MENE MENE TEKEL UPHARSIN
When fingers of a hand appeared in a drinking feast of Bęl-šar-uşur [Belshazzar], royal son and regent of Nabű-nâ’id, King of Babylon, he went pale and promised:
“Any man who shall read the writing and tell him its interpretation shall wear purple, a golden chain on his neck
and rule over a third of the kingdom.”
All the wise men of Babylon entered, but none could read the words to interpret for the royal prince.
In the Book of Daniel (5:1-30), it was not the appearance of the severed hand writing on a wall that was disturbing, but the inability of anyone at the royal court, including Bęl-šar-uşur himself to read the handwriting on the wall. Its implied symbolic meaning was:
“How could the heir to the royal throne hold a kingdom within his grasp when he was not able to read
a divine message sent by all powerful god(s).”
And this is exactly how it was interpreted by Daniel, an exiled Judean in the court of Babylon when he was brought in to read the writing; an interpretation well within the Judean tradition mostly critical of mortal kings and rulers.
While the words by themselves were no more than ordinary measures of Babylonian weight written in Aramaic, Mene=minah, Tekel=shekel and Upharsin=1/2 minah, this is how Daniel interpreted them:
MENE: God has counted your kingdom and has brought it to an end.
TEKEL: You were weighed on the scales and found wanting.
UPHARSIN: Your kingdom has been broken up and given to the Medes and Persians.
According to the Book of Daniel, on that very night, Bęl-šar-uşur was assassinated. And presumably Babylon fell into the hands of Kuruš soon afterward.
While the accounts in the Book of Daniel and similar books were not exactly historical, they were understood by their contemporaries in the context of time and place as demonstration of the power of a heavenly all-knowing God over the power of a worldly ignorant king.
Such could very well be the case with the interpretation of the imperial inscription on the Cyrus Cylinder. Like all inflective languages, interpretation of Cyrus Cylinder lies not only in the strict translation and transliteration of the words, but more importantly in the cultural context within which the document was written.
Scholars who think of Cyrus Cylinder as just another Babylonian foundation tablet seem to forget that:
Persians were not Babylonians.
Arguably, the best that the modern historians could do to move forward is to piece together a reasonable reconstruction based on the deeds that followed such proclamation and the pervasive benevolent memory of a great king that has lingered through the passage of time.
Now what if?
What if Cyrus Cylinder was also lost, like so many other ancient objects, and never found? What if the shovels of the careless excavators had turned the priceless object into dust and thousands of broken fragments? What if...? What if...? What then?
Would the modern view of Kuruš the Great be any different?
Well, according to Professor Wiesehöfer in Ancient Persia, 1996:
“... Even more historically effective than Herodotus’ picture of Cyrus was Xenophon’s, which he presented in a kind of ‘biography’ of this king (Kyropaideia). Until the 18th century, this work was one of the most widely read books of all times, and there are countless references to Xenophon’s Persian king in European literature and art.
More than any other work, Xenophon’s ‘Education of Cyrus’ has established the picture of
a good, wise and tolerant Cyrus...
“... In any event, the clemency Herodotus ascribed to Cyrus, the aptitude Xenophon saw in him, his mission according to the Old Testament and hid piety as described in the Babylonian inscription [Cyrus Cylinder] – all combined in the eyes of many observers to form a harmonious character study of the first Persian king.”
So, what do other modern scholars say about Kuruš ?
A. B. Burns, a classical historian, wrote in Persia and the Greeks: The Defense of the West, 1984:
“Persian peace that came with Cyrus, came as a blessing and even liberation to Jews and other broken people, a blessing which the Persians, a great people whose kings believed in their mission to impose peace and law, would have fain imposed upon the Greeks, who were unbroken, though they broke themselves afterward.”
Professor Pierre Briant wrote in From Cyrus to Alexander, 2002:
“Why Cyrus?... Now, without wishing to get ahead of the story, we must always keep in mind that we have no specific idea of the plans Cyrus might have made at his accession... the problem cannot be solved, as is fully recognizable by those historians who, equipped with more substantial tools for dealing with the evidence, are concerned with the origins and primary objectives of the conquests of Alexander or with the development of Romans imperialism.”
George Campbell wrote in Occidental Mythology, 1964:
“... nobility of his [Cyrus’] character shines forth to us equally: from the writings of the Persians whom he led to world mastery, to Jews whom he freed, and the Greeks whom he overthrew...”
Hershel Shanks, editor of Biblical Archaeology review, wrote in Jerusalem: An Archaeological Biography, 1995:
“... In January of 588, Nebuchadnezzar laid siege to Jerusalem… when the situation became hopeless; King Zedekiah fled Jerusalem with his family. The Babylonians captured him at Jericho. They put his sons to death before his eyes and then blinded him, so that the last thing he would ever see was the murder of his sons. The Zedekiah was taken to Babylon in chains. Nebuchadnezzar broke the walls of Jerusalem on the 17th day of the month Tammuz; less than a month later, on the 9th day of Av, he burned the [First] Temple. This day is marked with mourning and fasting...
“Persians in contrast to the Babylonians and Assyrians represented themselves to their subjects as a benevolent power concerned not just with the garnering of taxes but with the maintenance of peace and order throughout the empire. The territory formerly administered by the Assyrians and Babylonians were reorganized into a system of satrapies and provinces; local governments were strengthened; road systems of communications were developed; and most important for the Jews – displaced and exiled people were encouraged to return to their ancestral homelands to reestablish local religious and political institutions in order to play supportive roles in this new concept of empire...
“Cyrus Cylinder... an edict permitting subject people to resettle in their original homes and rebuild ruined sanctuaries...
“Jews returned in successive waves. The first in 539 B.C. was led by Sheshbazzar, the son of King Jehoiachin. He laid the foundation of the [Second] Temple. Temple was built by Zerubbabel, the last direct scion of the Davidic line mentioned in Hebrew Bible. Zerubbabel was the governor one the Persian province of Yehud (Judea in Aramaic). Under the inspiration of the prophet Haggai and Zechariah, Zerubbabel completed work on the [Second] Temple in 515 B.C. Rebuilt temple was a far more modest structure...”
Well, it seems that the modern view of Kuruš was not developed after the recovery of the Cyrus Cylinder, it was merely enhanced and reaffirmed by it.
Discovery of Cyrus Cylinder was further a boon to the Biblical archaeology providing material witness to ‘Cyrus the Persian’ and fall of Babylon that was mentioned in Hebrew Bible, and the recognition of the Judeans as one the captive people who were returned to their homelands.
There is no evidence that either Herodotos, Xenophon, the Judean writers of the Biblical records, Alexander, or the Romans who all thought Kuruš was an emperor to be admired and praised for good kingship, knew anything about the existence or the content of Cyrus Cylinder inscription.
If Kuruš himself intended the imperial inscription as mere political propaganda, we should expect excavations in the ancient royal cities, under the rule of the imperial Achaemenids, to find copies of the imperial inscription in various official languages of the empire, declaring the sheer imperial power of Kuruš.
Until then, the Cyrus Cylinder is literally what it is: a source of immense national pride to the Iranians everywhere, and a reaffirmation of the favorable contemporary accounts of the emperor’s reign by the subjects and enemies of the Achaemenids and the physical symbol of the start of the Persian power and splendor.
A. J.
2008
|
