Daniel and Belshazzar in History - The BAS Library
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Home > Magazines > BAR > May/June 1985

Daniel and Belshazzar in History

By Alan R. Millard

The party was in full swing, the wine flowed freely, and everyone felt on top of the world. There was no power on earth to rival Babylon, and no gods in heaven to equal hers.

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Footnotes

1.

In upharsin the letter “u” is a transliteration of the Hebrew letter vov. When used as a prefix, vov usually means “and.”

Endnotes

1.

See Morton Cogan, Imperialism and Religion. Assyria, Judah and Israel in the Eighth and Seventh Centuries, B.C.E., SBL Monograph Series 19 (Missoula, Montana: Scholars Press, 1974), Chapter 2, for these and other texts; Alan R. Millard, “Another Babylonian Chronicle Text,” Iraq 26 (1964), pp. 19–23, for the objects from Bel’s temple.

2.

Ferdinand Hitzig, Das Buch Daniel (Leipzig: Weidman, 1850), p. 75.

3.

See E. Sollberger, “Mr. Taylor in Chaldaea,” Anatolian Studies 22 (1972), pp. 129–139.

4.

Raymond R. Dougherty, Nabonidus and Belshazzar: A Study of the Closing Events of the Neo-Babylonian Empire, Yale Oriental Researches 15 (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1929), cites the majority of the texts.

5.

The text is translated by A. L. Oppenheim in J. B. Pritchard, Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament, (Princeton, New Jersey Princeton University Press, 1955, 1969), 313b.

6.

A. Abou-Assaf, P. Bordreuil, Millard, La Statue de Tell Fekherye et son incription bilingue assyro-araméenne, éditions Recherche sur les civilisations (Paris: A.D.P.F., 1982). Summary and translation Millard and Bordreuil, “A Statue from Syria with Assyrian and Aramaic Inscriptions,” Biblical Archaeologist 45 (1982), pp. 135–141. See also Adam Mikaya, “Earliest Aramaic Inscription Uncovered in Syria,” BAR 07:04.