User:Chronic2/Draft for Cyaxares II

Cyaxares II was said to be a king of the Medes whose reign is described by the Greek historian Xenophon. Some theories have equated this figure with the "Darius the Mede" named in the Book of Daniel. However, the fact that he is not mentioned at all in the history of Herodotus, nor in the very different history of Ctesias, has caused many scholars to debate whether such a king ever actually existed. If he did exist, there are implications beyond any relevance to the Book of Daniel. It would imply that the kingdom of the Medes merged quite peacefully with that of the Persians in about 537 B.C., as narrated by Xenophon (8.6.22, 8.7.1), rather than being subjugated in the rebellion of the Persians against Cyrus’s grandfather in 559 B.C., a date derived from Herodotus (1.214) and almost universally accepted by current scholarship. The history and chronology of the early Achaemenid kings would have to be rewritten.

History of Cyaxares II in Xenophon’s Cyropaedia

According to Xenophon's Cyropaedia (1.5.2), Cyaxares II followed king Astyages to the throne of the Median Empire, and was also brother of Mandane, Cyrus the Great's mother (1.2.1, 1.4.7). He describes the Persian Cyrus as cooperating with his uncle, Cyaxares, in order to conquer Babylon in 539 BC. However Cyaxares was by then an old man, and because Cyrus was in command of the campaign, the army came to regard Cyrus as king. Cyrus thus received not only the king's daughter (his first cousin), but his kingdom, as dowry. The aged Cyaxares nominally reigned from Babylon as head of the Medo-Persian empire for two years until his death (Cyropaedia 8.6.22, 8.7.1), the real power being Cyrus. Upon the death of Cyaxares, the empire passed peaceably to Cyrus.

Controversy over Cyaxares II’s name

Some historians say that Xenophon is confused about Cyaxares because this was the name of the father of Astyages. However, it was not unusual at that time, and even customary, to give a son the same name as his grandfather. Cyrus’s grandfather was Cyrus I. Cyrus’s father was Cambyses I, and Cyrus gave this name to his son, Cambyses II. Darius (I) Hystaspes had a grandson named Darius who was heir apparent but was killed before he could become king.

Was Cyaxares II a real person?

Cyaxares II figures prominently in Xenophon’s Cyropaedia. In contrast, he is not only absent from the Histories of Herodotus, but Herodotus leaves no place for him. Herodotus says that Astyages king of Media had no son, and that his successor as king of both Media and Persia was Cyrus the Great. The modern consensus of historians agrees with Herodotus. John Whitcomb wrote that Xenophon’s Cyaxares II “was a mere figment of the imagination.”

This was not always the case. From the time of Jerome if not earlier and up to the 19th century, many writers, both Jewish and Christian, accepted the existence of Cyaxares II. He was regarded as the king of Media at the end of the Neo-Babylonian Empire in the Biblical commentaries of John Calvin, Adam Clarke, Keil and Delitzsch, and Lange. Otto Zöckler in Lange’s commentary named Gesenius, Hengestenberg, and ten other more recent writers who equated Cyaxares II with Daniel’s Darius the Mede. These various commentaries noted the many correspondences between the portrait of Cyaxares II given by Xenophon and what may be inferred about Darius the Mede from the sparse statements about him in the Book of Daniel. The difference in name was not a problem, since ancient documents showed that kings of that time, including Artaxexres I, Darius II, Artaxerxes III, Darius III, had a throne name in addition to their given name. In the case of Cyaxares II, Harpocration and Berossus were cited as evidence showing that the throne name of Cyaxares II was Darius.

The correlations between Cyaxares and Daniel’s Darius were sufficiently striking that Zöckler wrote, “the account given by Xenophon regarding Cyaxares so fully agrees with the narrative of Daniel regarding Darius the Mede, that, as Hitzig confesses, “the identity of the two is beyond a doubt.”” These correspondences are more properly dealt with in the Wikipedia page for Darius the Mede#Cyaxares II. Although there is necessarily some overlap with concerns from the Book of Daniel addressed in that page, the present page concerns itself more narrowly with the question of whether, apart from Daniel, there are other ancient sources that support Xenophon in positing the existence of Cyaxares II. For modern scholarship, the chief problem regarding Cyaxares II is not his correspondence or lack of correspondence with Daniel’s Darius the Mede, but whether he existed outside of the imagination of Xenophon. The consensus of current scholarship is that he did not.

Evidence supporting the existence of Cyaxares II

The following sources generally support, in one way or another, the existence of Cyaxares II as a monarch who succeeded Astyages on the throne of Media, and who continued until sometime shortly after the capture of Babylon by the combined Median and Persian armies and their allies. The sources are listed in chronological order of their composition, with the oldest first.

The Harran Stele

The Harran Stele (Pritchard, pp. 362-63) was composed in the fourteenth or fifteenth year of Nabonidus, i.e. 542 to 540 B.C., commemorating his restoration of the temple at Ehulhul. Nabonidus relates how, in the tenth year of his reign (546/5 B.C.), hostile kings invited him to return to Babylon. The kings are named as “. . . the kings of the land of Egypt, of the land [v.l. for KUR: URU, of the city] of the Medes, of the land of the Arabs, and all the kings of hostile (lands) . . .” The significance of this lies in its date, just one to three years before Nabonidus lost his kingdom to the Medes and Persians. It was also some 13 or 14 years after Cyrus had supposedly subjugated the Medes and became ruler of the combined empire in 559 B.C. according to Herodotus and the consensus of modern historians who follow him. Nabonidus makes no mention of the Persians who soon would be the leaders of those who captured his capital. This is consistent with Xenophon’s picture of the Persians still being the subordinate partner in the Medo-Persian confederacy at the time, with Cyrus the junior sovereign under his uncle, Cyaxares II king of Media. Nowhere in any surviving inscription is Cyrus called the king of Media, unless it is maintained that the present inscription is interpreted that way; this would be in contradiction to all other places where Cyrus is either “king of Anshan”, “king of Persia,” “the great king”, “king of the universe” or some similar braggadocio. The Harran Stele therefore is evidence that just shortly before the fall of Babylon the king of the Medes, whose name is not given, not only existed, but was considered a more important enemy of the Babylonians than Cyrus and his Persians.

The Persepolis Reliefs

Frieze statues depicting Persian and Median nobleman in friendly conversation.

Construction of the Persian city of Persepolis began early in the reign of Darius I (522-486 B.C.), probably about 515 B.C., and construction was completed in the reign of his son Xerxes (486-425 B.C.). The great staircase of the Apadana was part of the first building phase. “The northern part of the eastern staircase depicts alternating Persian and Median nobles conversing with each other.” “These reliefs make no distinction in official rank or status between the Persian and Median nobility.” The scenes of this archaeological treasure are therefore not consistent with Herodotus’s account that the Persians “subjugated” and made “slaves” of the Medes about 20 years before the fall of Babylon (Histories 1.129,130). They are consistent with the picture presented in the Cyropaedia of a confederation between the two nations, with the Medes initially being the senior partners in the confederacy. This, in turn, agrees with with the role of leader of the Medes assigned to Cyaxares II in the Cyropaedia.

Aeschylus in The Persians

Aeschylus’s tragedy The Persians was written in 472 B.C. He was a contemporary of Darius Hystaspes (522-486 B.C.) and his son Xerxes (486-465). He fought the Persians at Marathon and Salamis. His play The Persians predates both Xenophon and Herodotus, and is therefore independent of either of these sources. The play is a dramatic reenactment of the Persian defeat at Salamis (486 B.C.). In it, Aeschylus has the ghost of Darius I describe the two Median kings who preceded Cyrus as rulers of the Medo-Persian alliance:

For the Mede was the first leader of [our] host;
And another, his son, completed this work,
For [his] mind directed his passion.
And third from him was Cyrus, a fortunate man;
When he ruled, he established peace for all his own.

In Herodotus, the two Median kings who preceded Cyrus were Cyaxares I and his son Astyages. But also according to Herodotus, Cyaxares I did not establish a Medo-Persian confederacy, and Astyages certainly did not “complete this work”; instead he lost his throne after foolishly initiating a war against Cyrus. The conflict of Aeschylus with Herodotus regarding the basic history of the Medes and Persians is so obvious that Walther Kranz wondered, “Certainly one could complain, that thus Aeschylus (like his hearers) knew nothing about the enormous revolution in the East regarding the changeover of the dominion to the Persians.” Steven Anderson writes, “The attempt to reconcile Aeschylus with Herodotus thus breaks down, not only because of the problem of correlating the Median kings, but also because of the problem of a Medo-Persian confederacy. Aeschylus presents the Medes and Persians as a united host right from the first Median king in the list, and does not indicate that there was a violent conquest of Media by Cyrus, as Herodotus claims there was.”

In the past, the interpretation taken by many classicists was that the two Median kings preceding Cyrus in this reference were Astyages and Xenophon’s Cyaxares II. This was the position of Thomas Stanley, who edited what became the standard edition of the works of Aeschylus from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries. That Astyages began a confederacy of his Medes with the Persians, as indicated by Aeschylus, is evidenced by Astyages giving his daughter Mandane in marriage to Cambyses, the father of Cyrus by Mandane. This marriage alliance is attested to in both Herodotus and Xenophon. “In the ancient Near Eastern context, such marriages signified the formation of political alliances, and it seems that Astyages made just such an alliance with Persia with a view toward checking Babylonian hegemony. The work which he began of opposing Babylonian hegemony through the confederation with Persia was completed by his son Darius/Cyaxares II, who occupied the Median throne when Babylon fell to the Medo-Persian army.” Aeschylus in these few lines presents a picture of the early days of the Medo-Persian confederacy that is in harmony with Xenophon's succession of Median kings, including Cyaxares II.

Xenophon in the Cyropaedia

Xenophon was a mercenary soldier who fought in the Persian civil war between Cyrus the Younger and his brother Artaxexes II of Persia. The story of the 10,000 Greek mercenaries is related in Xenophon’s most famous work, the Anabasis. Xenophon fought on the side of Cyrus and greatly admired him. After Cyrus was slain, Xenophon became leader of the Greeks in their long trek out of the territory controlled by the Persians. Since he apparently was quite familiar with the younger Cyrus and his attendants, he had ample opportunity to learn the court remembrances of Cyrus the Great.

When Xenophon wrote his Cyropaedia (the Education of Cyrus) several years later, the Histories (Herodotus) of Herodotus had already been published. Regarding the upbringing of Cyrus the Great, Herodotus said that he was choosing one of the stories he had heard, but there were three other stories that he did not choose to relate (1.95). The story he chose is obviously fabulous, adopted from myths that were current at the time. An integral part of Herodotus’s story was his explanation of how Cyrus came to the throne of Persia. This was after he led a successful rebellion against his maternal grandfather Astyages, king of the Medes. Xenophon would have known this story from Herotodus, but he did not believe it, because his history of the early years of Cyrus is quite different. Herodotus and Xenophon agree that Cyrus’s mother was Mandane of Media, daughter of Astyages, but Herodotus says that Cyrus’s father, Cambyses I, was not of “suitable rank” to be a king or the father of a king (1.07). Xenophon says that Cambyses was king of Persia. In contrast to Herodotus’s having Cyrus lead a rebellion against his grandfather and seizing the throne of Media, Xenophon says the Astyages died and was succeeded on the throne of Media by his son Cyaxares (II) some time before Cyrus, as prince regent of Persia and leader of their armies, began his campaign of conquest.

The discovery and deciphering of the Cyrus Cylinder gave evidence that Xenophon, not Herodotus, was correct regarding the ancestors of Cyrus. In the Cylinder, Cyrus states that he is “son of Cambyses, great king, king of Anshan, grandson of Cyrus, great king, king of Anshan, descendant of Teispes, great king, king of Anshan, of a family (which) always (exercised) kingship” (Pritchard, p. 316). Other ways in which archaeological findings have supported various aspects of Xenophon’s picture of the early Median and Persian kings, including his testimony to Cyaxares II, are listed on the Cyropaedia page.

Berossus

Berossus was a Babylonian writer who produced a history of Babylon, the Babyloniaca, about 270 B.C. The work was widely known in antiquity, but now survives only in fragments quoted by later writers. A fragment describing the conquest of Babylon by Cyrus is preserved in Josephus’s Against Apion (1.150-53/1.20). In it, Berossus dates the conquest to the 17th year of Nabonidus, in agreement with the cuneiform inscription of the Nabonidus Chronicle. This section of the Babyloniaca is also cited in the Chronicle of Eusebius, a work that survives only in an Armenian translation. Eusebius cites Abydenus, an eptiomizer of Berossus, as his source. The fragment of Berossus preserved in Josephus states that Cyrus gave Nabonidus the province of Carmania to live in. The Chronicle of Eusebius agrees with this, but its citation of Abydenus/Berossus adds further information as follows: “To this one [Nabonidus] Cyrus gave, when he had taken Babylon, the governorship of the land of the Carmanians; [but] Darius the king took away some of the province for himself.”

The additional information here is that 1) there was another king who was contemporaneous with Cyrus and Nabonidus, 2) This king was named Darius, and 3) He somehow had authority over Cyrus, being able to overrule Cyrus’s disposition of a part of Carmania. Points 1) and 3) are consistent with the presentation of Cyaxares II in the Cyropaedia, where Cyaxares II was the senior partner in the confederation of the Medes and Persians in the years prior to, and past, the capture of Babylon. The statement of Abydenus/Berossus is very difficult to explain from any other context. Point 2) was used in the 19th century commentaries of Keil and Delitzsch and Lange to demonstrate that “Darius the Mede” in the Book of Daniel was attested to in an ancient source that was independent of Daniel’s writing, and so was evidence of the early (6th century B.C.) date of composition of Daniel. Curiously, most recent commentaries seem unaware of this citation. Its significance to the identification of Daniel’s Darius is best left to the “Darius the Mede” page. The present page is more directly focused on whether there is attestation to Xenophon’s Cyaxares II from ancient sources outside of the Book of Daniel. Berossus offers such attestation.

Harpocration

Harpocration was a lexicographer who wrote in the latter half of 2nd century A.D. He was associated with the great library at Alexandria, so that he had access to many ancient resources that were later lost when the library was destroyed. His only surviving work is The Lexicon of the Ten Orators. In an entry for the daric coin, he writes, “But darics are not named, as most suppose, after Darius the father of Xerxes, but for a certain other more ancient king.” In the 19th century, C. F. Keil, in the Keil and Delitzsch commentary on the Hebrew Bible, cited the reference in Harpocration as evidence, outside of the Biblical Book of Daniel, for the existence of Daniel’s “Darius the Mede” as an historical figure. Modern writers of the “critical” or anti-supernatural school either ignore this significant reference or they seek to minimize its importance, since it is evidence against their basic assumption that the final chapters of Daniel, in which reference is made to Darius the Mede, are a fraudulent writing from the second century B.C. It is somewhat strange that recent conservative scholarship has also largely neglected this statement from Harpocration that supports a sixth century date for the composition of Daniel. It should be noted that Harpocration’s statement is independent of anything in the Bible, since Harpocration nowhere in his writing refers to the Bible or to any Biblical subject. He is therefore not a Jewish or Christian apologist. Further, the Book of Daniel says nothing about coins, daric or otherwise, so Harpocration did not get his information from that source. His reference is therefore independent of, but supports, the Book of Daniel in naming a Darius who preceded Darius Hystaspes.

The second part of the argument for the independence of Harpocration’s testimony addresses the question of whether Harpocration depended on Berossus (see the discussion above regarding Berossus). Certainly Berossus, who was widely quoted in antiquity, would have been well represented in the great library at Alexandria. Therefore it could be argued that Harpocration’s testimony to an early “Darius” was derived from Berossus, and thus should not be considered as an independent witness to his existence. But this is a two-edged sword. If Harpocration derived his information from some now-lost portion of Berossus, whose works now survive only in citations from later writers, then this would be a valuable testimony to the validity of Berossus’s statement about the earlier Darius. As quoted above, the Darius mentioned in Berossus had authority to override the command of Cyrus regarding the disposition of Nabonidus, defeated king of Babylon. The combined testimony of Harpocration and Berossus witnesses to the existence of a Median king whose role, timing, and authority correspond exactly to what Xenophon ascribed to Cyaxares II in the Cyropaedia. It bears repeating that the testimony regarding this Darius of Berossus and Harpocration is independent of anything written about Darius the Mede in the Book of Daniel, even though both Berossus and Harpocration supply the same name to this individual that is given by Daniel.

Evidence against the existence of Cyaxares II

Babylonian contract texts

There are thousands of examples of Babylonian contract documents written in cuneiform on clay. Many are still unpublished. Strassmaeir published some 384 contract texts dated to the reign of Cyrus, and others have been published since then. These documents provide the strongest argument against the existence of Cyaxares II, since none of those yet published has this name. Rowley writes, “No imperial monarch interposed his rule between Nabonidus and Cyrus, for ere the month in which Cyrus entered Babylon had run its course, contracts were being dated by his reign.” If there really was a Cyaxares II, the Cyropaedia might offer an explanation of why the people of Babylon did not date their contracts from his regnal years. According to the Cyropaedia(8.5.1,17), it was only after affairs were settled in Babylon that Cyrus went to Media and invited Cyaxares to come to Babylon, where he had a palace prepared for him. If this scenario is true, then the people of Babylon would have recognized Cyrus as their conqueror, not the distant Cyaxares. Steven Anderson, who advocates the basic outline of Xenophon, writes that Cyrus “was evidently hailed as the new king when he entered the city in a carefully choreographed procession, and his entrance was preceded and followed by a heavy propaganda campaign.” Anderson also has an interesting observation about what would happen to any contract texts that were found which were dated to the reign of Cyaxares, if his throne name was actually Darius as indicated by Berossus and Harpocration. “It is not impossible that there may be cuneiform texts which mention Darius the Mede that have been mistakenly identified by modern scholars with one of the three Persian kings called “Darius.” Any reference to Darius the Mede would have to be very explicit and otherwise unexplainable to be recognized as such by a conventional scholar.” This is quite tentative, however, and for most scholars the contract texts, which lack the propaganda bias of publications from the court of Cyrus (the Cyrus Cylinder, the Nabonidus Chronicle, and the Dream Text of Nabonidus), will remain the strongest argument against any Median king sharing power with Cyrus when Babylon fell to the Medes and Persians.

The Cyrus Cylinder

The Cyrus Cylinder (Pritchard, pp. 315-16) is a barrel-shaped clay cylinder inscribed in Akkadian cuneiform. By its contents, it appears to have been written sometime after the conquest of Babylon (539 B.C.) and before Cyrus’s death in 530 B.C The finding and deciphering of the Cyrus Cylinder was an important part of the evidence that was interpreted as favoring the history of the early Medo-Persian Empire that is in conflict with Xenophon. Its text was interpreted as implying that the Persians conquered the Medes in warfare before the capture of Babylon, as narrated by Herodotus. It has no mention of any Median king who was reigning when Babylon fell, and this also was taken as evidence that there was no Cyaxares II as described by Xenophon.

The Cyrus Cylinder (British Museum)

Modern scholarship recognizes it as a propaganda piece designed to manipulate public opinion against Nabonidus and to legitimatize Cyrus’s conquest of Babylon. Another example of this genre, the Nabonidus Chronicle, is discussed below. The Cylinder describes Cyrus as a liberator of the Babylonian people and one who restored the worship of Marduk after the neglect of such worship by Nabonidus the Babylonian king, who is vilified throughout.

The Cyrus Cylinder states that Cyrus “made the land of Gutium and all the Umman-Manda bow in submission at his feet.” Umman-Manda is taken by some authorities as a reference to the Medes, and so a casual reading of this text could support Herodotus’s statement (1.129,130) that Cyrus “subjugated” and made slaves of the Medes. By recognizing the propaganda intent of the writing, however, these same words could be interpreted as referring to the means by which Cyrus, in the Cyropaedia, gained the allegiance of the Median army after the successful campaign against the Lydians and their allies, and in essence upstaged Cyaxares II while still pledging allegiance to him. Steven Anderson writes regarding the “submission” of the Gutians and Umman-Manda (Medes?), “In order to justify these false propaganda claims, as well as to provide another opportunity for Cyrus to glorify himself, it became necessary to portray Cyrus as having actually conquered the Medes, rather than gradually appropriating control over the confederated Medo-Persian army, and finally succeeding the last Median king. . . . If Cyrus was given lordship over the Median army before the fall of Babylon, this would fit with either Herodotus or Xenophon.”

In order to determine the proper interpretation of Cyrus’s claim with respect to the Medes (assuming they are the Umman-Manda), it can be examined how the “submission” of the other people-group mentioned in this inscription, the Gutians, came about. Xenophon describes this in the Cyropaedia (4.6.1-11). Gobryas, governor of Gutium under the suzerainty of the Babylonians, had a long-standing grudge against the Babylonian king. After Cyrus defeated Croesus, Gobryas came to Cyrus and presented to him his allegiance and his army. Gobryas figures quite largely in events that follow, giving his advice about how to proceed in the capture of Babylon, and then leading the forces that took the city (5.4.41-50; 7.5.8-33). Although the basic outline of this account might be called into question because of Xenophon’s desire to portray Cyrus as a master of tact and diplomacy, there is simply no other account that has survived explaining how the Gutians became followers of Cyrus and were in submission to him, as stated in the Cyrus Cylinder. Although the easy course would be to be entirely skeptical about Xenophon’s account, the lack of any alternative explanation from ancient texts should caution against this. Further, Xenophon has support from the Nabonidus Chronicle, where Gobryas (Ugbaru), in agreement with the Cyropaedia, is called the governor of Gutium and the leader of the army of Cyrus in the capture of Babylon. Steven Hirsch concludes, “So Xenophon is right to claim that Cyrus enlisted the support of one Gobryas, a Babylonian vassal who was instrumental in the capture of Bablon. This detail is absent from Herodotus’ account and from the extant portions of Ctesias’ Persica”. If Xenophon is right about how Gobryas and the Gutians became subject to Cyrus, it lends credence to his account of how the Medes also became subject, and this is intimately connected with his account of Cyaxares II.

The other aspect of the Cyrus Cylinder that seems to contradict Xenophon is that it has no mention of Cyaxares II, who, according to Xenophon, was still the senior partner in the Medo-Persian confederacy at the time of the capture of Babylon. This argument from silence is weakened by the Cylinder’s failure to mention another figure who was even more important in the capture of the city, namely Belshazzar. Prominence is given instead to Belshazzar’s father and coregent, Nabonidus. Why does the Cyrus Cylinder have no mention of Belshazzar, the one who was actually reigning in Babylon when it was captured? Anderson comments, “[I]t was necessary for propaganda purposes to portray the battle as a contest solely between Cyrus and Nabonidus, since Belshazzar was religiously orthodox and opposed his father’s attempts to make Sȋn the head of the Babylonian pantheon. Thus, the propaganda texts are all directed against Nabonidus, with Belshazzar mentioned only in passing and never by name. Cyrus’ propaganda campaign was so successful that the existence of Belshazzar is not acknowledged by Herodotus, and the name of Belshazzar was not known from extrabiblical historical texts before modern times.” This kind of bias would explain why Cyrus, in a pronouncement devoted to his own glorification, would not mention his uncle (Cyaxares II) as of any importance in the subjugation of Babylon; Xenophon consistently portrays Cyaxares as an ineffective ruler whose Median troops were more loyal to Cyrus than to Cyaxares.

The Cyrus Cylinder supports Xenophon versus Herodotus with regard to the ancestry of Cyrus. Herodotus has a tale of the upbringing and background of Cyrus that is plainly derived from ancient fables. He says that Cyrus’s father was not of “suitable rank” to be either royalty or the father of royalty (Histories 1.107), whereas Xenophon says he was the son of a Persian king (Cyropaedia 1.2.1). The Cyrus Cylinder authenticates Xenophon, saying that Cyrus was “son of Cambyses, great king, king of Anshan, of a family (which) always exercised) kingship” (Pritchard, p. 316). Although the Cyrus Cylinder is customarily taken as evidence against the veracity of the Cyropaedia’s account of early Median and Persian kings, it nevertheless vindicates Xenophon in several important matters.

The Nabonidus Chronicle

The Nabonidus Chronicle (Pritchard, pp. 305-07) continues the propaganda of the Cyrus Cylinder. Its annalistic nature suggests that original documents from the reign of Nabonidus were the starting place of its texts, but these have been heavily edited to shed unfavorable light on Nabonidus as one who repeatedly did not keep the new year festival in Babylon. When it comes to the 17th year of Nabonidus (539 B.C.) its bias in favor of Cyrus becomes more obvious: Babylon falls to Cyrus’s forces “without battle,” its residents spread “green twigs” in front of Cyrus to welcome him, the gods of the other cities that Nabonidus had taken to Babylon are restored to their proper places, and peace comes to the city. The Chronicle has therefore been described as "a piece of propaganda at Cyrus's service" . That a quite massive propaganda campaign was carried out by the Persians is evident from another text, the Verse Account of Nabonidus (Pritchard, pp. 312-15). The Verse Account states that Cyrus “effaced . . . eradicated . . . erased” the deeds, pictures, records, and whatever else Nabonidus created, feeding them “to the flames.” Despite this obvious rewriting of history by the Persians, Amélie Kuhrt describes the Nabonidus Chronicle as "the most reliable and sober [ancient] account of the fall of Babylon."

The Nabonidus Chronicle

Of special interest with regard to the historicity or lack of historicity of Cyaxares II, the Chronicle agrees with Herodotus in saying that the army of Ishtumegu of of Agamantu (considered to be Astyages of Ectabana) revolted against him, whereupon “Cyrus, king of Anshan” conquered and pillaged Agamantu/Ectabana. This has been taken as supporting Herodotus with regard to the succession of kings in which Cyrus the Great immediately followed Astyages as king of both Media and Persia, with no intervening Cyaxares II. Although the agreement between the Nabonidus Chronicle and Herodotus, that Cyrus conquered Astyages and thus put an end to the Median kingdom, has seemed conclusive to most modern scholars as to the actuality of this event, there remain some difficulties. One of these is the consideration that Herodotus and the Nabonidus Chronicle may not be independent witnesses. Herodotus said that he had four versions of the upbringing of Cyrus and how he came to be king available to him, and he chose to present only one of them (Histories 1.95). The one account that he chose is apparently the official “party line” of the Persians; in other words, the agreement of Herodotus with the Nabonidus Chronicle in this matter should not be regarded as two independent testimonies. Unfortunately we do not know what was in the other three accounts available to Herodotus, although one of them may have been what was related by Xenophon. It should be noted that the Nabonidus Chronicle supports Xenophon in relating that it was Ugbaru/Gobryas, governor of Gutium, who was general of the armies that conquered Babylon.

Another consideration that should allow some skepticism about the factuality of the Chronicle’s account of Cyrus’s rebellion against Astyages is a chronological difficulty. According to the Chronicle, this happened in Nabonidus’s sixth year, i.e. 550 B.C. Herodotus, however, places it in 559 B.C. (1.214). The Dream Text of Nabonidus places it in Nabonidus’s third year (553). That the Dream Text is part of the Persian propaganda, although most of it probably was edited from a legitimate text of Nabonidus, is shown by Marduk promising to Nabonidus in the dream that he (Marduk) would raise up Cyrus to defeat the Medes. Its propaganda purpose is also shown by its widespread dissemination, with more than 75 copies discovered so far, whereas genuine texts from Nabonidus were largely eliminated in the purges described in the Verse Account. Anderson comments regarding the discrepancies in various documents that apparently came from the same Persian redaction effort that took place between 539 B.C. and Cyrus’s death in 530, “The existence of these discrepancies casts a shadow of suspicion on the whole story of Cyrus’ conquest of Media.”

In a section that is partially defective, the Nabonidus Chronicle reports the death of the “wife of the king.” This happened at some time before the end of the month in which the forces of Cyrus captured Babylon. If the king was Cyrus, as seems most probable, then the one who died was his first wife, Cassandane, mother of Cambyses II. Cambyses II was old enough to be prince regent when his father entered Babylon. If Cassandane had died at this time, it would shed light on the passage in the Cyropaedia (8.5.19) where Cyaxares II, maternal uncle of Cyrus, gave his daughter as bride to the recently bereaved Cyrus, with the kingdom of Media as her dowry. The death of the king’s wife in the Nabonidus Chronicle would then explain why Cyrus would take a new queen in his middle years, as stated in the Cyropaedia. Most historians do not make any connection between the death of the king’s wife in the Nabonidus Chronicle and Cyrus’s taking a new wife shortly thereafter (Cyropaedia) because to do so would lend credence to the existence of Cyaxares II. One writer who makes the connection is William Shea.

Herodotus

The Histories (Herodotus) of Herodotus was written sometime between 450 and 420 B.C. Herodotus has no room for Cyaxares II in the Histories, because his narrative has Cyrus leading a successful rebellion against his maternal grandfather, Astyages king of the Medes. As a consequence, the Medes then became subject to and “slaves” of the Persians (1.129,130). Herodotus further states that Astyages had no male heir (1.109); this may be compared to Xenophon’s statement (Cyropaedia 8.5.19) that it was Cyaxares (II), son of Astyages, who had no male heir. The lack of a male heir is an essential part of the story of Herodotus regarding the birth and upbringing of Cyrus, an account that is universally recognized as an adaptation of widespread myths about rejected sons becoming king. But the animosity between Cyrus and Astyages that led to Cyrus’s rebellion is an integral part of that myth. The rebellion however is generally accepted as true by modern historians, since it is supported by the official Persian party line as embodied in, for example, the Nabonidus Chronicle discussed above.

Resources

• Pritchard, James B., ed. (1969). Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament. Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press. {{cite book}}: |first= has generic name (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
• Cyrus Cylinder Full Babylonian text of the Cyrus Cylinder as it was known in 2001; translation; brief introduction.
• Xenophon, Cyropaedia: the education of Cyrus, translated by Henry Graham Dakyns and revised by F.M. Stawell, Project Gutenberg.