachment of nomads attacked the convoy, the soldiers drank wine and, becoming drunk, were captured by the Persians without a fight. Perhaps everything would have ended well for the Persian king if the queen’s son had not been among the captured Massagetae.
Having learned about the captivity of the prince, Tomiris became furious and ordered to kill the cunning Persian at any cost. In the battle, the Massagetae demonstrated such rage that the Persians did not even manage to remove the body of the dead king from the field. By order of Tomyris, Cyrus's severed head was stuffed into a wineskin...
Empire after the death of Cyrus
The death of Cyrus II the Great did not cause the collapse of his empire. The grandiose kingdom of the Achaemenids existed in the form in which the gifted commander left it for another 200 years, until Darius, a descendant of Cyrus, crushed
Cyrus the Great, the Persian king, was not only a brilliant strategist who knew how to calculate every little detail, but also a humane ruler who managed to maintain his power in the conquered territories without cruelty and bloodshed. For centuries, the Persians considered him the “father of nations,” and the Jews considered him Jehovah’s anointed one.
Persian king Cyrus in 550 BC. e. conquered Media.
The fall of the Median power was greeted by Nabonidus with joy, because it gave him the opportunity to gain a foothold in Harran. But his triumph was premature, since Persia turned out to be a more dangerous enemy than Media.
According to some sources, Babylonia, provo
In preparation for the upcoming war, she entered into an alliance with Egypt and Lydia (in Asia Minor). Despite this, in 546 Cyrus conquered all of Asia Minor, including Lydia, and his troops marched along the Babylonian border.
Obviously, Nabonidus and Belshazzar hoped that for some time they would be able to sit behind the powerful fortifications that were once built by Nebuchadnezzar. By this point, when the Persians began their offensive in 538, the kings of Babylonia no longer had any support in the country. This was the determining factor.
When the war between the Neo-Babylonian kingdom and Persia began, Nabonidus' position was complicated by internal strife. The capital's priesthood and the trade and usurious elite of slave owners did not see any benefit for themselves from the reign of this king. There was growing dissatisfaction with the religious policy of the king, who proclaimed the moon god Sin, who was revered in Nabonidus's hometown of Harran, to be the head of the pantheon instead of Marduk.
The Babylonian merchants, whose business operations and incomes were suffering from the hostilities, desired an end to the difficult war, at least through submission to Cyrus, hoping to expand their activities within the vast power of Persia.
The priesthood and the trade-usurious elite of the slave owners did not see anything bad in the fact that Cyrus would ascend the Babylonian throne, as there were Babylonian kings before him, for example, the Kassites and Chaldeans.
The Babylonian army was inactive for a long time. Obviously, this army was half mercenary, half recruited by force, was not sufficiently prepared, and also did not have the desire to fight an army that had conquered two major powers over the years.
The fate of the slave-owning Babylonian state was indifferent to the broad masses of the people, who saw in its existence unbearable hardships, ruinous duties and constant exactions.
The Jewish settlers awaited the arrival of the Persians even more fervently, hoping that the Persian king would free them from “Babylonian captivity” and return them to their homeland.
In 538 BC. e. The Persians and Medes began to advance down the Diyala River valley. After the battle of Opis, at the confluence of this river with the Tigris, the Persians passed Nebuchadnezzar's Median wall without a fight and occupied Sippar.
A legend has reached us, which is told in the “Book of Daniel” in the Bible that Belshazzar was feasting in the palace when letters inscribed with a fiery hand appeared on the wall. These letters foreshadowed the imminent fall of Babylon, which would occur that same night.
In democratic poetry of the 19th and 20th centuries. The image of Belshazzar feasting in the palace, unable to understand the signs prophesying his imminent death, is well represented.
Babylon was captured under the following circumstances: Nabonidus returned to Babylon and, together with Belshazzar, locked himself in the citadel. At a time when Cyrus' troops were under the walls of Babylon, the gates in front of them were open without a fight.
The battle was fought only in the courtyards of the citadel palace. In such a situation, Babylon could not be saved either by opening the floodgates and flooding the surrounding area, or by mighty walls. The Persians entered the city with the help of their supporters.
Nabonidus was captured and later sent into honorable exile in Karmania, in eastern Iran. Belshazzar was killed.
The attitude of the Persians towards the Babylonian sanctuaries was very remarkable. They took custody of the Babylonian sanctuaries, and the cult was carried out all the time without hindrance.
Cyrus, after some time, personally arrived in Babylon, where he compiled an inscription-manifesto. In this manifesto inscription, Cyrus assigned the traditional title of the Babylonian kings. In it, he condemned the “godless” rule of Nabonidus.
It is known that before the siege, Nabonidus transported statues of gods to Babylon. With the arrival of Cyrus, these statues were returned to their original places.
As expected by the representatives of the priesthood who lived in Babylonia, the Persians provided them with all kinds of protection.
After the fall of Babylon, the Babylonian kingdom formally existed for some time. The kings of the Persians simultaneously continued to be called the “kings of Babylon.” The Babylonian nobility never managed to play a leading role in the Persian state.
The Persians imposed tribute on Babylonia. This tribute is around 500 BC. e. amounted to 30 tons of silver per year. It is known that the amount of such tribute paid by Egypt was much smaller: 20 tons.
Minor changes have occurred in the economic
and the internal political life of Babylonia. But the ethnic composition of the population acquired a more variegated color: Asia Minor, Egyptian and Iranian warriors and merchants appeared. Also, a number of Persians became among the Babylonian landowners and slave owners.
The common population only expected a worsening of their fate, since they were now subjected to double oppression: the ruling Babylonian class itself and the Persian despotism.
More on the topic THE CONQUEST OF BABYLON BY THE PERSIANS:
- Chapter III Capture of Jerusalem by the Persians. The invasion of Persia in 623 and a series of defeats inflicted on the Persian king. Siege of Constantinople by Avars and Persians. World historical significance of the Persian War
Two and a half thousand years ago, he led his subjects, a small pastoral people, to storm the greatest eastern kingdoms. And he won, creating the first empire in history, binding dozens of countries and tribes together with a common law. His name, Cyrus the Great, was imprinted on the pages of the Bible and in the books of ancient sages. We will speak about his fate, as well as about the fates of other heroes of distant antiquity, in the language of history.
In fact, the ruler of the small region of Anshan in southwestern Iran was named Kurush. 150 years before his birth, his ancestor Achaemen brought a troop of horsemen from the north - a small part of the great wave of Indo-Europeans that, over the centuries, rolled from the Asian steppes into Europe and the Middle East. The rulers of Mesopotamia highly valued Aryan warriors for their skill with horses, and Achaemen quickly hired himself into the service of the king of Elam, a once powerful state that was defeated by the Assyrians. For protecting the Elamite borders, the newcomer received the hilly region of Anshan with abundant pastures, where his fellow tribesmen comfortably settled. They called themselves Persians, so their new homeland was called Persia (Parsua).
The descendants of Achaemen - the Achaemenids - were gaining strength, and one of them, Cambyses, received as his wife the daughter of Astyages himself - the king of the great Media, which owned all of Western Iran. So, in any case, says the legend, which was retold by the father of history, Herodotus. According to him, “Astyages had a dream that his daughter Mandana emitted such a huge amount of urine that she flooded his capital and all of Asia.” The soothsayers-magicians explained that this means that Mandana’s son will become a great king and deprive his grandfather of power. This news did not please the king, and he decided to marry his daughter as far as possible, to Persia. In fact, if such a marriage existed, it was explained by completely different goals. By that time, Assyria, which had brutally oppressed all the surrounding peoples, had fallen under the onslaught of its neighbors - Media and Babylon. As usual, the victors immediately quarreled over the Assyrian lands, and the Medes began to look for allies against the Babylonians in Elam - an alliance with him made it possible to squeeze Babylon into pincers.
Be that as it may, Mandana, given in marriage around 595 BC. e. gave birth to a son, Cyrus. It was then that Astyages had a new dream: “From the womb of his daughter a vine grew, and this vine then grew throughout Asia.” The frightened king turned to the magicians again and received the same answer as the first time. Then he ordered his close associate Harpagus to kidnap the baby and kill him. However, Harpagus took pity on the prince and gave him to be raised by the shepherd Mithridates. According to another version, Cyrus, like many heroes of antiquity, was raised by a she-wolf or a dog, but Herodotus does not believe in this. In his opinion, the shepherd's wife simply bore the name Spako, which means "dog" in Median. Time passed, Cyrus grew up and always commanded other children in games. When the son of the noble Mede Artembarus did not listen to him, he beat him with a whip, and the boy’s father went to complain to the king (oh the forgotten simplicity of ancient morals!). Having summoned Cyrus for investigation, Astyages immediately saw that he was similar to him in appearance and imperious disposition, and realized that Harpagus had violated the order. The tyrant terribly punished the disobedient man - having tricked Harpagus's only son into the palace, Astyages ordered him to be killed and roasted, and then fed the unsuspecting father the meat of his child. For some reason, the king did not touch Cyrus himself and sent him home to Persia.
Of course, this is a legend, if only because at the time of the birth of Cyrus, Astyages (Ishtuvegu) was not yet the king of Media and, in terms of age, was in no way suitable for the role of the grandfather of the Persian prince. Reliable information about Cyrus appears only around 558 BC. e., when he took the throne of the deceased Cambyses and declared himself not just a king, but “king of kings” - Shahinshah. This was tantamount to a declaration of war against Astyages, who bore the same title. According to Herodotus, the offended Harpagus became an ally of Cyrus, who incited the Median nobles to revolt against their king. When the conspiracy was ripe, he informed Cyrus about this in a letter, sewn into the carcass of a killed hare for conspiracy. Cyrus immediately gathered an army and, as a training exercise, forced the warriors to cut thorny grass with sickles all day. The next day, he again called the tired warriors, sat them down on soft pillows and fed them heartily. And then he asked which day they liked better - yesterday or today? Having received the answer, he said: “If you wish to follow me, then you will have these benefits, and a thousand times more. If you don’t want to, then endless hard work awaits you, like yesterday.”
Convinced by such agitation, the Persians bravely rushed towards the enemy. In the very first battle, Harpagus, appointed commander of the Medes, went over to the side of Cyrus. The defeated Astyages took refuge in his magnificent capital Ecbatana (present-day Hamadan) and raised its entire population, including the elderly and teenagers, in a last desperate battle. The Persians won, and the king was captured, but Cyrus pardoned him, appointing him governor of a remote province. He now had enough provinces - upon hearing about the death of Media, many tribes of Iran submitted to the Persians, right down to distant Parthia and Hyrcania. “Since then, the Persians have ruled over Asia,” Herodotus concluded the story.
Another story of the rise of Cyrus is told by the Greek writer Ctesias, author of the fabulous History of India. According to him, Cyrus was the son of the robber Atradates from the Mard tribe. Having entered the palace of the Median king as a sweeper, he rose to the rank of military leader and rebelled against the king. After a long war, with the help of the cunning adviser Gobryas, he defeated Astyages by deception. From the inscription of the Babylonian king Nabonidus it follows that the Persian war against Media was indeed long - three whole years. “Ishtuvegu gathered his army and went against Cyrus, king of Anshan, to defeat him,” the inscription reports. “But his army rebelled against Ishtuvegu and, taking him prisoner, handed him over to Kira.”
Together with Media, the Persians received Armenia and Syria, which were subject to it. This brought Cyrus closer to the borders of the Lydian kingdom in Asia Minor, which was ruled by King Croesus. The fame of the legendary rich man came to him thanks to the gold-bearing sands of the Galis River. Having received news of events in Media, Croesus wanted to avenge his brother-in-law Astyages. He sent a messenger to the Delphic oracle to ask about the outcome of the future war and received the answer: “If Croesus goes to war against the Persians, he will destroy a strong power.”
Encouraged, the king set out on a campaign and met with Cyrus near the village of Pteria in Cappadocia. The battle ended in a draw. Croesus retreated to his capital Sardis, hoping for help from his allies - the Egyptians and Spartans. But neither one nor the other came, and soon the Persians approached the city. Croesus moved the famous Lydian cavalry into battle, Cyrus, on the advice of Harpagus, placed the army of camels in front, and the horses, afraid of their smell, fled in panic, trampling the infantry standing behind. The defeated Croesus took refuge in the fortress, which the Persians took after two weeks of siege. The oracle did not lie - the king really destroyed the power, but only his own.
Croesus was taken prisoner, and at first Cyrus wanted to burn him at the stake as a sacrifice to the gods, but then he pardoned him and even made him his advisor. Herodotus explains this by saying that the Lydian retold to his conqueror the words of the sage Solon that no one can be called happy before his death. Hearing this, Cyrus allegedly thought that “he is also a man, but he wants another man, who was no less caressed by happiness than he, to be put on fire alive,” and canceled the execution. And henceforth he tried to be merciful with the vanquished, seeing in them his future subjects. He could well have repeated the Eastern wisdom: “Why slaughter a sheep if it can be sheared every year?”
Sardis fell on the eve of winter 547 BC. e., after which Cyrus left for his homeland. In the spring, the Lydian nobleman Pactius rebelled against him, and when the Persian army approached, he took refuge on the island of Chios. So Cyrus encountered the rich and independent cities of Ionia, inhabited by Greeks. The king sent the faithful Harpagus against them, who took one city after another. All of Asia Minor was in the hands of Cyrus; in addition, he received the best Greek fleet at that time.
The next seven years are shrouded in the darkness of the unknown: we know that by their end Cyrus had subjugated all of Iran - Aria, Drangiana, Arachosia, Gedrosia, as well as the Central Asian principalities - Bactria, Sogdiana and Khorezm. It seems that most often the king conquered these areas peacefully, leaving local rulers in power. It was different in India, where Cyrus went around 542 BC. e. - Most of his army died there. Not losing heart, the Shahinshah moved the spearhead of the main attack to the west, where ancient Babylon was located. In the spring of 539 BC. e. Cyrus with a huge army set out on a campaign against this city.
A traitor was found in Babylon - the governor of the Kutian region, Gobriya (Ukbaru), went over to the side of the king along with his warriors. However, Cyrus was in no hurry: when one of the sacred white horses drowned while crossing the Gind River, he stayed for a whole summer to “punish” the river. Breakthrough of 180 canals, the Persians drained the Gind. Herodotus saw this as just a manifestation of anger, but Cyrus knew the Babylonians well. Having learned about what had happened, they fell into a panic: if the king punished the mighty river like this, what would happen to us? In addition, the diverted waters of the Ginda irrigated a vast area, making it suitable for agriculture. In September, he made a roundabout maneuver and approached Babylon not from the east, where he was expected, but from the west. A battle took place near the city of Opis, in which the Babylonians, led by Nabonidus, were defeated and fled. The city was taken after a short siege, and Belshazzar, the son of Nabonidus, who tried to resist, was killed. Nabonidus, shocked by the death of his son, surrendered, and Cyrus, true to himself, appointed him governor of the region of Carmania.
The events of this war are reflected in the biblical Book of the Prophet Daniel, which speaks of Belshazzar’s miraculous vision - fiery letters appearing on the wall of his palace. Daniel translated the inscription “Mene, tekel, upharsin” - “Weighed, counted, measured” and interpreted it as a prediction of the inevitable death of Babylon. For such a service, Cyrus, soon after the victory, allowed the Jews to return from Babylonian captivity to their homeland and again build the Temple of Jerusalem, destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar. In response, the prophet Isaiah called the Persian king an instrument of God’s Providence: “This is what the Lord says to His anointed Cyrus: I hold you by the right hand in order to subdue the nations to you... I called you by name, I honored you, although you did not know Me.” The Jewish prophets called on the king to take cruel revenge on their oppressors and wipe out the “harlot of Babylon” from the face of the earth. But Cyrus behaved differently: he forbade the robbery of the city, especially the temples, and he himself worshiped the god Marduk in the magnificent temple complex of Esagila.
The Babylonian priests were fascinated by such a conqueror, which was reflected in the clay “cylinder of Cyrus” they made - one of the main sources telling us about the king’s policies. The cuneiform inscription on the cylinder, echoing the Bible, reports that Nabonidus and his son violated the will of the gods, and they preferred the foreign but pious Cyrus to them: “All the inhabitants of Babylon, nobles and governors bowed down before him and kissed his feet; they rejoiced in his kingdom, and their faces shone.” The following is the original manifesto of Cyrus. “I am Cyrus, king of the world, great king, mighty king, king of Babylon, king of Sumer and Akkad, king of four countries, son of Cambyses, the great king, king of the city of Anshan, grandson of Cyrus, the great king, king of the city of Anshan, branch of the eternal kingdom, whose dynasty is kind to Bel and Nabu, whose dominion is pleasant to their hearts. When I peacefully entered Babylon and, with rejoicing and joy, occupied the royal dwelling in the palace of the kings, Marduk, the great ruler, inclined the noble heart of the inhabitants of Babylon to me because I daily thought about his worship ... "
To emphasize the honorable position of Babylon, he appointed 17-year-old Cambyses, his eldest son from the noble Persian Kassandana, as its king. As befits an eastern ruler, Cyrus started a harem of the daughters of the conquered rulers, but only two sons were born to him - Cambyses and Bardia (aka Smerdis).
After twenty years of wars, the king was finally able to concentrate his forces on building up his empire, stretching from the Indus to the Bosphorus. Leaving power to the local kings, he placed a Persian adviser next to each. And so that he could quickly deliver information to the center, he ordered the establishment of a network of postal stations throughout the state, where messengers transmitted letters or oral messages to each other. “Whoever has the information controls the situation,” he could say. The stations were maintained by local rulers; they were also required to have armed detachments in case of war, but they were not ruined by taxes, gold and gems were not taken away - Cyrus, accustomed to an ascetic life from his youth, never acquired a taste for luxury. The king did not impose his gods on the conquered peoples: retaining faith in the Aryan Ahura Mazda, he worshiped Marduk in Babylon, and Apollo in Greek cities. The language of administration in the empire became not Persian, which did not yet know writing, but Aramaic - the language of Babylonian scribes and Jewish traders.
Delving into the intricacies of politics, Cyrus tried to preserve the simple and strict laws of his Aryan ancestors, which Herodotus narrates, not without surprise: “The main valor of the Persians is courage... They teach children from five to twenty years of age only three things: horse riding, archery and truthfulness... Even the king himself does not have the right to execute a person for an offense before considering his guilt... According to the Persians, they had no cases of killing their own father or mother... There is nothing more shameful for them than to lie or make debts.” True, even in those days the vaunted virtues of the Persians were weakening under the influence of foreign customs and fashions: “They wear Median clothes, considering them more beautiful than their own, and in war they put on Egyptian armor. The Persians indulge in all sorts of pleasures and pleasures as they become acquainted with them. So, they borrowed from the Hellenes love communication with boys.”
Cyrus did not seem to worry about the danger of his small people being dissolved into a multinational empire. It seemed that he even rushed this process, trying to bind all his subjects with a common language, common laws, and common governance. Having built a new capital, the magnificent Persepolis, in the center of his possessions, he equalized other capitals with it - Babylon and Ecbatana. The arrangement of Persepolis was not yet completed when Cyrus suddenly set off on another military campaign - to the distant outskirts of the empire, where the nomadic tribes of the Massagetae lived. For what? The nomads did not threaten his power; they had neither gold nor silver. Maybe the king heard from some merchant about distant China and wanted to conquer this country? Or maybe his heart as a steppe dweller simply felt cramped in the clay labyrinths of eastern cities? In any case, in the spring of 530 BC. e. he went on a campaign, which became his last.
Nobody really knew anything about the Massagetae. The same Herodotus told real fairy tales about them: “Each of them takes one woman as his wife, but they live with these women together... If someone lives to a very old age, then all the relatives gather and slaughter the old man as a sacrifice, and cook the meat together with the meat of other sacrificial animals and eaten. To die like this is the greatest bliss for them.” Where they lived is also unclear. The father of history speaks of the lands beyond the Araks, that is, in the Caucasus, but most scientists believe that we are still talking about the Amu Darya (Oxus); Later, the Massagetae and the Saki, close to them, lived in Central Asia. Other authors think differently. For example, the author of the “History of Babylon” Berossus talks about the campaign of Cyrus against the Iranian Dakhs, and Ctesias - against some Derbiks.
We know the details of the campaign again in the account of Herodotus. According to him, Cyrus first asked the hand of the Massagetian queen Tomiris, but she “realized that Cyrus was not wooing her, but was coveting the kingdom of the Massagets, and refused him.” Then the war began. The steppe inhabitants used the usual tactics of luring the enemy deep into the territory, which later destroyed the army of the Persian king Darius who went against the Scythians. At first, Cyrus was lucky: in one of the battles he captured the son of Queen Spargapate and, according to his custom, released him, but the proud young man considered this a dishonor and committed suicide. Then the grief-stricken mother gathered all the forces of the Massagetae and attacked the Persian army. During this “most brutal of battles,” almost all the Persians died, only the royal son Cambyses managed to escape with a small detachment. The scene of the death of Cyrus, described by Herodotus, was included in school textbooks: “Tomyris filled a wine skin with human blood and then ordered the body of Cyrus to be found among the fallen Persians. When Cyrus's body was found, the queen ordered his head to be put into the fur. Then, mocking the dead man, she began to say: “You wanted blood - drink your fill of it!”
It seems that Cyrus's body was nevertheless ransomed from the nomads, since it was buried in a stone tomb in the city of Pasargadae, which miraculously has survived to this day. On the tomb there was a bas-relief with a portrait of the king and the laconic inscription “King Cyrus, Achaemenid”, and an eternal flame burned inside. For two hundred years, the grave of the founder of the empire remained inviolable, despite political troubles. Immediately after his father's death, Cambyses executed his brother Bardia and many of his supporters. Then he went on a campaign against Egypt, committed many atrocities there and died from an accidental wound. Power in the capital was seized by an impostor posing as Bardiya, the empire almost collapsed, but she was saved by Kira’s distant relative Darius (Darayavaush), who became the new Shahinshah. The Persian state existed until the campaign of Alexander the Great, when new kingdoms arose on its ruins. During the campaign, the tomb of Cyrus was still plundered, but no wealth was found there. Upon learning of this, Alexander exclaimed: “What a worthy example for rulers!” And we can only agree with him.
Cyrus's capture of Babylon
538 BC e.
After the conquest of Lydia, the Persian king Cyrus began a slow offensive against Babylon. His strategy was to first of all isolate Babylon from the outside world. The result of this isolation was a significant decline in Babylonian trade, which caused discontent among Babylonian trading circles. Numerous foreigners who were in Babylonian captivity were awaiting the arrival of the Persians, especially the Jews and Phoenicians.
In the spring of 539 BC. e. The Persian army marched on Babylon. At this critical moment, Ugbaru, governor of the region of Gutium (a Babylonian province east of the middle Tigris), betrayed King Nabonidus and went over to the side of Cyrus. According to the famous Greek historian Herodotus, while crossing the Gind (modern Diyala), one of the sacred white horses drowned in it. Cyrus, in anger, ordered the river to be punished. During the summer, the Persian army dug three hundred and sixty canals and diverted the water from the river. Apparently, Cyrus was delayed by Nebuchadnezzar's hydraulic structures, which were activated and flooded the entire space from Opis and Sippar to the south, thus cutting off Babylon from the enemy army.
An interesting description by Herodotus of the fortifications of Babylon dating back to the end of the 7th century BC has also reached us. e. The data given in this description is confirmed by excavations. It is now known that Babylon was surrounded by three walls, respectively 7, 7.8 and 3.3 meters thick. On one of the walls there were about three hundred towers, located one from the other at a distance of forty-four meters. The walls were surrounded by a deep and wide ditch filled with water. Each wall had a large number of gates covered with copper. The city of Babylon was the most powerful fortress of its time.
The “punishment of the river,” which Herodotus presents as tyranny, was in fact a completely deliberate undertaking - to again drain the water from the flooded area and make it passable. Only after this did Cyrus continue his campaign. The Babylonian army camped near the city of Opis, covering the crossings across the Tigris. But Cyrus unexpectedly bypassed the Median wall from the west on the 20th of September. Ugbaru's corps sent by Cyrus besieged Babylon, which had a strong garrison led by Nabonidus' son Belshazzar. Cyrus himself struck in the rear of Nabonidus's army standing at Opis. In the battle of Opis, which took place at the very end of September, the Babylonian army suffered a severe defeat and fled. Nabonidus with a few associates wanted to retreat to Babylon, but the path there was cut off by the troops of Ugbaru, and Nabonidus took refuge in Borsippa. On October 10, Sippar was captured without a fight, and on October 12, according to Babylonian sources, Ugbaru entered Babylon. As Herodotus writes, Cyrus ordered the river to be diverted and entered the city along its bed, while the residents were celebrating some kind of holiday. But the contemporary Babylonian Chronicle says nothing about this, and therefore many historians consider Herodotus’ message unreliable. Belshazzar, who tried to resist the Persians in the center of the city, was killed.
According to the Bible, on the night of the capture of Babylon by the Persians, at the last feast organized by Belshazzar, he sacrilegiously used sacred vessels taken by his father from the Temple of Jerusalem for food and drinks. In the midst of the fun, words in Hebrew appeared on the wall, written by a mysterious hand: “mene, mene, tekel, upharsin.” The prophet Daniel interpreted the inscription, translated from Hebrew as: “Numbered, numbered, weighed, divided,” and deciphered it as a message from God to Belshazzar, predicting the imminent destruction of him and his kingdom. That same night Belshazzar died.
Ugbaru, the governor of Gutium, who commanded the Persian troops that entered Babylon, immediately took measures to prevent massacres and looting in the city. Nabonidus, having learned about the fall of Babylon and the death of Belshazzar, left Borsippa, returned to Babylon and voluntarily surrendered. October 29, 539 BC e. Cyrus himself entered the city, and a solemn meeting was arranged for him. “On the 3rd Arakhsamnu (October 29), the chronicle continues, Cyrus entered Babylon. The [streets] in front of him were covered with branches. Peace was established in the city. Cyrus declared peace to all Babylon." The captive Nabonidus was quietly sent into honorable exile to remote Karmania in eastern Iran, where he ended his days.
In the official Babylonian historiography, the events were depicted as if there was no war with the Persians at all, and if there were isolated incidents, such as the Battle of Opis, then only Nabonidus was to blame, and not Babylon. Cyrus willingly accepted this version of the Babylonian oligarchy, because it fully met his interests, and tried to back it up with deeds. The inhabitants of the Babylonian cities were promised peace and immunity. At first, Cyrus appointed his eldest son and heir Cambyses as king of Babylon, but a few months later, apparently for political reasons, Cyrus removed his son from power and was crowned himself.
Having captured Mesopotamia, the Persian king formally preserved the Babylonian kingdom and did not change anything in the social structure of the country. Babylon became one of the royal residences, the Babylonians continued to occupy a predominant position in the state apparatus, and the priesthood had the opportunity to revive the ancient cults, which Cyrus patronized in every possible way. In the inscriptions on bricks, he appears as both a worshiper of the Babylonian gods and a benefactor of Esagila and Ezida. Moreover, Cyrus's power in Babylon was not considered a foreign dominion, since he received the kingdom "from the hands of the god Marduk" by performing ancient sacred ceremonies, and took the title "king of Babylon, king of countries." However, in fact, Babylonia from an independent kingdom turned into a satrapy of the Achaemenid power and lost all independence in foreign policy, and within the country, the highest military and administrative power now belonged to the Persian governor (in Babylonian bel-pahati - “regional commander”) of Babylon and Zarechye, that is the entire Neo-Babylonian Empire. Cyrus appointed Ugbara, whom the Greeks called Gobryas, as this “regional governor.”
After the capture of Babylonia, all Western countries up to the borders of Egypt - Syria, Palestine and Phenicia - submitted to the Persians voluntarily. The trading cities of Phenicia, just like the Babylonian and Asia Minor merchants, were interested in creating a large state with safe roads. This is how a grandiose Persian world power arises, stretching from the Balkans to India. Babylon became, along with Persepolis, Susa and Ecbatana, one of the four capitals of the Persian king.
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