of Babylon, besides the great Nebuchadnezzar himself is a groundless
mistake of some modern chronologers rely, and destitute of all proper
original authority.

[22] These fifteen days for finishing such vast buildings at Babylon, in
Josephus's copy of Berosus, would seem too absurd to be supposed to be
the true number, were it not for the same testimony extant also in the
first book against Apion, sect. 19, with the same number. It thence
indeed appears that Josephus's copy of Berosus had this small number,
but that it is the true number I still doubt. Josephus assures us, that
the walls of so much a smaller city as Jerusalem were two years and four
months in building by Nehemiah, who yet hastened the work all he could,
Antiq. B. XI. ch. 5. sect. 8. I should think one hundred and fifteen
days, or a year and fifteen days, much more proportionable to so great a
work.

[23] It is here remarkable that Josephus, without the knowledge of
Ptolemy's canon, should call the same king whom he himself here [Bar.
i. 11, and Daniel 5:1, 2, 9, 12, 22, 29, 39] styles Beltazar, or
Belshazzar, from the Babylonian god Bel, Naboandelus also; and in the
first book against Apion, sect. 19, vol. iii., from the same citation
out of Berosus, Nabonnedon, from the Babylonian god Nabo or Nebo. This
last is not remote from the original pronunciation itself in Ptolemy's
canon, Nabonadius; for both the place of this king in that canon, as the
last of the Assyrian or Babylonian kings, and the number of years of his
reign, seventeen, the same in both demonstrate that it is one and the
same king that is meant by them all. It is also worth noting, that
Josephus knew that Darius, the partner of Cyrus, was the son of
Astyages, and was called by another name among the Greeks, though it
does not appear he knew what that name was, as having never seen
the best history of this period, which is Xenophon's. But then what
Josephus's present copies say presently, sect. 4, that it was only
within no long time after the hand-writing on the wall that Baltasar was
slain, does not so well agree with our copies of Daniel, which say it
was the same night, Daniel 5:30.

[24] This grandmother, or mother of Baltasar, the queen dowager of
Babylon, [for she is distinguished from his queen, Daniel 5:10, 13,]
seems to have been the famous Nitocris, who fortified Babylon against
the Medes and Persians, and, in all probability governed under Baltasar,
who seems to be a weak an