Nabonidus Cylinder and Belshazzar

In 1854, a man named J. G. Taylor found four clay cylinders buried in the foundation of a ziggurat at Ur, in what is now Iraq. Written on them was a king's prayer for his eldest son.

Scripture: Belshazzar the king made a great feast to a thousand of his lords, and drank wine before the thousand.

Daniel chapter five opens with a king named Belshazzar hosting a great feast. Soon, vessels taken from the temple in Jerusalem are brought in, and a hand writes on the palace wall.

The cylinders were left by Nabonidus, king of Babylonia from 556 to 539 BC. His devotion to the moon god Sin led him to building work outside Babylon.

At Ur, he repaired a ziggurat called E-lugal-galga-sisa, part of Sin's temple. The foundation text is probably his last building inscription, dated to around 540 BC.

All four cylinders apparently carry the same inscription, in cuneiform, which is writing pressed into clay. Where they are kept today, our sources do not say.

Scripture: Near the end, Nabonidus prays for himself. Then he names his eldest son, and asks that reverence for the god be placed in his heart.

The Sippar cylinder was written after Nabonidus came back from Arabia, in his thirteenth year, but before war with Cyrus the Great. It describes repairing three temples.

So what does it show? A Babylonian inscription from Nabonidus's own reign names Belshazzar, and calls him the king's eldest son. It is a direct mention of the name.

But the link is indirect. The cylinder calls him a son, not a king, and mentions no feast. The passage calls Nebuchadnezzar his father, while the cylinder names Nabonidus. These sources do not settle how that fits.

A clay prayer from a foundation names Belshazzar, a small, real piece of the world behind the story. May the Lord Jesus Christ be with you today. Follow for more.