Concept

Nabonidus Cylinder and Belshazzar

Intro

Daniel 5 tells the story of Belshazzar, king of Babylon, who threw a drunken feast with the gold cups taken from the Jerusalem temple, saw a hand write on the wall, and died that same night as Babylon fell. For centuries Belshazzar was known only from the book of Daniel. The ancient historians who wrote about the fall of Babylon named its last king as Nabonidus, not Belshazzar. So critics argued that Daniel had the history wrong, and some treated Belshazzar as a figure the author had made up.

In 1854 a British consul named J. E. Taylor dug into the great temple tower at Ur, in southern Iraq, and found clay cylinders buried in its structure by Nabonidus himself. The inscription ends with a prayer for the king and for "Belshazzar, the eldest son." Belshazzar was real, and he was the son of Babylon's last king.

Later texts showed more: Nabonidus spent about ten years away in the Arabian desert and left Belshazzar in charge of Babylon. That explains a puzzling detail in Daniel. When Belshazzar offers a reward to whoever can read the writing, he does not offer the second place in the kingdom. He offers the third, because he himself was only second.

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In full

The Nabonidus Cylinders from Ur are foundation inscriptions of Nabonidus (reigned 556-539 BC), the last native king of Babylon, recording his restoration of the ziggurat E-lugal-galga-sisa in the temple precinct of the moon god Sin at Ur. They were recovered by J. E. Taylor in 1854 during work at the ziggurat, and one copy is British Museum 91128. The inscription closes with a prayer for Nabonidus and for Bel-šarra-uṣur (biblical Belshazzar), described as his eldest son. Combined with the Verse Account of Nabonidus (BM 38299), which says the king "entrusted the kingship" to his firstborn before leaving for Tayma in Arabia, and with the Nabonidus Chronicle, which repeatedly records the king in Tayma while "the prince" stayed with the army in Akkad, the cylinders establish that Belshazzar existed, was Nabonidus's heir, and exercised royal authority in Babylon during his father's long absence. This answers the nineteenth-century objection that the Belshazzar of Daniel 5 was unhistorical and gives a natural reading of the "third ruler in the kingdom" in Daniel 5:7, 16, 29.

The objection the cylinders answered

Before 1854 the only ancient sources outside the Bible for the fall of Babylon named a different last king. Berossus, the Babylonian priest-historian of the early third century BC, quoted by Josephus (Against Apion 1.20), calls the last king Nabonnedus and says he fled to Borsippa, surrendered to Cyrus, and was sent to live out his days in Carmania. No surviving source mentioned a Belshazzar.

On that evidence nineteenth-century critical scholars treated Daniel 5 as unreliable. Bryan Windle (2024) cites Cäsar von Lengerke's commentary Das Buch Daniel (1835) as an example of the verdict that the chapter was fiction written by someone without accurate knowledge of the period. The argument had three parts: the last king of Babylon was Nabonidus, not Belshazzar; Belshazzar was not Nebuchadnezzar's son; and Babylon's last king was not killed when the city fell.

The object and its discovery

• Discovery. Leon Legrain of the University of Pennsylvania Museum (1944) records that the clay cylinders of Nabonidus were found by Taylor in 1854 on the second stage of the ziggurat at Ur. They were also the find that first identified the ruin as Ur, the city later linked with Abraham.
• What they are. Barrel-shaped clay foundation cylinders inscribed in Babylonian cuneiform, deposited in the ziggurat when Nabonidus restored it. The British Museum's catalogue describes its copy as a complete cylinder in two columns, recording work on the temple of the moon god Sin at Ur and including a prayer for the king and for Belshazzar his son.
• Date. Livius.org, introducing Paul-Alain Beaulieu's translation, dates the text to about 540 BC and describes it as probably the king's last building inscription.
• Where it is now. The British Museum, London (museum number 91128).

What it says

Most of the inscription describes the ziggurat's history (begun by Ur-Nammu and finished by his son Šulgi, kings of Ur in the late third millennium BC) and Nabonidus's repairs. It ends with a prayer to the moon god. In Beaulieu's translation, Nabonidus asks the god to "save me from sinning against your great godhead and grant me as a present a life long of days," and then continues: "as for Belshazzar, the eldest son," asking the god to "instill reverence for your great godhead in his heart."

The Babylonian form of the name is Bel-šarra-uṣur. The Hebrew and Aramaic Belshazzar is a close rendering of it.

Companion texts: Belshazzar as acting king

The cylinder proves Belshazzar existed and was crown prince. Two further texts show what his role was.

The Verse Account of Nabonidus (British Museum BM 38299, first published by Sidney Smith in 1924) is a hostile poem written after the Persian conquest to discredit Nabonidus. In A. Leo Oppenheim's translation (in Pritchard's Ancient Near Eastern Texts), it says that as the king's third year was beginning "he entrusted the army [?] to his oldest son, his first born," and then "He let everything go, entrusted the kingship to him, and, himself, he started out for a long journey," going to Tayma in north-west Arabia. The poem does not name the son, but the Ur cylinder identifies Nabonidus's eldest son as Belshazzar.

The Nabonidus Chronicle (British Museum BM 35382; Grayson's Chronicle 7) records year after year, in Grayson's translation, that "The king (was) in Tayma (while) the prince, the officers, and his army (were) in Akkad," and that in those years the king did not come to Babylon for the New Year festival.

Alan Millard (1985) drew the conclusion that Belshazzar acted as king, as his father's agent, even though he may not have held the title legally, and that the distinction would have been irrelevant to a narrative like Daniel's.

The biblical match

"Belshazzar the king made a great feast to a thousand of his lords, and drank wine before the thousand." (Daniel 5:1, ASV)

When the writing appears, the king announces a reward:

"Whosoever shall read this writing, and show me the interpretation thereof, shall be clothed with purple, and have a chain of gold about his neck, and shall be the third ruler in the kingdom." (Daniel 5:7, ASV)

He repeats the offer to Daniel (5:16) and keeps it:

"Then commanded Belshazzar, and they clothed Daniel with purple, and put a chain of gold about his neck, and made proclamation concerning him, that he should be the third ruler in the kingdom. In that night Belshazzar the Chaldean King was slain." (Daniel 5:29-30, ASV)

The fit:

1. A real person. Belshazzar is attested in Babylonian texts written in his own lifetime, as the son and heir of Babylon's last king.
2. Ruling in Babylon. Daniel presents Belshazzar as the king in Babylon at the end. The Babylonian texts show that Nabonidus was absent in Arabia for years and that Belshazzar held delegated royal authority in Babylonia.
3. The third ruler. If Nabonidus was first and Belshazzar second, the highest rank Belshazzar could give was third. Windle (2024) draws this inference, and it is the common reading among those who defend the chapter's historicity. A writer who knew only the later Greek accounts, in which Nabonidus is the last king and Belshazzar does not appear, would have had no reason to frame the reward this way.
4. Daniel's dating. Daniel dates visions "In the first year of Belshazzar king of Babylon" (Daniel 7:1) and "In the third year of the reign of king Belshazzar" (Daniel 8:1), treating him as a ruler whose years could be counted, consistent with a regency of several years.

What it does and does not prove

What it confirms:

• Belshazzar existed, was Nabonidus's eldest son and heir, and exercised kingly authority in Babylon during his father's absence.
• The specific objection that Daniel invented Belshazzar is refuted, and the "third ruler" detail reads naturally against the Babylonian evidence.

What it does not settle:

• The title "king." Babylonian texts call Belshazzar the king's son, not king. Daniel's use of "king" is best explained as describing his actual function (Millard's point), but no Babylonian document gives him the royal title.
• "Nebuchadnezzar his father." Daniel 5 repeatedly calls Nebuchadnezzar Belshazzar's "father" (Daniel 5:2, 11, 18). Nabonidus was not Nebuchadnezzar's son. Defenders read "father" in the broad Semitic sense of royal predecessor or ancestor; no Babylonian text settles the question.
• His death. The Babylonian sources do not record what happened to Belshazzar when Babylon fell in 539 BC. Daniel's statement that he was slain that night (Daniel 5:30) is neither confirmed nor contradicted by them.
• Darius the Mede. The next verse (Daniel 5:31) introduces "Darius the Mede," who is not yet identified in any contemporary source. That separate question is treated in Daniel Was Written in the 2nd Century Objection Defeater.
• The miracle. No inscription can confirm the hand on the wall or the prophetic interpretation. The cylinders confirm the historical setting in which Daniel 5 places those events.
• The date of Daniel. Accurate knowledge of Belshazzar does not by itself prove a sixth-century date for the book, though it does count against the view that the author was working only from the Greek-era sources, which had lost track of him.

Evidential status

Well-established mainstream consensus on the cylinders' discovery, reading, and identification of Belshazzar as Nabonidus's son, and on his regency during Nabonidus's stay at Tayma. The apologetic inference about the "third ruler" is widely drawn and fits the evidence, but it is an interpretation of Daniel, not something the cylinders state. The questions about the royal title, the "father" language, and Darius the Mede remain open discussions.

See also

• Biblical Archaeology, parent hub
• Cyrus Cylinder, Cyrus's own account of taking Babylon from Nabonidus in 539 BC
• Cyrus the Great, the conqueror of Babylon
• Nebuchadrezzar, the king Daniel 5 calls Belshazzar's "father"
• Babylonian Chronicle and the Capture of Jerusalem, the chronicle series at the start of the same dynasty
• Jehoiachin Ration Tablets, Babylonian palace records naming the exiled king of Judah
• Nebo-Sarsekim Tablet, a Babylonian official from Jeremiah confirmed on a temple receipt
• Daniel Was Written in the 2nd Century Objection Defeater, the wider dating debate over Daniel
• Daniel 5, the writing on the wall
• Daniel 5.25-31, the interpretation and the fall of Babylon