Vol.9 No.4

Treasures of a Lost Empire
Research into Babylon’s lost glory lights up the pages of sacred history.
by Laci Kovacs

There is usually nothing enticing about a brick wall. But this wall is different. As soon as I see it, I am both awed and excited. I am gazing at the famous Ishtar Gate of Babylon, displayed in the Pergamum Museum in Berlin. It is vivid blue with a glossy enamel and embellished with ornamental bulls and dragons. Countless caravans to the land of Shinar must have seen it shimmering in the morning sun and, like I, succumbed to her beauty.

Many other important relics await my attention in this cathedral of history. But this gate, most certainly used by Daniel the Hebrew prophet and Babylonian prime minister, grips my imagination.

Keys to the Treasure

The kingdom of Babylon has ancient roots to the earliest recorded history. But not until centuries later, when Babylon emerged as the first world super power, was she mentioned prolificly in Scripture.

Babylon’s greatest king, Nebuchadnezzar II, was used by God to punish His own people for their apostasy. Then through the prophet Isaiah, God predicted Babylon’s later downfall, identifying the conquering Persian general, Cyrus, a century before his birth.¹

What we can learn of Babylon’s past can aid our understanding of God’s dealings with this great nation and its kings. Yet until the nineteenth century, some scholars questioned the very existence of Babylon. This was because no above-ground evidence of Babylon had survived. What was known of Babylon and many other ancient kingdoms appeared in the Hebrew Scriptures and a few scattered references from antiquity.

This lack of outside sources to confirm the Old Testament led higher critics to discount the Bible’s reliability—including its descriptions of Babylon and its striking stories of her kings and God’s prophet Daniel. In other words, the Bible’s account of Babylon was guilty until proven innocent.

One can imagine the fervor aroused among serious students of the Bible when the Behistun Inscription was discovered and deciphered, furnishing the key to Assyrian-Babylonian cuneiform. With these came the release of a vast quantity of material confirming Old Testament history.

Uncommon Treasure

Some of the most spectacular archeological discoveries were made in the fertile valleys of the Tigris and the Euphrates, where the Babylonian culture flourished for centuries, first as a subject of Assyria, then as queen of the nations. These discoveries seriously challenged the prevailing view that Bible history was mythological, or at best—unreliable history.

One extraordinary confirmation of the sacred record is found among some three hundred cuneiform tablets unearthed near the Ishtar Gate in the Babylon of Nebuchadnezzar II and dating between 595 and 570 B.C.. In the list of rations paid to craftsmen and captives living near the capital occurs the name of “Yaukin, king of the land of Yahud”—none other than “Jehoiachin, king of Judah,” who was taken captive to Babylon after Nebuchadnezzar’s first conquest of Jerusalem.² Another confirmation came when Belshazzar’s identity was resolved. The book of Daniel identifies Belshazzar as the king of Babylon when it fell. But the cuneiform of that time identifies Nabodius as king. This discrepancy was used by higher critics to discount the book of Daniel’s historical reliability. The discrepancy was resolved when archeologists found evidence that during the last part of his reign Nabodius resided in Arabia and left the government of Babylon to his eldest son, Belshazzar.³

Through modern excavations, the splendors of Nebuchadnezzar’s Babylon are now well known. In 1899 the German Oriental Society began excavating at the ancient city’s site and uncovered remains of vast building projects. The book of Daniel records Nebuchadnezzar’s proud boast of Babylon’s magnificence, “Is not this great Babylon, which I have built for the royal dwelling-place, by the might of my power and for the glory of my majesty?”⁴

Archeology reveals that Babylon did indeed owe much of its magnificence and reputation to this monarch. Most of the bricks found in the excavations of Babylon carry this stamp: “Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, supporter of Esagila and Ezida, exalted first-born son of Nabopolassar, king of Babylon.”⁵ One of the stones echoes his boast mentioned in   Daniel 4:30: “The fortifications of Esagila and Babylon I strengthened and established the name of my reign forever.”⁶

Among the vast ruins was discovered the Ishtar Gate, leading through a massive double wall of fortification and leading to the city’s great processional street. The German Oriental Society transported the gates beautiful remains to Germany, where it was restored. It is now displayed in Berlin’s Pergamum Museum.

Today, only the ground floor of Nebuchadnezzar’s ziggurat remains. But according to Herodotus, a prominent Greek historian, it towered to a height of eight stages. No longer identifiable were the most famous of all Nebuchadnezzar’s constructions, the hanging gardens, built in terraces to compensate his Median queen for the absence of her beloved mountains. The Greeks considered the hanging gardens of Babylon one of the seven wonders of the world.

Daniel’s mention of Nebuchadnezzar’s building activities proves very important. The common critical view of the book of Daniel gives it a Maccabean authorship date (167 B.C), a period much latter than the book of Daniel describes. But if the book of Daniel was written then, how did the supposed writer of the book know that the splendor of Babylon was due to Nebuchadnezzar’s building operations? R. H. Pfeiffer, while defending the skeptical view, confesses that “we shall presumably never know.”⁷ But to those who accept the genuineness of the Book of Daniel, in this instance strongly supported by archeology, the critic’s “problem” disappears. 

Artifacts and Faith

The material remains of the ancient past are often used to “prove” the accuracy of Bible history. But archeology plays a subordinate role to the Bible. The Bible, when legitimately approached, does not need to be “proven,” either by archeology, geology or any other science. As God’s revelation to man, the Holy Scriptures are what they claim to be to those who believe the message.  Those who appreciate spiritual truth do so on the basis of faith and not of sight.⁸

Whatever contribution archeology or any other science might make toward supporting the reliability of the Bible, it can never replace faith. Scientific authentication may act as an aid to faith, but God has ordained that simple trust will always be necessary in dealing with Him and His revealed truth.

The greatest treasures of Babylon, however, will never be unearthed by archeologists. They are the stories of captives and kings from heaven’s perspective, as recorded in Daniel chapters 1-6. These stories “prove” Scripture in the lives of those who lived its principles.

Through the heaven-sent dreams of Nebuchadnezzar, the God of the Hebrew captives triumphed over a superpower’s top astrologers and magicians. More significantly, He revealed His ultimate power over the nations and His tender regard for all His children—even haughty potentates unaccustomed to Divine grace. When Nebuchadnezzar threw three young Hebrew captives into a fiery furnace for not worshipping him, heaven honored them and they were not consumed. Instead, their walk through the fire and their God was heralded throughout the kingdom. And as a great climax to human pride comes the story of the impious King Belshazzar’s last night.

These lessons from history are the true treasures of the lost empire. And they will continue to enrich all who will hear God’s voice speaking through the pages of sacred history.

References:

1. Isaiah 45:1-5.
2. Albright, W.F. in Biblical Archeologist, vol. 4, Dec. 1942, pp. 49-55; 2 Kings 25:27-30.
3. Dougherty, Raymond P., Nabodius and Belshazzar; A Study of the Closing Events of the Neo-Babylonian Empire, New Heaven, 1929, pp. 93-137.
4. Daniel 4:30.
5. Price, Ira M., The Monuments and the Old Testament, Philadelphia, 1925, p. 358.
6. Finegan, Jack, Light From the Ancient Past, Princeton, 1946, p. 186.
7. Pfeiffer, Old Testament Introduction, New York, 1941, p 758.
8. 2 Corinthians 5:7.