Many of these sources show him to be godlike and a city builder, while others, especially biblical and early Jewish writers, make him out to be the archetypi-cal villain and city destroy
Trang 1books of the Pseudepigrapha and the apocrypha,
several Arabic commentaries, and many classical and
medieval Greek and Latin authors mention
Nebuchad-nezzar, showing his fame and impact on the ancient
world Many of these sources show him to be godlike
and a city builder, while others, especially biblical and
early Jewish writers, make him out to be the
archetypi-cal villain and city destroyer
He often appears in the sources as Nebuchadnezzar
(mostly in Latin and Greek writings), but more
accu-rately he should be called Nebuchadrezzar (according to
the Akkadian and Babylonian version of his name and
the Aramaic and Hebrew spellings) His name means
“Nabu protects the son (or boundary).” Nabu forms
the main root of his father Nabopolassar’s name and is
the name of the divine son of the national
Mesopota-mian god Marduk There are at least fi ve other famous
Babylonians who take Nabu’s name, including
Nebu-chadnezzar I, ruler in Second Dynasty of Isin (southern
Mesopotamia), 1124–03 b.c.e., from whom his father
may have named his son His life must be reconstructed
from disparate and limited materials Archaeology
pro-vides a somewhat sound basis to speak of his tenure
as king Another somewhat contemporary and
cunei-form record is the Babylonian Chronicles, but there is
a 30-year gap in its account of Nebuchadnezzar The
gap is fi lled in by Jewish biblical accounts and by the
history of Josephus, writing many centuries later
The Neo-Babylonian Empire replaced the empire of
Assyria in 612 b.c.e under Nabopolassar It was built
on a hybrid of peoples, one of which was the Chaldeans
of southern Mesopotamia There is some evidence that
Nebuchadnezzar’s family descended from the Chaldeans
One of Nebuchadnezzar’s marriages was to a Median
princess, an arrangement meant to keep security among
the major powers (like the Medes and Persians) of the
eastern Fertile Crescent so that the Babylonians might
venture westward He accompanied his father on several
campaigns and was with him at Carchemish in 608–607
b.c.e., a major frontier city on the Euphrates River, held
by the Egyptians His father had to return to Babylon,
but Nebuchadnezzar stayed on and successfully fought
the army of the pharaoh Neco The Egyptian army was
vanquished, and the world of Syria, Phoenicia, and
Ju-daea lay open to him News of his father’s death,
how-ever, interrupted his plan, and he rushed back home to
claim the throne Then he swept to victories across the
Levant in 601 b.c.e., and cities throughout the region
were forced to pay tribute
At this point the Jewish Bible is important as a
commentary on Nebuchadnezzar, for the Babylonian
Chronicles is silent Judah, the southern counterpart to
the now defunct kingdom of Israel, chafed under the burden of Babylon’s domination The kings of Judah miscalculated the strength and resolve of the Egyptians
to help them, and they let domestic hotheads and fanat-ics lead them into open rebellion against their overlords
By 587 b.c.e Nebuchadnezzar surrounded and besieged the city of Jerusalem On July 30 the Judaean king and his family were humiliated, the city fell, and the Baby-lonian army deported the citizens Only poor peasants were left behind in Judaea All the Temple’s treasures and cultural trappings were exported to Babylon For the people of biblical Israel this event became a turn-ing point in their national identity The central image in the biblical books for this period is Nebuchadnezzar’s destruction of the Temple, his captivity of their leading citizens, and his branding of their status as Diaspora
In retrospect the Babylonian foreign policy was more merciful than that of the Assyrians, for Nebuchadnezzar did not totally disintegrate the structures that hold a peo-ple together (religion, family life, social customs) In fact, Nebuchadnezzar left enough intact that 50 years later the captive people could return and reconstitute themselves
as a nation Even the famous prophet Jeremiah coun-seled his fellow religionists to cooperate with Nebuchad-nezzar and his ilk But the enormity of the loss of land and temple forever colored the evaluation that writers
of the biblical tradition would have of Nebuchadnezzar They caricatured him in the darkest hues
For Nebuchadnezzar’s later years as king inscrip-tions, archaeology, and later writings must fi ll the gap
He never was able to invade Egypt successfully or endur-ingly Instead he seems to have devoted himself to public works and beautifi cation The empire he led reached its pinnacle of power and prosperity under his rule His con-struction program involved at least 12 cities in his own land, and he lavished the empire’s resources on his capi-tal city Excavations suggest that fi ve walls surrounded the city, with towers perched at various strategic places
In addition a moat protected the whole boundary He was not satisfi ed to live in his father’s palace but con-structed a dwelling for himself using the most valuable
of materials such as gold, silver, lapis lazuli, ivory, and cedar He restored the city’s temple of Marduk with a tower (ziggurat) perhaps popularly associated with the biblical Tower of Babel (anachronistically placed in the Bible at an earlier Babylonian period)
For all these reasons he wins adulation from later classical historians For example, the Greeks considered him as the patron of the hanging gardens, one of the
Sev-en Wonders of the World Judging by the extant physical