The Kings of Tyre and Babylon

To these I will add Menander of Ephesus as well. He wrote the history of what was done among both Greeks and barbarians under each of the kings, taking pains to learn it from each people’s native records. Writing about the kings who reigned at Tyre, when he comes to Hiram he says this: “When Abibalus died, his son Hiram succeeded to his kingdom; he lived fifty-three years and reigned thirty-four. He built up the Broad Place with an embankment and set up the golden pillar in the temple of Zeus. He went to the forest and cut cedar timber from the mountain called Lebanon for the roofs of the temples; he pulled down the ancient temples and built new shrines to Heracles and to Astarte. He was the first to celebrate the awakening of Heracles, in the month of Peritius. He made war on the people of Utica, who would not pay their tribute, and when he had brought them under his rule, he returned home. In his reign there lived Abdemon, a young boy, who always mastered the problems that Solomon, king of Jerusalem, set.” The time from this king to the founding of Carthage is reckoned thus: “When Hiram died, his son Balbazerus succeeded to the kingdom; he lived forty-three years and reigned seventeen. After him his son Abdastartus lived thirty-nine years and reigned nine. The four sons of his nurse plotted against him and killed him, and the eldest of them reigned, Methusastartus son of Leastartus, who lived fifty-four years and reigned twelve. After him his brother Astharymus lived fifty-eight years and reigned nine. He was killed by his brother Phelles, who took the kingdom and ruled eight months, having lived fifty years. He was slain by Ithobalus, the priest of Astarte, who lived forty-eight years and reigned thirty-two. He was succeeded by his son Balezorus, who lived forty-five years and reigned six. His successor was his son Mettenus, who lived thirty-two years and reigned twenty-nine. His successor was Pygmalion, who lived fifty-eight years and reigned forty-seven. In the seventh year of his reign his sister fled from him and built the city of Carthage in Libya.” So the whole time from the reign of Hiram to the founding of Carthage adds up to a hundred and fifty-five years and eight months. And since the temple at Jerusalem was built in the twelfth year of his reign, from the building of the temple to the founding of Carthage was a hundred and forty-three years and eight months. What need is there to add more testimony from the Phoenicians? The truth is plainly seen to be firmly confirmed. And surely the arrival of our forefathers in this country came long before the building of the temple, for it was only when they had taken possession of the whole land by war that they built the temple. All this I have shown clearly from the sacred writings in my Antiquities. [a]

I will now tell what is recorded and related about us among the Chaldeans, records that agree closely with our own writings on other matters too. Their witness is Berosus, a Chaldean by birth, but well known to those who concern themselves with learning, since he himself published for the Greeks writings on astronomy and on the philosophy of the Chaldeans. This Berosus, following the most ancient records, has written about the flood that took place and the destruction of mankind in it, just as Moses has, and about the ark in which Noah, the founder of our race, was saved when it was carried onto the heights of the mountains of Armenia. Then he lists the descendants of Noah, adding their dates, and comes to Nabopolassar, king of Babylon and of the Chaldeans. Telling the deeds of this king, he relates how he sent his son Nebuchadnezzar with a great army against Egypt and against our land, when he learned that they had revolted; how Nebuchadnezzar conquered them all, set fire to the temple at Jerusalem, and removed our whole people from their country and settled them in Babylon; and how the city lay desolate for seventy years, until Cyrus king of the Persians. He says that the Babylonian king conquered Egypt, Syria, Phoenicia and Arabia, surpassing in his deeds all who had reigned over the Chaldeans and Babylonians before him. A little further on Berosus sets this out again in his history of ancient times. I will set down his own words, which run as follows: “When his father Nabopolassar heard that the satrap he had appointed over Egypt and the regions of Coele-Syria and Phoenicia had revolted, he was no longer able to bear hardship himself, and so he entrusted part of his army to his son Nebuchadnezzar, who was still in the prime of youth, and sent him against the rebel. Nebuchadnezzar engaged the rebel in pitched battle, defeated him, and brought the country back under their rule. About this time his father Nabopolassar fell ill and died in the city of Babylon, after reigning twenty-one years. Learning not long afterward of his father’s death, Nebuchadnezzar settled the affairs of Egypt and the rest of the country. He entrusted the captives, Jews, Phoenicians, Syrians and the peoples of Egypt, to some of his friends, to bring them to Babylonia with the heavy-armed troops and the rest of the spoils, while he himself hurried across the desert to Babylon with very few companions. There he found the affairs of state being managed by the Chaldeans, and the kingdom kept for him by the noblest of them. Now master of his father’s whole realm, he gave orders that the captives, when they arrived, be assigned settlements in the most suitable places in Babylonia. From the spoils of the war he lavishly adorned the temple of Bel and the other temples. He restored the original city and added another outside it; and so that besiegers could never again divert the river and so get at the city, he surrounded the inner city with three walls and the outer city with three, some of baked brick and bitumen, and some of brick alone. When he had walled the city splendidly and adorned its gates as befits holy places, he built beside his father’s palace another palace adjoining it. It would perhaps take too long to describe its height and its other magnificence; yet, enormous and splendid as it was, it was finished in fifteen days. In this palace he raised high terraces of stone, gave them the look of mountains, and planted them with all kinds of trees. So he made what is called the hanging garden, because his wife, who had been brought up in Media, longed for mountain scenery.” [g]

So Berosus writes about this king, and much more besides, in the third book of his History of Chaldea. There he blames the Greek writers for vainly supposing that Babylon was founded by Semiramis the Assyrian, and for falsely writing that the marvelous works around it were built by her. In these matters the Chaldean record must be considered trustworthy. Moreover, in the archives of the Phoenicians too there are records in agreement with what Berosus says about the king of Babylon, that he subdued all Syria and Phoenicia. Philostratus also agrees with these in his histories, where he mentions the siege of Tyre, and so does Megasthenes in the fourth book of his History of India, where he tries to show that this king of Babylon surpassed Heracles in courage and in the greatness of his deeds; for he says that he subdued most of Libya and Iberia. What I said above about the temple in Jerusalem, that it was burned by the Babylonians when they invaded, and began to be rebuilt when Cyrus had taken over the kingdom of Asia, will be clearly shown from the words of Berosus. For in his third book he says this: “Nebuchadnezzar, after beginning the wall I have mentioned, fell ill and died, having reigned forty-three years, and his son Evil-merodach became master of the kingdom. He ran the government lawlessly and with debauchery, and was plotted against and killed by Neriglissar, his sister’s husband, after reigning two years. After he was killed, Neriglissar, who had plotted against him, succeeded to the throne and reigned four years. His son Laborosoarchod, a mere boy, was master of the kingdom for nine months; but because he showed many signs of a wicked character, his friends plotted against him and he was beaten to death. When he was dead, the conspirators met and together conferred the kingdom on Nabonnedus, a man of Babylon who had been one of the same conspiracy. In his reign the walls of the city of Babylon along the river were finished with baked brick and bitumen. In the seventeenth year of his reign Cyrus, who had come out of Persia with a great army and had subdued all the rest of the kingdom, advanced on Babylonia. When Nabonnedus learned that he was coming, he went out to meet him with his army and gave battle; but he was defeated, fled with a very few companions, and was shut up in the city of Borsippa. Cyrus took Babylon and gave orders that the outer walls of the city be torn down, because the city had proved very troublesome to him and hard to take; then he marched off to Borsippa to besiege Nabonnedus. Nabonnedus did not wait for the siege but surrendered first, and Cyrus treated him kindly, gave him Carmania to live in, and sent him out of Babylonia. So Nabonnedus spent the rest of his life in that country, and died there.” [j]

These accounts agree with the truth in our books. For it is written in them that Nebuchadnezzar laid waste our temple in the eighteenth year of his reign, and that it lay in obscurity for fifty years; that in the second year of the reign of Cyrus its foundations were laid; and that it was completed in the second year of the reign of Darius. I will add the records of the Phoenicians as well, for an abundance of proofs should not be passed over. Their reckoning of the times runs like this: “In the reign of King Ithobalus, Nebuchadnezzar besieged Tyre for thirteen years. After him Baal reigned ten years. After him judges were appointed, and these judged: Ecnibalus son of Baslechus two months; Chelbes son of Abdaeus ten months; Abbarus the high priest three months; Myttynus and Gerastratus son of Abdelimus were judges six years, and within their time Balatorus reigned one year. When he died, they sent and fetched Merbalus from Babylon, and he reigned four years. When he died, they sent for his brother Hiram, who reigned twenty years. In his reign Cyrus became ruler of the Persians.” So the whole time is fifty-four years and three months; for Nebuchadnezzar began to besiege Tyre in the seventh year of his reign, and Cyrus the Persian took power in the fourteenth year of Hiram. The records of the Chaldeans and of the Tyrians, then, agree with our writings about the temple, and the testimony I have given to the antiquity of our race is acknowledged and beyond dispute. For those who are not excessively contentious, I think what I have said will be enough. [n]