134 THEOPHILUS G. PINCHES, LL.D., M.E.A.S., ON 



if you go and conquer that land." The Bible, it is true, speaks of 

 Babylonia as all desert and dry waste, and so forth ; but that pre- 

 diction need not have been fulfilled immediately. In fact, one of 

 the great proofs of the truth of the Bible is that Babylonia remained 

 the same a long time after the Bible was completed. It was at a 

 later time that the condition of desolation began, and it was com- 

 pleted by the wanton destruction of the Saracens and Turks. 



May I say one word about the death of the queen-mother Who 

 is this queen-mother who in the ninth year of Nabonidus's reign 

 died, and for whom the son of the king mourned If the queen- 

 mother died, and Nabonidus and his family were not related to her 

 in any way, because, meanwhile, there had been another little 

 dynasty, and if Nabonidus's son had not married the daughter of 

 Nebuchadrezzar, as we suppose from the Bible, then who is this 

 queen-mother "? Surely it was because they were related to this 

 queen-mother that they mourned for her. She seems to me to 

 have been the wife or one of the wives of Nebuchadrezzar, the 

 mother of the wife of Belshazzar. According to this theory, 

 Belshazzar mourned the daughter of Nebuchadrezzar, and hence, in 

 the solemn interview between Daniel and himself, he is reminded 

 that Nebuchadrezzar his ancestor — we believe his grandfather— 

 underwent that humiliation from God, and had his kingdom 

 restored to him. I think that point proves that Nabonidus 

 married a daughter of Nebuchadrezzar, and hence Belshazzar was 

 a grandson of Nebuchadrezzar. 



The Eev. H. J. R. Marstox, M.A. : Can we alter the reading of 

 the closing chapter of Daniel and instead of reading Darius read 

 Gobryas ^ 



Dr. Pinches : I think we ought to regard him as being the same 

 as Gobryas. He may haA^e been known by two names. 



Mr. Martin Rouse : A lady wishes me to ask whether the facts 

 we have had are from inscriptions, or whether some are from 

 Berosus. May I ask another question 1 When we had the last and 

 most interesting paper in 1914, the German discoveries were fully 

 under discussion, and it seemed to me that it could only have been 

 the citadel of Babylon they had discovered, and that Babylon must 

 have been a far vaster country. Otherwise how could Sir Henry 



