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Far below the palace of Xerxes he has found vastly earlier remains. There is the column set up, if we can believe the Assyriologists who trust the chronology of Nabonidus, the last king of Babylon, and it is not incredible, three thousand eight hundred years before Christ, by Naram-Sin, a Babylonian king, to commemorate one of his raids into the land of what were perhaps his stronger enemies.
It would be interesting could we regard it as proved that they traded also with the Indian peninsula; but the "rough logs of wood, apparently teak," which Mr. Taylor discovered in the great temple at Mugheir, belong more probably to the time of its repair by Nabonidus than to that of its original construction by a Chaldaean monarch.
Now, from other records of Nabonidus, fourth in succession to Nebuchadnezzar, we shall learn further that this temple did not come into Babylonian hands till the middle of the following century.
In 538 Cyrus moved against Babylon, and Nabonidus now retreated into the city with his troops, and prepared for a siege. But Cyrus, taking advantage of the time of the year when the waters were lowest, diverted the Tigris, so that his soldiers were able to enter the city without striking a blow. Nabonidus surrendered, and Belsharuzur was slain. With him perished the second Chaldæan Empire.
He captured Jerusalem, and a year later destroyed it, sending most of its people to Chaldea. He died in 561, and was succeeded by his son. "This son was murdered; and there was confusion again till 556, when the throne was usurped by Nabonidus, the son of a soothsayer, who became a wise and active prince, and his reign ranks next in importance to that of Nebuchadnezzar.
In settling all problems connected with early Chaldæan chronology, the starting-point was, and in fact still is, the period of Sargon I, King of Agade, inasmuch as the date of his reign is settled, according to the reckoning of the scribes of Nabonidus, as about 3800 B.C. It is true that this date has been called in question, and ingenious suggestions for amending it have been made by some writers, while others have rejected it altogether, holding that it merely represented a guess on the part of the late Babylonians and could be safely ignored in the chronological schemes which they brought forward.
Nabonidus became a mere vassal of Cyrus, and lived more or less inactively in his palace at Tima, leaving the direction of power at Babylon in the hands of his son, Bel-sharuzu. At length the Babylonians grew weary of their king. Nabonidus had never been popular, and the discontent of the people at length called for the intervention of the suzerain.
Passing over the confirmation which he draws from the "known rate of the deposit of Nile mud of about three inches a century," which would give a mild antiquity of twenty-six thousand years to pottery fished up from borings in the mud, since he admits that "borings are not very conclusive," we may notice how he deals with evidence from Chaldea on much the same principles. Here, again, the source had been till lately only "fragments quoted by later writers from the lost work of Berosus. Berosus was a learned priest of Babylon, who ... wrote in Greek a history of the country from the most ancient times, compiled from the annals preserved in the temples and from the oldest traditions." Still this "learned priest," though antecedently as competent a critic as Manetho, is so portentously mythical in his accounts, that "no historical value can be attached to them," which must be regretted, since he pushes history back a quarter of a million years prior to the Deluge, and the Deluge itself to about half a million years ago. Here, therefore, we are thrown solely upon the independent value of the monumental evidence, and must drop the argument from coincidence. This evidence, we are told, "is not so conclusive as in the case of Egypt, where the lists of Manetho, &c.... The date of Sargon I. (3800 B.C.) rests mainly on the authority of Nabonidus, who lived more than three thousand years later, and may have been mistaken." "The probability of such a remote date is enhanced by the certainty that a high civilization existed in Egypt as long ago as 5000 B.C." If the evidence for the antiquity of Chaldee civilization is "less conclusive" than that for Egyptian, and rests on it for an argument
A man, named Aracus, an Armenian by descent, but settled in Babylonia, headed the insurrection, and, adopting the practice of personation so usual at the time, assumed the name and style of "Nebuchadnezzar, son of Nabonidus." Less alarmed on this occasion than at the time of the first revolt, the king was content to send a Median general against the new pretender.
Sippara is called Tsipar sha Shamas, "Sippara of the Sun," in various inscriptions, and possessed a temple of the god which was repaired and adorned by many of the ancient Chaldaean kings, as well as by Nebuchadnezzar and Nabonidus. The general prevalence of San's worship is indicated most clearly by the cylinders. Few comparatively of those which have any divine symbol upon them are without his.
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