Harran Stela

The following excerpts from the Harran Stela are from the translation of C. J. Gadd, as given in Pritchard's Ancient Near Eastern Texts.[2] The first quote shows Nabonidus's devotion to Sin, and also shows that Nabonidus was “one who has nobody,” i.e. he was not of any royal house, and yet he became king. Other sources relate that he was a co-conspirator in the coup that executed Labashi-Marduk, after which his co-conspirators elected him as king.

(This is) the great miracle of Sin that none of the (other) gods and goddesses knew (how to achieve), that has not happened in the country from the days of old, that the people of the country have (not) observed nor written down on clay tables to be preserved for eternity, that (you), Sin, the lord of all the gods and goddesses residing in heaven, have come down from heaven to (me) Nabonidus, king of Babylon! For me, Nabonidus, the lonely one who has nobody, in whose (text: my) heart was not thought of kingship, the gods and goddesses prayed (to Sin) and called me to kingship. At midnight, he (Sin) made me have a dream and said (in the dream) as follows: “Rebuild speedily Ehulhul, the temple of Sin in Harran, and I will hand over to you all the countries.

In the third year of his reign, Nabonidus left Babylon to carry out his commission of rebuilding the Ehulhul temple to Sin in Harran, and apparently also to fight the hostile Arabs in the area. At that time, he installed his oldest son Belshazzar as coregent and as king in Babylon, as is related in the Verse Account of Nabonidus: “He [Nabonidus] entrusted the “Camp” to his oldest (son), the first-born . . . He let (everything) go, entrusted the kingship to him, And himself, he started out for a long journey . . . And he, himself, took his residence in [Te]ma.”[3]

During the time in Tema, the Stela describes Nabonidus’s interactions with the enemies of Babylonia:

Upon the command of Sin <<and>> Ishtar, the Lady-of-Battle, without whom neither hostilities nor reconciliation can occur in the country and no battle can be fought, extended her protection (lit.: hand) over them, and the king of Egypt, the Medes and the land of the Arabs, all the hostile kings, were sending me messages of reconciliation and friendship. As to the land of the Arabs which [is the eternal enemy] of Babylonia [and which] was (always) ready to rob and carry off its possession, Nergal broke their weapons upon the order of Sin, and they all bowed down at my feet.

The Stela confirms that Nabonidus was not of royal lineage, so that he received the kingship as the result of a coup. It also displays his devotion to gods, particularly Sin, in preference to Marduk, the chief god of the Babylonian pantheon. It was this neglect of the worship of Marduk that Cyrus and those following him made great use of in the Cyrus Cylinder and elsewhere to show that Marduk had rejected Nabonidus and had chosen instead Cyrus to be “king of kings” and the legitimate ruler of Babylon. Although the Harran Stela is in agreement with the later Persian propaganda on Nabonidus's neglect of Marduk, there is an important difference that relates to the final conflict between the Babylonians and their enemies. The Stela names the enemies of Babylon as “the king of Egypt, the Medes and the land of the Arabs, all the hostile kings.” The significance of this lies in the date the Stela was composed, just one to three years before Nabonidus lost his kingdom to the Medes and Persians, and in the fact that Persians or their king are not mentioned by name. According to Herodotus, however, the Persians had made “slaves of the Medes” several years earlier (Histories 1.129.4). Since Herodotus gives Cyrus 29 years of reign (Histories 1.214.3), this would place the subjugation of the Medes 559 BC, at least 17 years before the writing of the Harran Stela that named the Medes, but not the Persians, as a main enemy of the Babylonians. Surely Nabonidus, king of the Babylonians, would know who his principal enemies were. How can this be reconciled with the consensus view that the Persians were dominant over the Medes at this time?

The present consensus that starts the ascendancy of the Persians over the Medians several years before the capture of Babylon has not always been the consensus view. Starting at least as early as Josephus in the first century AD,[4] continuing with Jerome in the third century,[5] and then as late as the latter half of the 19th century, eminent scholars accepted that Xenophon, in his Cyropaedia, presented the correct view of Medo-Persian relations before, and then slightly after, the fall of Babylon in 539 BC. This all changed when the cuneiform texts were unearthed and translated. Among these were the Nabonidus Chronicle, The “Dream Text of Nabonidus” (=Sippar Cylinder), the Verse Account, and the Cyrus Cylinder. All of these texts agreed with Herodotus in the general sense that they had Cyrus taking over the kingdom of the Medes and Persians well before 539 BC.

However, more recent scholarship has recognized that all of these texts were written after Cyrus conquered Babylon, and that all, except possibly the Nabonidus Chronicle, were part of a propaganda campaign in which it was necessary to denigrate Nabonidus as someone who was unfaithful to Marduk, so that Marduk had to find someone else (Cyrus) to rule Babylon. The existence of Belshazzar, however, was an embarrassment to this propaganda line, since Belshazzar was a devout worshipper of Marduk. In order to deal with this, in those Persian documents where we would expect to find the name of Belshazzar, such as the Cyrus Cylinder in its description of events leading up to and after the capture of Babylon, there is simply no mention of the name of Belshazzar. This propagandistic screening of unwelcome facts was so effective that, for many years, scholars maintained that the Belshazzar described in the biblical book of Daniel was not a historical figure.

Recent studies of the cuneiform texts, however, have shown more discernment in recognizing their propagandistic nature. Thus Steven Hirsch observes: “The real Cyrus was a master of propaganda, as can be seen from the Cyrus Cylinder, the Babylonian verse chronicle of Nabonidus’ fall, and the stories of Cyrus’ merciful treatment of conquered kings, all no doubt propagated with Cyrus’ encouragement or active participation.”[6] Similarly, R. van der Spek: “Cyrus was very successful in his propaganda and modern historiography is still influenced by it.”[7] The importance of the Harran Stela, which was not discovered until almost a century after the earlier, pro-Persian texts had been translated, is that it offers a perspective that is not tainted by the Persian rewrite of history. It has its own propagandistic bias of course—the glorification of Nabonidus instead of his denigration as in the Persian texts—but there is no reason to think that this bias would extend to disguising who Nabonidus recognized as his real enemies. As mentioned above, he named them as the Medians, not the Persians, which is consistent with Xenophon's portrayal of events, not Herodotus's that apparently followed the Persian propaganda narrative.

In this naming of Nabonidus's enemies, the Harran Stela also offers an insight into why the importance of the Medes in conquering Babylon was expunged from the Persian narrative, while it is very prominent in Xenophon's Cyropaedia. The Stela makes it clear: the real enemies of the Babylonians were the hated Medes. But, according the Cyropaedia, Cyrus was still de jure under the rule of the Medes and their last king Cyaxares II when Babylon fell in 539 BC. If this were the case, then the Persian propaganda, starting with the Cyrus Cylinder, would then find it necessary to omit this inconvenient fact, thus explaining why, in all subsequent Persian official documents, Cyrus must be presented as a Persian with no connection with the Medes, so that the Babylonian populace would not extend their hatred and fear of the Medes onto the Persians.

Frieze statues depicting Persian and Median noblemen in friendly conversation. Yet Herodotus said that the Persians had made slaves of the Medes several decades earlier.

The finding of the Harran Stela in 1956 therefore has offered an archaeological artifact that bears on the important question of whether Herodotus or Xenophon is more accurate in their description of Medo-Persian relations in the sixth century BC. Other archaeological findings that must be taken into account are the well-preserved stairway reliefs at Persepolis. Paul Tanner writes, “Archaeological evidence, such as the stairway reliefs at Persepolis, shows no distinction in official rank between the Persian and Median nobility.”[8] These two archaeological evidences, then—the Harran Stela and the Persepolis reliefs—argue in favor of Xenophon vs. Herodotus. Nevertheless, the current consensus of historians still favors Herodotus, although it can be argued that no satisfactory explanation has been offered for Nabonidus's “mistake” in identifying his enemies.