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EEV. ANDREW CKAIG KOBINSON, M.A., ON 



welfare of Belshazzar and calls him "his eldest son the offspring 

 of his heart." The Annalistic Tablet, one of the principal 

 inscriptions of this period, ibr several successive years records 

 that "the king's son and the nobles were with the army in 

 Accad " (Northern Babylonia). To these nobles, with whom he 

 was thus so intimately associated in the army for many years, 

 Belshazzar perhaps gave that memorable banquer. in Bal)ylon 

 recorded in the' 5th Chapter of the Book of Daniel, " Belshazzar 

 the King made a great feast to a thousand of his lords and 

 drank wine before the thousand" — a banquet to the chiefs of 

 the army. Several contract tablets record business transactions 

 of " Belshazzar the son of the king " {Records of the Fast, 

 New Series, vol. iii, pp. 125-127), and there are records also of 

 his offerings to the temples of the gods. The Annalistic Tablet, 

 as we have seen, informs us that for several years in succession 

 Belshazzar was in command of the army in Northern Babylonia, 

 whilst his father, Nabonidus, remained in Babylon. Subsequently 

 he and his father would appear to have exchanged places — his 

 father taking command of the forces in the field, and suffering 

 a signal defeat from the army of Cyrus — whilst Belshazzar 

 remained in Babylon, where, the Book of Daniel tells us, he was 

 holding a brilliant banquet to his lords on the night that the 

 city fell. " On that night," says the Book of Daniel, " was 

 Belshazzar the King of tlie Chaldeans slain." 



But it has now come to be treated as if it were a common- 

 place of history, and one of the " assured results " of modern 

 criticism that these words in the Book of Daniel, and the 

 general account of the fall of Babylon which has come down to 

 us in the writings of the classical historians, are contradicted by 

 the inscriptions. 



How has this impression been created ? 



The general account of the Fall of Babylon which has come 

 down to us from antiquity may be put in this way: — The 

 classical authorities say, that the Babylonians after one 

 encounter with the troops of Cyrus, in which they were worsted, 

 retired within the walls of Babylon which seemed to be 

 impregnable, and within which there had been stored up pro- 

 visions fur many years. Cyrus then invested Babylon. He 

 commanded his soldiers to dig deep trenches surrounding the 

 city^ as if he were throwing up lines of circumvallation, but 

 contrix'cd that these trenches should be dug in such a way that 

 at a moment's notice the waters of the Eiver Euphrates could be 

 turned into them, and the depth of the river so much reduced 

 in that part where it flowed through the city, that his soldiers 



