Belshazzar
Eldest son of Nabonidus, who governed in Babylonia during his father’s long absence. In the book of Daniel he is the king at whose feast a hand writes on the wall on the night Babylon falls.
Babylonian texts know Belshazzar as the eldest son of Nabonidus, who prays for him in a building inscription from Ur (Nabonidus Cylinder from Ur col. ii, closing prayer). While his father lived at Tayma, the chronicle places “the prince” with the officers and the army in Babylonia (Nabonidus Chronicle ii.5–25), and a poem hostile to Nabonidus says that the king entrusted the army and the kingship to his first-born (Verse Account of Nabonidus ii.5–6). These texts call him the king’s son. None of them gives him the title of king.
The book of Daniel calls him king and speaks of Nebuchadnezzar as his father. At his feast the vessels of the Jerusalem temple are brought out, a hand writes on the wall, and he is killed the same night (Daniel 5:1–30). Daniel also dates two visions by the years of his reign (Daniel 7:1) (Daniel 8:1). The cuneiform sources do not say how he died.
In the timeline
- about 605 BC to 536 BC, traditional dateDaniel at the Babylonian Court
The book of Daniel tells of a young Judean taken to Babylon who serves its kings and stays loyal to his God through the furnace and the lions’ den, and who sees “one like a son of man” receive an everlasting kingdom.
- 12 October 539 BC, firm dateCyrus Takes Babylon
The army of Cyrus of Persia enters Babylon without a battle in October 539 BC, and the Babylonian empire passes to Persia. The Judean exiles come under a king who lets displaced peoples go home.