watched with keen interest by the Jewish exiles in Babylonia. The songs in
Isaiah 14, 15, and 21:1-10, and Jeremiah 51:29-31, voice their joyous
expectation of Babylon's impending humiliation. In a contemporary
inscription Cyrus has given a vivid account of the fall of the capital.
Early in October of the year 538 B.C. he assembled a large army on the
northern borders of Babylonia. Here a battle was fought in which the
Babylonians were completely defeated. The town of Sippar quickly
surrendered to Cyrus's general, and two days later the Persian army
entered Babylon. The record states that the gates of the mighty city were
opened by its inhabitants, and Cyrus and his followers were welcomed as
deliverers. King Nabonidus was captured and banished to the distant
province of Carmania, northeast of the Persian Gulf. In the words
of Cyrus: "Peace he gave the town; peace he proclaimed to all the
Babylonians." In the eyes of the conquered, he figured as the champion
of their gods, whose images he restored to the capital city. The temples
as well as the walls of Babylon were rebuilt, and the king publicly
proclaimed himself a devoted worshipper of Marduk and Nebo, the chief gods
of the Babylonians. Thus from the first the policy of Cyrus in treating
conquered peoples was fundamentally different from that of the Babylonians
and Assyrians. They had sought to establish their power by crushing the
conquered rather than by furthering their well-being; but Cyrus, by his
many acts of clemency, aimed to secure and hold their loyalty.

VIII. His Treatment of Conquered Peoples. Cyrus showed the same wisdom
in his treatment of the many petty peoples who had been ground down under
the harsh rule of Babylon. In one of his inscriptions he declares: "The
gods whose sanctuaries from of old had lain in ruins I brought back again
to their dwelling-places and caused them to reside there forever. All of
the citizens of these lands I assembled and I restored them to their
homes" (Cyrus Cyl., 31, 32). In the light of this statement it is clear
that the Jews, in common with other captive peoples, were given full
permission to return to their homes and to rebuild their ruined temple.
The decree of Cyrus recorded in the Aramaic document preserved in Ezra
6:3-5 is apparently the Jewish version of the general decree which he
issued. It is also possible that he aided the vassal peoples in rebuilding
their sanctuaries; for such action was in perfect accord