(npproxim!llely our June) the murder and the accession must ha.ve taken place. F 0 r the reign of Nabunabid we have the advantage of a long inscription on a. clay tablet, entitled" the annals of Nabunahid." Several other documents have come down to us also throwing light on his character. In several inscriptions he has named his eldest son along with himself, as if associating him on the throne. Although the name "king ~ is not given to him, he fulfils all the functions of the monarchy, and pra.yers a.re put up for him ns for the monarch. For a number of the yea.rs of his reign Na.bunahid took no part in the business of royalty, not even on the New Yea.r's festival, where his presence as monarch was indispensable, did he come to Babylon. Certainly from his seventh to his eleventh year, it is told us of Nabuna.hid tha.t he wa.s in Terna. Where Toma. was, and what it wa9 that thus kept Na.bunahid there, we do not know. It ma.y have been sickness, bodily or mental; it ma.y have been that he ha.d vowed the life .of a solitary. Though this is the hypothesis at which Winckler hints, it seems to us improbable. Meanwhile the crown prince was with the RalJbuti at the head of the army, and managing the affairs of the kingdom. It was probably when thus he assumed the regency that the feast occurred, narrated in Daniel, when the fiery inscription appeared on the walll During the reign of this monarch a Scythian horde, under the command of a king Istuvigt1 (Astyages), ha.d overrun Media. and Elam, had pressed into B.ibylonia, and had wrested Assyria from the empire. This horde bad the general name of Manda, or Umman-Manda.2 These nomads were pressing in upon Babylonia, and Nabunahid relates how he dreamed that Marduk appeared to him and foretold the destruction of these intruders. "Marduk said to me,' The Umman-Manda -0f whom thou speakest, be himself and the kings his allies shall be no more. In the third year the gods will cause them to cease.' Cyrus, King of Ansan, his insignificant vassal, with his few troops scattered the numerous Umman-Manda. Astyages, the King of the U mman-Manda, he took and brought in fetters into his land." N abunahid here regards Cyrus as his real ally sent by the gods to destroy his enemies the Ma.nda. In regard to no character in ancient history has the revolution to which we referred above been greater than in regard to Cyrus. We had several accounts of him, two fairly full, from Herodotus and Xenophon; besides, we had the fragments of Ctesias Diodorus and Justin. Altogether we felt that if we combined the Greek sources with .the notices of Scripture, we knew a great deal about Cyrus. We find now that all our knowledge from Greek sources is utterly misleading. We were told that he was the graudson of Astyages and the great-grandson of Cyaxares. He certainly was not related to Astyages, and most probably not to Cyanres either. We were told he was King of the Persians, and threw off the Median rule. He was king of the small canton ,of Ansan, and was hailed by the Medes as their deliverer from the oppression of the Manda. Ansa.n seems to have been generally reckoned to Elam, but was not .coincident with it. Persia (Parsua) seems to have been another canton contiguous to Ansan. For some reason, after he had overthrown Astyages, Cyrus took the title of King of the Persians. We cannot, and even if we could, do not, require here to follow the coune of Cyrus's conquests. It is sufficient that, after he had overthrown A11tyages, he turned his eyes towards Babylonia. So long as Belshazzar commanded, he seems to have been unabl~ to pierce into Babylonia proper. In the ninth year of the reign of Nabunahid we learn that Cyrus overran Mesopotamia, and made Gobryas governor of the whole province, 1 The verse in the Massoretio which announces Belshazznr's death the night of the feast
is spurious. It does not appenr in the Scptungint. • The rcsemblanoe of the name Manda to l\fadai has led Herodotus to rego.rd Astyages 11,s a Median king. Xliviii INTRODUCTIO~ TO