one to comfort her: all her friends have
dealt treacherously with her, they are become her enemies. Judah
is gone into captivity because of affliction, and because of great
servitude: she dwelleth among the heathen, she findeth no rest:
all her persecutors overtook her between the straits.... Jerusalem
remembered in the days of her affliction and of her miseries all
her pleasant things that she had in the days of old....[561]

Tyre was besieged, but was not captured. Its king, however, arranged
terms of peace with Nebuchadrezzar.

Amel-Marduk, the "Evil Merodach" of the Bible, the next king of
Babylon, reigned for a little over two years. He released Jehoiachin
from prison, and allowed him to live in the royal palace.[562] Berosus
relates that Amel-Marduk lived a dissipated life, and was slain by his
brother-in-law, Nergal-shar-utsur, who reigned two years (559-6 B.C.).
Labashi-Marduk, son of Nergal-shar-utsur, followed with a reign of
nine months. He was deposed by the priests. Then a Babylonian prince
named Nabu-na'id (Nabonidus) was set on the throne. He was the last
independent king of Babylonia. His son Belshazzar appears to have
acted as regent during the latter part of the reign.

Nabonidus engaged himself actively during his reign (556-540 B.C.) in
restoring temples. He entirely reconstructed the house of Shamash, the
sun god, at Sippar, and, towards the end of his reign, the house of
Sin, the moon god, at Haran. The latter building had been destroyed by
the Medes.

The religious innovations of Nabonidus made him exceedingly unpopular
throughout Babylonia, for he carried away the gods of Ur, Erech,
Larsa, and Eridu, and had them placed in E-sagila. Merodach and his
priests were displeased: the prestige of the great god was threatened
by the policy adopted by Nabonidus. As an inscription composed after
the fall of Babylon sets forth; Merodach "gazed over the surrounding
lands ... looking for a righteous prince, one after his own heart, who
should take his hands.... He called by name Cyrus."

Cyrus was a petty king of the shrunken Elamite province of Anshan,
which had been conquered by the Persians. He claimed to be an
Achaemenian--that is a descendant of the semi-mythical Akhamanish (the
Achaemenes of the Greeks), a Persian patriarch who resembled the
Aryo-Indian Manu and the Germanic Mannus. Akhamanish was reputed to
have been fed and protected in childhood by an eagle--the sacred ea