Belshazzar: The King Critics Called Fiction

The short verdict. Belshazzar was real. He was the eldest son of Nabonidus, Babylon's last king, and he governed Babylon for about ten years while his father lived in Arabia. That explains why Daniel 5 offers the "third" place in the kingdom. Two points are still argued: Babylonian texts never give Belshazzar the title "king", and Daniel calls Nebuchadnezzar his father. Verdict: Confirmed.

The story in Daniel 5

Belshazzar "the king" holds a great feast for a thousand of his lords. They drink from the gold and silver vessels taken from the temple in Jerusalem, and a hand appears and writes on the wall. The terrified king promises that whoever can read it "shall be clothed with scarlet, and have a chain of gold about his neck, and shall be the third ruler in the kingdom" (Daniel 5:7). Daniel reads the writing as judgment: "God hath numbered thy kingdom, and finished it" (5:26). The chapter ends: "In that night was Belshazzar the king of the Chaldeans slain" (5:30).

The critics' case

For most of the 19th century, Belshazzar was a problem:

• Berossus, a Babylonian priest who wrote a history of Babylon in Greek around 280 BCE, named the last king as Nabonidus.
• Greek historians knew nothing of a Belshazzar. Herodotus calls Babylon's last king Labynetus, a form of Nabonidus.
• No Babylonian text had been found with his name.
• Many scholars already dated the book of Daniel to the 2nd century BCE, nearly four centuries after the fall of Babylon.

Some, such as the German scholar Ferdinand Hitzig, concluded that there had been no such person and that the author of Daniel had invented him or confused him with someone else.

The cylinders from Ur (1854)

In 1853–54 John George Taylor, British vice-consul at Basra, excavated for the British Museum at Tell al-Muqayyar in southern Iraq. (He is often called "J. E. Taylor" because of a printer's error in his 1855 report.) In the corners of the great stepped tower, the ziggurat, he found clay cylinders of Nabonidus, buried as foundation records when the king restored the temple tower of the moon god Sin. Henry Rawlinson read them, and announced in 1854 that the site was Ur.

The inscription closes with a prayer for Nabonidus and for Bel-šar-uṣur, "his eldest son". The Babylonian name means "Bel, protect the king". In Hebrew it became Belshazzar. The man Daniel names was real, and he was the son of Babylon's last king.

Ruling for an absent father

That raised a new question: if Nabonidus was king, why does Daniel treat Belshazzar as king? More tablets answered it.

In 553 BCE Nabonidus left Babylon and spent about ten years at Tayma, an oasis in northwest Arabia, returning around 543. Belshazzar governed Babylonia in his absence.

• The Nabonidus Chronicle (British Museum 35382, bought in 1879 and first published by Theophilus Pinches in 1882) repeats it for year after year of the reign: "The king (was) in Tayma (while) the prince, his officers, (and) his army (were) in Akkad" (years 7, 9, 10 and 11). Akkad means Babylonia.
• The Verse Account of Nabonidus (British Museum 38299, published by Sidney Smith in 1924) was written under Persian rule and is hostile to Nabonidus. It says he "entrusted the army to his oldest son, his first born… He let everything go, entrusted the kingship to him, and, himself, he started out for a long journey… to Tayma deep in the west."
• Some late oaths from the regency were sworn by "the majesty of Nabonidus and Belshazzar" together.

Why "third ruler"?

If Nabonidus was king and Belshazzar governed for him, the highest place Belshazzar could give away was the third. It is a small detail, and it fits a situation that later Greek historians do not seem to have known about.

What is still argued

Was Belshazzar ever "king"?

Contemporary Babylonian documents never give Belshazzar the title šarru, "king". They call him mār šarri, "the king's son", the crown prince. Daniel calls him king. Defenders point to the Verse Account's "entrusted the kingship to him": he held royal power in practice, even without the title. Critics see a later writer simplifying. Both readings are still argued.

The night Babylon fell

In October 539 BCE, after defeating the Babylonian army at Opis, the Persian army under Ugbaru entered Babylon without a battle, and Cyrus himself entered about two and a half weeks later. The Nabonidus Chronicle says Nabonidus was captured, but it says nothing about Belshazzar. Herodotus, writing about a century later, says the Babylonians were celebrating a festival when the city was taken (Histories 1.191), which echoes Daniel's feast. Belshazzar's death that night is recorded only in Daniel. Other sources do not say what happened to him.

Nebuchadnezzar, "his father"?

Daniel 5 calls Nebuchadnezzar Belshazzar's father (5:2, 11, 18). His actual father was Nabonidus, who was not related to Nebuchadnezzar by birth. Three explanations are offered:

1. "Father" as predecessor. Ancient usage could call a later king the "son" of an earlier one. The Assyrian Black Obelisk calls the Israelite king Jehu "son of Omri", though Jehu destroyed Omri's dynasty.
2. A grandfather through his mother. Some suggest Nabonidus married a daughter of Nebuchadnezzar. There is no direct evidence for this.
3. A mistake by a later author.

Where scholars stand today

See also: Sargon II, the king known only from Isaiah.

Sources and further reading

• J. E. [John George] Taylor, "Notes on the Ruins of Muqeyer," Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 15 (1855)
• Theophilus G. Pinches, "On a Cuneiform Inscription Relating to the Capture of Babylon by Cyrus," Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archaeology 7 (1882)
• Sidney Smith, Babylonian Historical Texts Relating to the Capture and Downfall of Babylon (Methuen, 1924)
• Raymond P. Dougherty, Nabonidus and Belshazzar (Yale University Press, 1929)
• A. Leo Oppenheim, "The Verse Account of Nabonidus," in James B. Pritchard, ed., Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament (Princeton, 1950)
• A. Kirk Grayson, Assyrian and Babylonian Chronicles (J. J. Augustin, 1975), Chronicle 7
• Paul-Alain Beaulieu, The Reign of Nabonidus, King of Babylon 556–539 B.C. (Yale University Press, 1989)
• Herodotus, Histories 1.188–191