Cylinders of Nabonidus from Ur

Overview

The Cylinders of Nabonidus from Ur are clay foundation cylinders inscribed for Nabonidus, last king of Babylon, recording his restoration of the ziggurat of the moon god at Ur and closing with a prayer for himself and for his eldest son. That son is named Belshazzar. Until these cylinders were read, no record of Belshazzar was known outside the book of Daniel.

Archaeological Evidence

Four cylinders were recovered in 1853 and 1854 by John George Taylor, the British vice consul at Basra, who was excavating at Tell el-Muqayyar, the site of ancient Ur. They had been placed one in each corner of the second tier of the ziggurat, each sealed inside a capsule of brickwork, which is where Babylonian builders put foundation documents. Taylor's four are in the British Museum, numbered BM 91125 to BM 91128. The same inscription is now known from at least fourteen copies, later ones recovered from the same ziggurat and from other sites, so the four are exemplars of one text rather than the whole of it. The cylinders carry no date of their own; they are placed late in the reign of Nabonidus, commonly about 540 BC.

Content

The text records the rebuilding of the ziggurat E-lugal-galga-sisa for the moon god Sin and ends with a prayer. Nabonidus asks for long life for himself, and then asks that the fear of the god be placed in the heart of "Belshazzar, my first-born son, my own offspring", so that he should not sin. The prayer names him and gives his parentage. It does not call him king, crown prince or regent, and it records nothing that he did.

Biblical Significance

Daniel 5 names Belshazzar as the ruler of Babylon on the night the city fell, and for centuries that was the only source for him. Critics of the book treated him as an invention, since the Babylonian king lists end with Nabonidus. These cylinders name him as the king's first-born son, and the administrative tablets, oath formulas and chronicles of the same reign show what he was doing: governing Babylon and commanding its army during the years his father spent at the oasis of Tayma. The picture is consistent with the book of Daniel on the point that mattered, and it explains a detail the text does not explain about itself. When Belshazzar offers Daniel the position of "third ruler in the kingdom" rather than the second, Daniel 5:16, the reason is that the first two places were taken: Nabonidus was still king, and Belshazzar governed in his place. What the cylinders themselves establish is that the man existed and who his father was; the shape of his authority comes from the other Babylonian records.