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inscription, we find the last events of the reign of Uabonidus, 
the father of Belshazzar, very minutely related, verifying the 
words of the prophet and Grecian history. The difficulty 
which overwhelmed the brains of some men with reference 
to the existence of the names of Belshazzar and Darius 
in the story related by Daniel, and omitted by Herodotus 
and others, has now been satisfactorily explained. The 
long-buried ancient records of the past, which have revealed 
to us from time to time most important facts connected with 
the Bible, inform us that though Nabonidus was the de facto 
king at the time of the fall of Babylon, yet he was absent at 
the time, and his son Belshazzar was in command of the 
Babylonian army, and acting as Regent at the Chaldean 
capital. With regard to what seems a discrepancy between 
the account given by Daniel and that related by Herodotus 
and Xenophon as to the name of the Persian king, it has been 
proved that, though Cyrus was in command of the. Mcdo- 
Persian army, he was really not the king, but a mere satrap 
or viceroy, acting for his grandfather Astyages, who was the 
real monarch, and was called “ Darius Medus.” 
The Greek historian, Syncellus, who lived in the eighth 
century, calls this Cyrus of Herodotus and Xenophon “ Darius 
Astyages,” which shows that at his time there must have been 
some record in existence which explained the various appella- 
tions of both Cyrus and Darius. 
What I wanted to be convinced of more than anything else 
was the exact time the Euphrates ran through Babylon, as 
Herodotus makes an allusion to it in the following words : — 
“ Queen Nitocris enclosed herself therefore with these 
defences by digging, and immediately afterwards made the 
following addition. As the city consisted of two divisions, 
which were separated by the river, during the reign of former 
kings, when any one had occasion to cross from one division to 
the other, he was obliged to cross in a boat, and this, in my 
opinion, was very troublesome ; she therefore provided for this, 
for, after she had dug the reservoir for the lake, she left this 
other monument built by similar toil ; she had large blocks of 
stone cut, and when they were ready, and the place was com- 
pletely dug out, she turned the whole stream of the river into 
the place she had dug. While this was filled, and the ancient 
channel had become dry, in the first place she lined with 
burnt bricks the banks of the river throughout the city, and 
the descents that lead from the gates to the river, in the same 
manner as the walls. In the next place, about the middle of 
the city, she built a bridge with the stones she had prepared, 
and bound them together with plates of lead and iron. Upon 
