Battle of Opis
Encyclopedia
The Battle of Opis, fought in September 539 BC, was a major engagement between the armies of Persia under Cyrus the Great
and the Neo-Babylonian Empire
under Nabonidus
during the Persian invasion of Mesopotamia
. At the time, Babylonia was the last major power in western Asia that was not yet under Persian control. The battle was fought in or near the strategic riverside city of Opis
, north of the capital Babylon
. It resulted in a decisive defeat for the Babylonians. A few days later, the city of Sippar
surrendered to the Persians and Cyrus's forces entered Babylon apparently without a fight. Cyrus was subsequently proclaimed king of Babylonia and its subject territories, thus ending the independence of Babylon and incorporating the Babylonian Empire into the greater Persian Empire.
on the river Tigris
, located about 50 miles (80 km) north of modern Baghdad
. The city is thought to have been a preferred point to cross the river; Xenophon
describes a bridge there. The timing of the invasion may have been determined by the ebb of the Mesopotamian rivers, which are at their lowest levels - and therefore are easiest to cross - in the early autumn.
Opis was a place of considerable strategic importance; apart from the river crossing, it was at one end of the Median Wall
, a fortified defensive barrier north of Babylon that had been built several decades earlier by Nebuchadnezzar II. Control of Opis would have enabled Cyrus to break through the Median Wall and open the road to the capital.
, one of a series of clay tablets collectively known as the Babylonian Chronicles
that record the history of ancient Babylonia. Some additional detail is provided by one of the few documents to have survived from Cyrus's lifetime, the Cyrus Cylinder
. Further information on Cyrus's campaign is provided by the later ancient Greek
writers Herodotus
and Xenophon
, though neither mention the battle at Opis and their accounts of the campaign differ considerably from the Persian and Babylonian sources. Most scholars prefer to use the Nabonidus Chronicle as the main source on the battle, as it is a contemporaneous source.
Although much of the Nabonidus Chronicle is fragmentary, the section relating to the last year of Nabonidus's reign - 539 BC - is mostly intact. It provides very little information about Cyrus's activities in the years immediately preceding the battle. The chronicler focuses on events of immediate relevance to Babylonia and its rulers, only occasionally records events outside Babylonia and does not provide much detail other than a bare outline of key incidents. There is almost no information for the period 547-539. Most of the chronicle's text for this period is illegible, making it impossible to assess the significance of the few words that can be read.
At the time of the Battle of Opis, Persia was the leading power in the Near East. Its power had grown enormously under its king, Cyrus II, who had conquered a huge swathe of territory to create an empire that covered an area corresponding to the modern countries of Turkey
, Armenia
, Azerbaijan
, Iran
, Kyrgyzstan
and Afghanistan
. The only remaining significant unconquered power in the Near East was the Neo-Babylonian Empire, which controlled Mesopotamia and subject kingdoms such as Syria
, Judea
, Phoenicia
and parts of Arabia. It had been closely linked with Cyrus's enemies elsewhere, having been a formal ally of Croesus
of Lydia
, whose kingdom had been overrun by the Persians a few years earlier.
By the time of the battle, Babylonia was in an unpromising geopolitical situation; the Persian empire bordered it to the north, east and west. It had also been suffering severe inflation
exacerbated by plague and famine, and its king Nabonidus was said to be unpopular among many of his subjects for his unconventional religious policies. According to Mary Joan Winn Leith, "Cyrus's success is credited to military acumen, to judicious bribery, and to an energetic publicity campaign waged throughout Babylonia, which portrayed him as a lenient and religiously tolerant overlord." On the other hand, Max Mallowan
notes: "Religious toleration was a remarkable feature of Persian rule and there is no question that Cyrus himself was a liberal-minded promoter of this humane and intelligent policy," and such a publicity campaign was in effect a means of permitting his reputation to proceed his military campaign. Cyrus was said to have persuaded a Babylonian provincial governor named Gobryas
(and a supposed Gadates) to defect to his side. Gutium
, the territory governed by Gobryas, was a frontier region of considerable size and strategic importance, which Cyrus was said to have used as the starting point for his invasion.
The Nabonidus Chronicle records that prior to the battle, Nabonidus had ordered cult statues from outlying Babylonian cities to be brought into the capital, suggesting that the conflict had begun possibly in the winter of 540 BC. In a fragmentary section of the chronicle which is presumed to cover 540/39 BC, there is a possible reference to fighting, a mention of Ishtar
and Uruk
, and a possible reference to Persia. The Battle of Opis was thus probably only the final stage in an ongoing series of clashes between the two empires.
The Nabonidus Chronicle records that the battle took place in the month of Tashritu (27 September-27 October) "at Opis on the [bank of the] Tigris." Very little is known about the events of the battle; the chronicle does not provide any details of the battle's course, the disposition of the forces on either side or the casualties inflicted. The Persian army under Cyrus fought "the army of Akkad
" (meaning the Babylonians in general, not the city of that name). The identity of the Babylonian commander is not recorded in the chronicle but it has traditionally been assumed that Belshazzar
, the son of Nabonidus, was in command. His fate is unclear and he may have been killed in the battle.
The outcome of the battle was clearly a Babylonian defeat, possibly a rout, as the defeated Babylonian army is not mentioned again in the chronicle. Following the battle the Persian forces "took plunder" from the defeated Babylonians. Most translations of the Chronicle also refer to a "massacre" of "the people of Akkad", though translators disagree on which side was responsible and who was killed - the population of Opis or the retreating Babylonian army.
Pierre Briant comments: "This victory was followed by an immense haul of booty and the massacre of those who attempted to resist." Andrew Robert Burn comments: "Indeed on one reading of the text, Akkad broke out into open revolt, and Nabonidus' last military achievement was slaughter of rebels." Maria Brosius interprets the massacre as a punitive action, "mak[ing] an example of a city trying to resist the Persian army." Cuyler Young comments on the Chronicle accounts: "This reference in the Chronicle suggests that the Persians captured intact the main camp of Nabonidus' army and that, as is so often the case, the real killing of the engagement came after the Babylonians had fallen prey to fear and panic and had retreated from the field." Amélie Kuhrt
comments that the references to a massacre and looting suggest that the battle was "probably a hard-won victory." W. G. Lambert
argues a contrarian view that there was no massacre or slaughter at all.
The battle is not mentioned in the inscription on the Cyrus Cylinder, which portrays Cyrus as liberating Babylon peacefully and with the consent of its people. However, the battle demonstrates that the existing Babylonian regime actively resisted Cyrus's invasion of Mesopotamia.
was captured without battle. Nabonidus fled." The chronicle's wording implies that Nabonidus was present in Sippar when the Persians arrived. Cyrus remained in Sippar, and "on the sixteenth day [12 October] Ug/Gubaru
, governor of Gutium
, and the army of Cyrus without a battle entered Babylon." Nabonidus himself was captured shortly afterward when he returned to Babylon. His ultimate fate is unclear, but according to the 3rd century BC Babylonian historian Berossus
, Nabonidus was spared and he went into exile in Carmania, where he died years later. Persian troops took control of the city, though the Nabonidus Chronicle provides little detail of how this was done. The chronicle makes a point of noting the conquering army's protection of the city's most important temples and records that "Interruption of (rites/cults) in [the] Esagila
[temple] or the [other] temples there was none, and no date was missed." Seventeen days later, on 29 October, Cyrus himself entered Babylon, where he was proclaimed king, issued royal proclamations and appointed governors of his newly conquered realm.
Ancient Greek accounts of Cyrus's campaign and the fall of Babylon differ significantly from the cuneiform accounts preserved in the Nabonidus Chronicle and the Cyrus Cylinder, suggesting that the Greeks were drawing on—or perhaps inventing—different traditions about the conquest of Babylonia. The two ancient Greek sources for the campaign, Herodotus and Xenophon, present broadly similar versions of events. According to Herodotus, Cyrus marched to Babylon along the side of the Diyala river (past Opis, though the battle is not mentioned), where the Persians fought a battle with the Babylonians near the capital. Cyrus subsequently laid siege to Babylon, ordering his troops to dig a canal to drain off part of the Euphrates to enable his troops to penetrate the city through weak points in its defences. Xenophon provides a similar but more elaborate account, claiming that Cyrus dug a huge trench around the city to divert the Euphrates and make the river bed passable for the Persian army. Herodotus, Xenophon and the Biblical Book of Daniel
all assert that the Babylonians were taken by surprise while celebrating a festival.
Berossus presents an account that is different again, asserting that Cyrus defeated Nabonidus, who "fled with certain others and shut himself up in Borsippa
. Meanwhile Cyrus occupied Babylon and ordered to destroy the exterior walls of the city, because the city seemed very formidable to him and difficult to capture. Afterward Cyrus marched to Borsippa, in order to organize the siege against Nabonidus. But Nabonidus did not await the end of the siege, and surrendered."
These accounts, written long after the Persian conquest, contradict many aspects of the contemporary cuneiform evidence, which does not mention any sieges, engineering works or battles near Babylon. The cuneiform descriptions of a peaceful surrender of Babylon are corroborated by archaeological evidence from the city, as no evidence of conflagrations or destruction have been found in the layers corresponding to the fall of the city to the Persians. Scholars are in general agreement that Herodotus's account is an invention, while Kuhrt comments that Xenophon's account in his Cyropedia is "virtually impossible to use ... as a strictly historical source" due to its literary form, as a moral treatise on Cyrus in the form of an historical novella. Paul-Alain Beaulieu
suggests that the Greek accounts may constitute an aggregate of various folk tales and legends which came to be associated with the fall of Babylon." David George Hogarth
and Samuel Rolles Driver
commented on what they saw as Herodotus's unreliability:
According to the Behistun Inscription
, Babylon revolts again from Darius, only to be recaptured by his general Gobryas. In this case Herodotus only mentions the first revolt of Babylon in which Zopyrus captures the city for Darius, and omits this second revolt from Darius and its capture by Gobryas.
to punish a regime that had opposed his will. The strongly anti-Nabonidus tone of these documents, which accused the former king of behaving capriciously and neglecting the worship of the gods, suggests that their authors - the Babylonian priestly elite - were alienated from Nabonidus and may have welcomed a Persian takeover. It is, however, unclear how widely the Persians were supported within Babylonia, as accounts of the invasion and Nabonidus's rule are coloured by Cyrus's subsequent propaganda.
Other writers have advanced a number of additional or alternative explanations for the Babylonian defeat. M. A. Dandamaev suggests variously that the regime suffered from a lack of allies; a lack of support among the general population; opposition from subject peoples such as the Jews, who may have seen the invading Persians as liberators; and the inability of the Babylonian forces to resist numerically superior and better equipped opponents.
(1916). The contending armies and a vast Babylonian courtyard are lavishly recreated.
Cyrus the Great
Cyrus II of Persia , commonly known as Cyrus the Great, also known as Cyrus the Elder, was the founder of the Achaemenid Empire. Under his rule, the empire embraced all the previous civilized states of the ancient Near East, expanded vastly and eventually conquered most of Southwest Asia and much...
and the Neo-Babylonian Empire
Neo-Babylonian Empire
The Neo-Babylonian Empire or Second Babylonian Empire was a period of Mesopotamian history which began in 626 BC and ended in 539 BC. During the preceding three centuries, Babylonia had been ruled by their fellow Akkadian speakers and northern neighbours, Assyria. Throughout that time Babylonia...
under Nabonidus
Nabonidus
Nabonidus was the last king of the Neo-Babylonian Empire, reigning from 556-539 BCE.-Historiography on Nabonidus:...
during the Persian invasion of Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia is a toponym for the area of the Tigris–Euphrates river system, largely corresponding to modern-day Iraq, northeastern Syria, southeastern Turkey and southwestern Iran.Widely considered to be the cradle of civilization, Bronze Age Mesopotamia included Sumer and the...
. At the time, Babylonia was the last major power in western Asia that was not yet under Persian control. The battle was fought in or near the strategic riverside city of Opis
Opis
Opis was an ancient Babylonian city on the Tigris, not far from modern Baghdad. The precise location of Opis has not been established, but from the Akkadian and Greek texts, it was located on the east bank of the Tigris, near the Diyala River.-History:Opis is mentioned for the first time at the...
, north of the capital Babylon
Babylon
Babylon was an Akkadian city-state of ancient Mesopotamia, the remains of which are found in present-day Al Hillah, Babil Province, Iraq, about 85 kilometers south of Baghdad...
. It resulted in a decisive defeat for the Babylonians. A few days later, the city of Sippar
Sippar
Sippar was an ancient Near Eastern city on the east bank of the Euphrates river, located at the site of modern Tell Abu Habbah in Iraq's Babil Governorate, some 60 km north of Babylon and 30 km southeast of Baghdad....
surrendered to the Persians and Cyrus's forces entered Babylon apparently without a fight. Cyrus was subsequently proclaimed king of Babylonia and its subject territories, thus ending the independence of Babylon and incorporating the Babylonian Empire into the greater Persian Empire.
Location
The site of the battle was at the city of OpisOpis
Opis was an ancient Babylonian city on the Tigris, not far from modern Baghdad. The precise location of Opis has not been established, but from the Akkadian and Greek texts, it was located on the east bank of the Tigris, near the Diyala River.-History:Opis is mentioned for the first time at the...
on the river Tigris
Tigris
The Tigris River is the eastern member of the two great rivers that define Mesopotamia, the other being the Euphrates. The river flows south from the mountains of southeastern Turkey through Iraq.-Geography:...
, located about 50 miles (80 km) north of modern Baghdad
Baghdad
Baghdad is the capital of Iraq, as well as the coterminous Baghdad Governorate. The population of Baghdad in 2011 is approximately 7,216,040...
. The city is thought to have been a preferred point to cross the river; Xenophon
Xenophon
Xenophon , son of Gryllus, of the deme Erchia of Athens, also known as Xenophon of Athens, was a Greek historian, soldier, mercenary, philosopher and a contemporary and admirer of Socrates...
describes a bridge there. The timing of the invasion may have been determined by the ebb of the Mesopotamian rivers, which are at their lowest levels - and therefore are easiest to cross - in the early autumn.
Opis was a place of considerable strategic importance; apart from the river crossing, it was at one end of the Median Wall
Median Wall
The Median Wall was a wall built to the north of the ancient city of Babylon at a point where the distance between the rivers Tigris and Euphrates decreases considerably. It was believed to have been constructed during the latter part of the reign of Nebuchadrezzar II and to have consisted of baked...
, a fortified defensive barrier north of Babylon that had been built several decades earlier by Nebuchadnezzar II. Control of Opis would have enabled Cyrus to break through the Median Wall and open the road to the capital.
Sources
The main contemporary source of information on Cyrus's Mesopotamian campaign of 539 BC is the Nabonidus ChronicleNabonidus Chronicle
The Nabonidus Chronicle is an ancient Babylonian text, part of a larger series of Babylonian Chronicles incribed in cuneiform script on clay tablets...
, one of a series of clay tablets collectively known as the Babylonian Chronicles
Babylonian Chronicles
The Babylonian Chronicles are many series of tablets recording major events in Babylonian history. They are thus one of the first steps in the development of ancient historiography...
that record the history of ancient Babylonia. Some additional detail is provided by one of the few documents to have survived from Cyrus's lifetime, the Cyrus Cylinder
Cyrus cylinder
The Cyrus Cylinder is an ancient clay cylinder, now broken into several fragments, on which is written a declaration in Akkadian cuneiform script in the name of the Achaemenid king Cyrus the Great. It dates from the 6th century BC and was discovered in the ruins of Babylon in Mesopotamia in 1879...
. Further information on Cyrus's campaign is provided by the later ancient Greek
Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek is the stage of the Greek language in the periods spanning the times c. 9th–6th centuries BC, , c. 5th–4th centuries BC , and the c. 3rd century BC – 6th century AD of ancient Greece and the ancient world; being predated in the 2nd millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek...
writers Herodotus
Herodotus
Herodotus was an ancient Greek historian who was born in Halicarnassus, Caria and lived in the 5th century BC . He has been called the "Father of History", and was the first historian known to collect his materials systematically, test their accuracy to a certain extent and arrange them in a...
and Xenophon
Xenophon
Xenophon , son of Gryllus, of the deme Erchia of Athens, also known as Xenophon of Athens, was a Greek historian, soldier, mercenary, philosopher and a contemporary and admirer of Socrates...
, though neither mention the battle at Opis and their accounts of the campaign differ considerably from the Persian and Babylonian sources. Most scholars prefer to use the Nabonidus Chronicle as the main source on the battle, as it is a contemporaneous source.
Although much of the Nabonidus Chronicle is fragmentary, the section relating to the last year of Nabonidus's reign - 539 BC - is mostly intact. It provides very little information about Cyrus's activities in the years immediately preceding the battle. The chronicler focuses on events of immediate relevance to Babylonia and its rulers, only occasionally records events outside Babylonia and does not provide much detail other than a bare outline of key incidents. There is almost no information for the period 547-539. Most of the chronicle's text for this period is illegible, making it impossible to assess the significance of the few words that can be read.
Background
Turkey
Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...
, Armenia
Armenia
Armenia , officially the Republic of Armenia , is a landlocked mountainous country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia...
, Azerbaijan
Azerbaijan
Azerbaijan , officially the Republic of Azerbaijan is the largest country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. Located at the crossroads of Western Asia and Eastern Europe, it is bounded by the Caspian Sea to the east, Russia to the north, Georgia to the northwest, Armenia to the west, and Iran to...
, Iran
Iran
Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...
, Kyrgyzstan
Kyrgyzstan
Kyrgyzstan , officially the Kyrgyz Republic is one of the world's six independent Turkic states . Located in Central Asia, landlocked and mountainous, Kyrgyzstan is bordered by Kazakhstan to the north, Uzbekistan to the west, Tajikistan to the southwest and China to the east...
and Afghanistan
Afghanistan
Afghanistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located in the centre of Asia, forming South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. With a population of about 29 million, it has an area of , making it the 42nd most populous and 41st largest nation in the world...
. The only remaining significant unconquered power in the Near East was the Neo-Babylonian Empire, which controlled Mesopotamia and subject kingdoms such as Syria
Syria
Syria , officially the Syrian Arab Republic , is a country in Western Asia, bordering Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea to the West, Turkey to the north, Iraq to the east, Jordan to the south, and Israel to the southwest....
, Judea
Judea
Judea or Judæa was the name of the mountainous southern part of the historic Land of Israel from the 8th century BCE to the 2nd century CE, when Roman Judea was renamed Syria Palaestina following the Jewish Bar Kokhba revolt.-Etymology:The...
, Phoenicia
Phoenicia
Phoenicia , was an ancient civilization in Canaan which covered most of the western, coastal part of the Fertile Crescent. Several major Phoenician cities were built on the coastline of the Mediterranean. It was an enterprising maritime trading culture that spread across the Mediterranean from 1550...
and parts of Arabia. It had been closely linked with Cyrus's enemies elsewhere, having been a formal ally of Croesus
Croesus
Croesus was the king of Lydia from 560 to 547 BC until his defeat by the Persians. The fall of Croesus made a profound impact on the Hellenes, providing a fixed point in their calendar. "By the fifth century at least," J.A.S...
of Lydia
Lydia
Lydia was an Iron Age kingdom of western Asia Minor located generally east of ancient Ionia in the modern Turkish provinces of Manisa and inland İzmir. Its population spoke an Anatolian language known as Lydian....
, whose kingdom had been overrun by the Persians a few years earlier.
By the time of the battle, Babylonia was in an unpromising geopolitical situation; the Persian empire bordered it to the north, east and west. It had also been suffering severe inflation
Inflation
In economics, inflation is a rise in the general level of prices of goods and services in an economy over a period of time.When the general price level rises, each unit of currency buys fewer goods and services. Consequently, inflation also reflects an erosion in the purchasing power of money – a...
exacerbated by plague and famine, and its king Nabonidus was said to be unpopular among many of his subjects for his unconventional religious policies. According to Mary Joan Winn Leith, "Cyrus's success is credited to military acumen, to judicious bribery, and to an energetic publicity campaign waged throughout Babylonia, which portrayed him as a lenient and religiously tolerant overlord." On the other hand, Max Mallowan
Max Mallowan
Sir Max Edgar Lucien Mallowan, CBE was a prominent British archaeologist, specialising in ancient Middle Eastern history, and the second husband of Dame Agatha Christie.-Life and work:...
notes: "Religious toleration was a remarkable feature of Persian rule and there is no question that Cyrus himself was a liberal-minded promoter of this humane and intelligent policy," and such a publicity campaign was in effect a means of permitting his reputation to proceed his military campaign. Cyrus was said to have persuaded a Babylonian provincial governor named Gobryas
Gubaru
Gobryas was a common name of several Persian noblemen. The English form Gobryas is derived from the Greek rendering of this name.- Gobryas :...
(and a supposed Gadates) to defect to his side. Gutium
Gutium
The Gutians were a tribe that overran southern Mesopotamia when the Akkadian empire collapsed in approximately 2154 BC....
, the territory governed by Gobryas, was a frontier region of considerable size and strategic importance, which Cyrus was said to have used as the starting point for his invasion.
The Nabonidus Chronicle records that prior to the battle, Nabonidus had ordered cult statues from outlying Babylonian cities to be brought into the capital, suggesting that the conflict had begun possibly in the winter of 540 BC. In a fragmentary section of the chronicle which is presumed to cover 540/39 BC, there is a possible reference to fighting, a mention of Ishtar
Ishtar
Ishtar is the Assyrian and Babylonian goddess of fertility, love, war, and sex. She is the counterpart to the Sumerian Inanna and to the cognate north-west Semitic goddess Astarte.-Characteristics:...
and Uruk
Uruk
Uruk was an ancient city of Sumer and later Babylonia, situated east of the present bed of the Euphrates river, on the ancient dry former channel of the Euphrates River, some 30 km east of modern As-Samawah, Al-Muthannā, Iraq.Uruk gave its name to the Uruk...
, and a possible reference to Persia. The Battle of Opis was thus probably only the final stage in an ongoing series of clashes between the two empires.
The battle
Akkad
The Akkadian Empire was an empire centered in the city of Akkad and its surrounding region in Mesopotamia....
" (meaning the Babylonians in general, not the city of that name). The identity of the Babylonian commander is not recorded in the chronicle but it has traditionally been assumed that Belshazzar
Belshazzar
Belshazzar, or Balthazar , was a 6th century BC prince of Babylon, the son of Nabonidus and the last king of Babylon according to the Book of Daniel . Like his father, it is believed by many scholars that he was an Assyrian. In Daniel Belshazzar, or Balthazar , was a 6th century BC prince of...
, the son of Nabonidus, was in command. His fate is unclear and he may have been killed in the battle.
The outcome of the battle was clearly a Babylonian defeat, possibly a rout, as the defeated Babylonian army is not mentioned again in the chronicle. Following the battle the Persian forces "took plunder" from the defeated Babylonians. Most translations of the Chronicle also refer to a "massacre" of "the people of Akkad", though translators disagree on which side was responsible and who was killed - the population of Opis or the retreating Babylonian army.
Pierre Briant comments: "This victory was followed by an immense haul of booty and the massacre of those who attempted to resist." Andrew Robert Burn comments: "Indeed on one reading of the text, Akkad broke out into open revolt, and Nabonidus' last military achievement was slaughter of rebels." Maria Brosius interprets the massacre as a punitive action, "mak[ing] an example of a city trying to resist the Persian army." Cuyler Young comments on the Chronicle accounts: "This reference in the Chronicle suggests that the Persians captured intact the main camp of Nabonidus' army and that, as is so often the case, the real killing of the engagement came after the Babylonians had fallen prey to fear and panic and had retreated from the field." Amélie Kuhrt
Amélie Kuhrt
Amélie Kuhrt FBA is a historian and specialist in the history of the ancient Near East.Professor Emerita at University College London, she specialises in the social, cultural and political history of the region from c.3000-100 BC, especially the Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian and Seleucid empires....
comments that the references to a massacre and looting suggest that the battle was "probably a hard-won victory." W. G. Lambert
Wilfred G. Lambert
Wilfred G. Lambert, FBA was a historian and archaeologist, a specialist in Assyriology and Near Eastern Archaeology.Retired after long service from the University of Birmingham, he worked with the British Museum on their Catalogue of the Western Asiatic Seals Project, dealing with the...
argues a contrarian view that there was no massacre or slaughter at all.
The battle is not mentioned in the inscription on the Cyrus Cylinder, which portrays Cyrus as liberating Babylon peacefully and with the consent of its people. However, the battle demonstrates that the existing Babylonian regime actively resisted Cyrus's invasion of Mesopotamia.
Aftermath
The defeat at Opis appears to have ended any serious resistance to the Persian invasion. The Nabonidus Chronicle states that following the battle, "on the fourteenth day [6 October] SipparSippar
Sippar was an ancient Near Eastern city on the east bank of the Euphrates river, located at the site of modern Tell Abu Habbah in Iraq's Babil Governorate, some 60 km north of Babylon and 30 km southeast of Baghdad....
was captured without battle. Nabonidus fled." The chronicle's wording implies that Nabonidus was present in Sippar when the Persians arrived. Cyrus remained in Sippar, and "on the sixteenth day [12 October] Ug/Gubaru
Gubaru
Gobryas was a common name of several Persian noblemen. The English form Gobryas is derived from the Greek rendering of this name.- Gobryas :...
, governor of Gutium
Gutium
The Gutians were a tribe that overran southern Mesopotamia when the Akkadian empire collapsed in approximately 2154 BC....
, and the army of Cyrus without a battle entered Babylon." Nabonidus himself was captured shortly afterward when he returned to Babylon. His ultimate fate is unclear, but according to the 3rd century BC Babylonian historian Berossus
Berossus
Berossus was a Hellenistic-era Babylonian writer, a priest of Bel Marduk and astronomer writing in Greek, who was active at the beginning of the 3rd century BC...
, Nabonidus was spared and he went into exile in Carmania, where he died years later. Persian troops took control of the city, though the Nabonidus Chronicle provides little detail of how this was done. The chronicle makes a point of noting the conquering army's protection of the city's most important temples and records that "Interruption of (rites/cults) in [the] Esagila
Esagila
The Ésagila, a Sumerian name signifying "É whose top is lofty", was a temple dedicated to Marduk, the protector god of Babylon...
[temple] or the [other] temples there was none, and no date was missed." Seventeen days later, on 29 October, Cyrus himself entered Babylon, where he was proclaimed king, issued royal proclamations and appointed governors of his newly conquered realm.
Ancient Greek accounts of Cyrus's campaign and the fall of Babylon differ significantly from the cuneiform accounts preserved in the Nabonidus Chronicle and the Cyrus Cylinder, suggesting that the Greeks were drawing on—or perhaps inventing—different traditions about the conquest of Babylonia. The two ancient Greek sources for the campaign, Herodotus and Xenophon, present broadly similar versions of events. According to Herodotus, Cyrus marched to Babylon along the side of the Diyala river (past Opis, though the battle is not mentioned), where the Persians fought a battle with the Babylonians near the capital. Cyrus subsequently laid siege to Babylon, ordering his troops to dig a canal to drain off part of the Euphrates to enable his troops to penetrate the city through weak points in its defences. Xenophon provides a similar but more elaborate account, claiming that Cyrus dug a huge trench around the city to divert the Euphrates and make the river bed passable for the Persian army. Herodotus, Xenophon and the Biblical Book of Daniel
Book of Daniel
The Book of Daniel is a book in the Hebrew Bible. The book tells of how Daniel, and his Judean companions, were inducted into Babylon during Jewish exile, and how their positions elevated in the court of Nebuchadnezzar. The court tales span events that occur during the reigns of Nebuchadnezzar,...
all assert that the Babylonians were taken by surprise while celebrating a festival.
Berossus presents an account that is different again, asserting that Cyrus defeated Nabonidus, who "fled with certain others and shut himself up in Borsippa
Borsippa
Borsippa was an important ancient city of Sumer, built on both sides of a lake about southwest of Babylon on the east bank of the Euphrates. The site of Borsippa is in Babil Governorate, Iraq and now called Birs Nimrud, identifying the site with Nimrod...
. Meanwhile Cyrus occupied Babylon and ordered to destroy the exterior walls of the city, because the city seemed very formidable to him and difficult to capture. Afterward Cyrus marched to Borsippa, in order to organize the siege against Nabonidus. But Nabonidus did not await the end of the siege, and surrendered."
These accounts, written long after the Persian conquest, contradict many aspects of the contemporary cuneiform evidence, which does not mention any sieges, engineering works or battles near Babylon. The cuneiform descriptions of a peaceful surrender of Babylon are corroborated by archaeological evidence from the city, as no evidence of conflagrations or destruction have been found in the layers corresponding to the fall of the city to the Persians. Scholars are in general agreement that Herodotus's account is an invention, while Kuhrt comments that Xenophon's account in his Cyropedia is "virtually impossible to use ... as a strictly historical source" due to its literary form, as a moral treatise on Cyrus in the form of an historical novella. Paul-Alain Beaulieu
Paul-Alain Beaulieu
Paul-Alain Beaulieu is a Canadian Assyriologist, a Professor of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations at the University of Toronto.Beaulieu earned a masters degree from the Université de Montréal in 1980 under the supervision of Marcel Leibovici, and a Ph.D. from Yale University in 1985...
suggests that the Greek accounts may constitute an aggregate of various folk tales and legends which came to be associated with the fall of Babylon." David George Hogarth
David George Hogarth
David George Hogarth was a British archaeologist and scholar associated with T. E. Lawrence and Arthur Evans.-Archaeological career:...
and Samuel Rolles Driver
Samuel Rolles Driver
Samuel Rolles Driver was an English divine and Hebrew scholar. He devoted his life to the study, both textual and critical, of the Old Testament. He was the father of Sir Godfrey Rolles Driver, also a distinguished Bible scholar.-Biography:Samuel Rolles Driver was born at Southampton...
commented on what they saw as Herodotus's unreliability:
The untrustworthiness of the accounts in Herodotus is
evident as soon as they can be definitely compared with
monumental records. The famous siege and capture of
Babylon by Cyrus is contradicted by his inscription, which
relates that, after a battle at Opis and another at Sippara,
his general, Gobryas, entered the city without a struggle.
Babylon had stood many sieges before the time of Cyrus,
and stood many more afterwards : it is thought that one
of the two captures by Darius, whose general was also
named Gobryas, may have been confused with the entry
of Cyrus.
According to the Behistun Inscription
Behistun Inscription
The Behistun Inscription The Behistun Inscription The Behistun Inscription (also Bistun or Bisutun, Modern Persian: بیستون The Behistun Inscription (also Bistun or Bisutun, Modern Persian: بیستون...
, Babylon revolts again from Darius, only to be recaptured by his general Gobryas. In this case Herodotus only mentions the first revolt of Babylon in which Zopyrus captures the city for Darius, and omits this second revolt from Darius and its capture by Gobryas.
Historiography
The Babylonian defeat at Opis and the apparently unopposed Persian entry into Babylon ended the independence of Babylonia (although there were a number of unsuccessful revolts against later Persian rulers). That the Babylonian collapse was swift and apparently total is confirmed by the ancient accounts of Cyrus's campaign in Mesopotamia and corroborating evidence such as cuneiform inscriptions dating to shortly after the Persian conquest. A number of explanations have been advanced for the rapid collapse of the Babylonian state. The Cyrus cylinder and the roughly contemporary Verse Account of Nabonidus attribute Nabonidus's failure to the desire of the god MardukMarduk
Marduk was the Babylonian name of a late-generation god from ancient Mesopotamia and patron deity of the city of Babylon, who, when Babylon became the political center of the Euphrates valley in the time of Hammurabi , started to...
to punish a regime that had opposed his will. The strongly anti-Nabonidus tone of these documents, which accused the former king of behaving capriciously and neglecting the worship of the gods, suggests that their authors - the Babylonian priestly elite - were alienated from Nabonidus and may have welcomed a Persian takeover. It is, however, unclear how widely the Persians were supported within Babylonia, as accounts of the invasion and Nabonidus's rule are coloured by Cyrus's subsequent propaganda.
Other writers have advanced a number of additional or alternative explanations for the Babylonian defeat. M. A. Dandamaev suggests variously that the regime suffered from a lack of allies; a lack of support among the general population; opposition from subject peoples such as the Jews, who may have seen the invading Persians as liberators; and the inability of the Babylonian forces to resist numerically superior and better equipped opponents.
In popular culture
The circumstances surrounding the Battle of Opis are depicted in one of the four parallel storylines of D.W. Griffith's classic silent film IntoleranceIntolerance (film)
Intolerance is a 1916 American silent film directed by D. W. Griffith and is considered one of the great masterpieces of the Silent Era. The three-and-a-half hour epic intercuts four parallel storylines each separated by several centuries: A contemporary melodrama of crime and redemption; a...
(1916). The contending armies and a vast Babylonian courtyard are lavishly recreated.