Bonus 64 - Nabonidus Cylinder

Nabonidus Cylinder
Photo by Dr. David E. Graves
Courtesy of the Trustees for the British Museum

The Nabonidus Cylinder was discovered at Ur by John Taylor in 1854. It mentions Nabonidus' son Balshazzar (Heb. and Chald. Belshatstsar' ), also mentioned in Daniel 5 (11, 18). The inscription at Umqeer (Ur of the Chaldees), read by Sir Henry Rawlinson, shows that Nabonidus admitted his son Belshazzar into a share of the kingdom. Daniel knew that Balshazzar was the last Babylonian king before it was conquered by Darius the Mede of the Persians in 538 BC.1. The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia states:

The Babylonian monuments speak a number of times of a Bel-shar-usur who was the “firstborn son, the offspring of the heart of” Nabunaid, the last king of the Babylonian empire, that had been founded by Nabopolassar, the father of Nebuchadnezzar, at the time of the death of Ashurbanipal, king of Assyria, in 626 BC. 2.

The Nabonidus Cylinder mentions both Nabonidus and Balshazzar also mentioned in the Bible.

Footnotes

• 1. James Strong and John McClintock. The Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical Literature. (Haper and Brothers; NY, 1880), op. cit..
• 2. R. Dick Wilson, “Balshazzar,” ed. James Orr and Melvin Grove Kyle, International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1939), op. cit..