Bible Synapse
Nabonidus Chronicle
document · late 6th or early 5th century BC · Persian period · also called ABC 7, Babylonian Chronicle 7
See it on the map and timeline
- Date
- late 6th or early 5th century BC (the chronicle’s composition (the surviving tablet is thought to be a later copy))
- Found
- Probably Babylon, Iraq (exact find-spot unknown), 1879. Bought by the British Museum in 1879 from the dealers Spartali & Co. (its registration number, Sp. II 964, records this). Its find-spot was not recorded, but it is thought to come from Babylon.
- Now
- British Museum, London (BM 35382)
- Passages
- Daniel 5:30–31, Isaiah 45:1, Ezra 1:1
What it is
A clay tablet about 14 cm square, one of the Babylonian chronicles that record each year’s events in a plain, factual style. It covers the reign of Nabonidus, the last king of Babylon, and the coming of Cyrus of Persia. It notes that for several years the king stayed at Tayma in Arabia while ‘the prince’ and the army remained in Babylonia. For 539 BC it records that Sippar was taken without a battle, that Ugbaru and the army of Cyrus entered Babylon without fighting, and that Cyrus himself entered the city soon afterwards.
How it connects to the Bible
Daniel 5 tells of Belshazzar’s feast and says he was killed that same night (Daniel 5:30). The chronicle never names him: it speaks only of ‘the prince’, the king’s son, who stayed in Babylonia with the army while Nabonidus was in Arabia. Other Babylonian texts name Nabonidus’s eldest son and crown prince as Bel-sharra-usur, the Belshazzar of Daniel, and he is generally taken to be this prince. The chronicle’s account of Babylon passing to Cyrus fits Isaiah 45:1, which names Cyrus as the LORD’s “anointed”, and the opening of Ezra.
What scholars debate
Daniel calls Belshazzar king and the son of Nebuchadnezzar, and says “Darius the Median” took the kingdom; none of this appears in the chronicle, and how to read it is debated.