Latest / The Achaemenid Empire: Persia's Golden Age of Power — Fexingo History / The Achaemenid Siege of Babylon: Cyrus Cracks the Walls
Transcript
- Lucas: If you've been stepping into history with us episode by episode, you know we've covered Cyrus the Great's campaigns in Bactria and Lydia. But there's one conquest that really sealed his reputation as a ruler unlike any the ancient world had seen—the fall of Babylon in 539 BCE. Luna: That's the one where he supposedly diverted a river, right? Lucas: Exactly. Babylon was the most famous city of its age—huge walls, the Hanging Gardens, a legacy stretching back to Hammurabi. And yet Cyrus took it with remarkably little bloodshed, at least according to our sources. The key player on the ground was his general Gobryas—sometimes called Ugbaru in the Babylonian records. Lucas: Gobryas was a former Babylonian governor who had defected to Cyrus. He knew the city's layout, its vulnerabilities, and its politics. And crucially, he knew about the Euphrates, which ran right through the middle of Babylon. Luna: So how do you use a river as a weapon? Lucas: The standard story, which Herodotus tells, is that Cyrus's engineers dug canals upstream to divert the Euphrates into a basin—the ancient equivalent of a dry lake, actually it was a depression formed by a former canal. The water level dropped so much that his soldiers could wade into the city through the river gates, which had been left open because nobody expected an attack from that direction. Lucas: Now, Herodotus wrote about 80 years after the event, so there are details we have to take with a grain of salt. But the Nabonidus Chronicle—a contemporary Babylonian cuneiform tablet—confirms the basic outline: Cyrus's army entered Babylon without a major battle, and the city was captured 'without fighting.' Luna: Wait—the chronicle actually says 'without fighting'? Lucas: Yes, it does. The chronicle records that on the sixteenth day of the month Tashritu, Gobryas entered Babylon, and later that month Cyrus himself arrived. The key phrase is that 'the weapons of the land of Gutium surrounded the gates.' But there's no mention of a massive slaughter or a siege. This was a carefully planned coup, not a brutal sack. Lucas: And part of that plan was propaganda. The Cyrus Cylinder, which was discovered in 1879, presents Cyrus as a liberator chosen by the Babylonian god Marduk to rescue the people from the impious king Nabonidus. Nabonidus had neglected the city's religious festivals and had moved the capital to Teima in the desert, so he was deeply unpopular. Luna: So Cyrus sells himself as the restorer of order—very smart. Lucas: Absolutely. The cylinder even claims that Cyrus 'daily sought after the worship of Marduk,' which is a remarkable thing for a Persian king who actually worshipped Ahura Mazda. But he understood that in Babylon, legitimacy came through the local gods. And it worked—the Babylonians basically opened their gates to him. Lucas: There's also the dramatic story of Belshazzar's feast from the biblical Book of Daniel, where the writing appears on the wall during a feast the very night Babylon falls. The historical Belshazzar was actually Nabonidus's son and co-regent, and he did die at the city's fall, but the details in Daniel are more theological than historical. Lucas: Quick honest thing—a handful of listeners chip in monthly through buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo, and that's literally what funds making this many of these. No ads, just people who like the show keeping it alive. If that's you, thank you—you're the reason we can dig into details like this. Luna: Yeah, it's a small group that makes a big difference. And it keeps the show exactly what we want it to be. Lucas: So back to Babylon. What's really fascinating is how Cyrus handled the aftermath. He didn't destroy the city—he kept its institutions intact. The cylinder shows him restoring temples, returning statues of gods to their original cities, and even allowing deported peoples to go home. This was a radical departure from Assyrian practice. Luna: That's the policy that gets him called 'the Great,' isn't it? Lucas: Partly, yes. Xenophon, the Greek historian, later wrote that Cyrus treated conquered kings with generosity. And this policy served a practical purpose too—by co-opting local elites, he stabilized his empire. Babylon became one of the most important capitals of the Achaemenid Empire, and it remained a thriving city for centuries. Lucas: But there's a lesser-known detail that I find really telling. The Nabonidus Chronicle says that after Gobryas took control, he appointed 'governors' in the city. But then it adds that on the night after the fall, the wife of the previous king died—and the chronicle notes that 'from the 27th of the month to the 3rd of the following month, there was weeping.' That suggests some violence or at least a purge, despite the 'without fighting' narrative. Luna: So things were a little messier than the cylinder lets on. Lucas: Exactly. The cylinder is propaganda, the chronicle is a record from the Babylonian priesthood who had reasons to favor Cyrus. The truth is probably somewhere in between—Cyrus conquered with minimal force, but there was still a transition of power that involved some deaths. Lucas: One more thing: the story of diverting the river may not be unique to Babylon. We have similar accounts for other sieges—like when the Assyrian king Sargon II took Babylon in 710 BCE, or when the Greeks later took Sardis. So it might be a kind of legendary motif that got attached to Cyrus as well. Luna: But it's still a great story, even if it's not 100% proven. Lucas: Absolutely. And that's what makes these episodes so rewarding—we get to separate the legend from the evidence, and sometimes the truth is even more impressive. Cyrus's conquest wasn't just a military feat; it was a masterclass in political maneuvering and cultural sensitivity that laid the foundation for the Persian Empire's golden age.