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The fall of Babylon was the decisive event that marked the total defeat of the Neo-Babylonian Empire to the Achaemenid Empire in 539 BC. Nabonidus , the final Babylonian king and son of the Assyrian priestess Adad-guppi , [ 4 ] ascended to the throne in 556 BC, after overthrowing his predecessor Labashi-Marduk .
For this accomplishment, Cyrus is venerated as a messiah—the only non-Jew (as he was a Persian) to be held in this regard in Judaism. The historicity of Cyrus' decree has been debated among scholars, as has the impact that it may have had on the nascent Jewish diaspora if the events of the Hebrew Bible did indeed take place as they are described.
The Nabonidus Chronicle is an ancient Babylonian text, part of a larger series of Babylonian Chronicles inscribed in cuneiform script on clay tablets.It deals primarily with the reign of Nabonidus, the last king of the Neo-Babylonian Empire, covers the conquest of Babylon by the Persian king Cyrus the Great, and ends with the start of the reign of Cyrus's son Cambyses II, spanning a period ...
Meanwhile Cyrus occupied Babylon and ordered to destroy the exterior walls of the city, because the city seemed very formidable to him and difficult to capture. Afterward Cyrus marched to Borsippa, in order to organize the siege against Nabonidus. But Nabonidus did not await the end of the siege, and surrendered." [7]
[2] [9] [8] The Judean elite, including the Davidic dynasty, were exiled to Babylon. [8] After Babylon had fallen to Cyrus the Great, founder of the Persian Achaemenid Empire, in 539 BC, he allowed the exiled Judeans to return to Zion and rebuild Jerusalem. The Second Temple was completed in 516 BC.
The Neo-Babylonian Empire under the rule of Nebuchadnezzar II occupied the Kingdom of Judah between 597–586 BCE and destroyed the First Temple in Jerusalem. [2] According to the Hebrew Bible, the last king of Judah, Zedekiah, was forced to watch his sons put to death, then his own eyes were put out and he was exiled to Babylon (2 Kings 25).
Cyrus's edict is significant to the return of the Jews, because it shows that they did not slip away from Babylon but were given official permission by the Persian king in the first year of his rule, and it is a specific fulfillment of the seventy years prophecy of Jeremiah (Jeremiah 25:11–14; Jeremiah 29:10–14).
The city experienced two major periods of ascendancy, when Babylonian kings rose to dominate large parts of the Ancient Near East: the First Babylonian Empire (or Old Babylonian Empire, c. 1894/1880–1595 BC) and the Second Babylonian Empire (or Neo-Babylonian Empire, 626–539 BC). Babylon was ruled by Hammurabi, who created the Code of ...