During the reign of Nebuchadnezzar II Babylonia revived and its cities were rebuilt. Babylon itself expanded to an enormous city covering 850 ha. But Babylon’s political power was not to last long. In 555 a usurper acceded to the throne called Nabonidus (555-539). In contrast to Nebuchadnezzar’s care for Babylon and the temple of Marduk, Nabonidus favored the moon-god Sin whose sanctuary was located in Harran, a preference which brought him little sympathy with the Babylonians. His reign ended when Nabonidus had to succumb to the Persians, who, under the reign of Cyrus II (559-530), had conquered the lands of Media and Urartu and even brought the kingdom of Lydia under their control in the 540s. Cyrus took Babylon in 539 BC after having seized the cities of Opis and Sippar. Accounts vary as to whether this was a peaceful surrender or involved a battle outside the city gates. According to Cyrus’s own account, recorded in the famous Cyrus-Cylinder found in Babylon and now in the British Museum, Cyrus took the city with the blessing of the god Marduk:
He (Marduk) commanded him (Cyrus) to go to Babylon, and let him take the road to Babylon. Like a friend and companion he walked by his side, while his extensive troops, whose number was immeasurable like the water of a river, marched at his side, with their weapons fastened. Without battle and fighting he led him enter Babylon. He saved his (Marduk’s) city Babylon from its oppression; he handed over to him Nabonidus, the king who did not revere him. (Cyrus-Cylinder lines 15-17; for full text, Brosius 2000)
Babylonia became a satrapy of the new Persian empire, leaving intact its legal and economic administration, and its religious and social customs. With the foundation of the first Persian empire, known as the Achaemenid empire (559-330 bc), the entire world of the ancient Near East, from Egypt to India, came under the control of one single power. The Persians integrated the past kingdoms into a vast world empire which was to last for about 230 years, ending with its conquest by Alexander III of Macedon.
While the Macedonian conquest of Achaemenid Persia undoubtedly signifies a marked change in the development of the history of the ancient Near East, a political, historical, and cultural continuity can nevertheless be traced here, albeit to a varying extent. Vestiges of Near Eastern cultures remain tangible throughout the Seleukid and the Parthian periods. Perhaps a more decisive political chasm occurred with the fall of the last Persian power, the Sasanians (ad 224-651), and the Arab conquest of the Near East in the mid-seventh century ad. The Sasanians, rivals of Rome, claimed heritage to the lands west of the Euphrates river which had been the recognized border between the two empires since the Parthian period. After more than four centuries of Sasanian rule, which witnessed frequent wars, first with Rome, and then with Byzantium, and had left both empires politically and militarily exhausted, Sasanid Persia, as well as the Roman Near East, succumbed to invasions of Arab tribes. With them they brought a new, monotheistic religion and a new form of writing which they imposed upon the conquered peoples. Five thousand years of ancient Near Eastern history thus finally came to an end.
World History
