A hand without a body wrote a horrifying prophecy on the wall

A boisterous party was celebrated at the court of the Great King. In arrogance, the householder summoned the cups of gold and silver that his father had plundered from the temple in Jerusalem, and drank out of them to the extent of Babylon. Suddenly an eerie hand appeared in the hall and wrote strange signs on the wall. The Jewish scholar Daniel was fetched. He read the words "Mene mene tekel u-parsin": "The days of your reign are numbered, you were weighed on the scales and found wanting, your kingdom will be divided and given to the Medes and Persians." That night the Great King became king Belshazzar killed by his courtiers.

This is how the book of Daniel in the Old Testament explains the fall of the Neo-Babylonian Empire and the rise of the Persian Empire. October 6, 539 B.C. Its founder Cyrus II, also known as “the Great”, had one of his generals move into Babylon. It was a turning point in world history.

Cyrus came from a lineage that had its roots in Persis, a region in south-west Iran. The Persians living there were among the Indo-European speaking migrants who had settled a few centuries earlier. They also included the Medes who, in alliance with the Babylonians at the end of the 7th century B.C. had put an end to the Assyrian Empire.

While the Medes formed a loose confederation, the Neo-Babylonian Empire under Nebuchadnezzar II rose to become the leading power in the Near East. The Old Testament did not leave a good hair on him, but he paid off with the conquest of Jerusalem in 587 BC. the Jewish petty kingdom off the map and deported its elite to Mesopotamia.

The ancient sources, on the other hand, paint an extremely positive picture of Cyrus. The Greek Herodotus called him a "generous victor" who spared his enemies. Herodotus' compatriot Xenophon, who in his "Cyropedia", a kind of educational novel, stylized the Persian as the ideal ruler, described him as a "wonderful appearance" whose "natural ability and upbringing enabled him to rule over people in such an excellent way". The prophet Isaiah in the Old Testament even praises Cyrus as God's tool.

In any case, Cyrus must have had exceptional political and military skills. This included choosing the right time and farsighted organization of the conquests. The first was the Medes. Around 550 Cyrus moved into his capital Ekbatana (Hamadan) and made it one of the metropolises of his empire.

The next conquest connects to one of the most iconic episodes in ancient history. The Lyder Kroisos, whose empire included large parts of western Anatolia, saw an opportunity for expansion after the collapse of the Mede Empire. He consulted the oracle of Delphi, who advised him: "If you cross the (river) of Halys, you will destroy a great empire" - a stroke of genius in policy advice, since the empire he founded in 541 BC destroyed was his own.

According to some testimonies, Cyrus is said to have left his opponent alive. But the Persian's generosity had limits. When the governor installed in Lydia rebelled, the king used great brutality against him and his allies. Nabonidus, the last great king of the Neo-Babylonian Empire, which stretched from Mesopotamia to Palestine, also had to experience this. The Old Testament made him Belshazzar, the son of Nebuchadnezzar II. In fact, several other rulers succeeded him to the throne.

Nabonidus probably also underestimated his opponent and broke the bridle of the war. The battle broke out at “Opis on the banks of the Tigris”, reports the Babylonian Nabonidian chronicle: “The people (soldiers) of Akkad withdrew. He (Cyrus) had the booty carried away (and) the (captive) people killed.” One cannot deny Cyrus a healthy measure of Machiavellianism. He could then afford to send his general Ugbaru to Babylon before taking possession of the city himself in late October 539.

After Cyrus had also brought eastern Iran under his rule, an empire arose that the world had never seen before. The amazing thing about it was not just its size, but that it didn't fall apart after the death of its founder. Although the final organization of the empire was only completed under his successors - especially Dareios I. is to be mentioned here - decisive decisions can be traced back to Cyrus. Instead of making the elites of the subjugated docile through massacres or deportations, the Persians relied on cooperation by giving them regionally limited powers and enabling them to rise in the imperial aristocracy.

Another building block was an unprecedented degree of religious tolerance. All the gods were allowed to “take up a place of joy in their hearts in prosperity in their sanctuaries,” Cyrus wrote on a clay cylinder after his victory over Babylon. "May they only advocate the prolongation of my life day by day and utter words on my behalf to my lord Marduk" (the city god of Babylon; ed.).

The Jewish deportees, who were allowed to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the Temple, also benefited from this. So it was entirely consistent that the prophet Isaiah praised the king of the Persians and founder of the first world empire in history as "God's anointed".

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