The cuneiform inscriptions and the Old Testament - The Search For ...

BOOK OF DANIEL IV. 129
Armeniaa Chronicle (ed, Schoene I, 41. 42; In C. Mueller,
Fragm. hist. Gr. IV, p. 283 foil.). From the above we
learn that, according to a tradition which prevailed among
the Chaldees, Nebukadnezzar, after he had become stronger
than Hercules and had undertaken expeditions to Libya
and Iberia, and had settled a portion of the subjugated
populations at Pontus, mounted the royal fortress and, in-
spired by a god, had declared a prophecy, whereby Perses,
(the Persian) mule , would bring the Babylonians under
bondage, not without the complicity of their own Baby-
lonian ruler, Nabunit-Labynetus , the * son of the Median
woman" {yloq Mi/df/g as we should read with A. von Gut- 432
schmid). A comparison of both accounts shows that they
are narratives which have been moulded independently
of one another from one and the same Babylonian popular
legend. To these may be added a third variety viz. the
concise story in Herodotus (I, 188) respecting Labynetus I,
husband of Nitocris and his son Labynetus II *, the oppo-
nent of Cyrus. Of the two first accounts the tradition in
Abydenus, written down comparatively late in the form in
which we now have it , possesses the greater claim to
originality, both on the ground of form and of contents.
"The form which the legend in the Hebrew tradition— i. e.
through the writer of the Book of Daniel— has assumed,
* We need not explain that he is the same as the Nabunit of
Berossus and the Nabu-n&'id of the inscriptions. Nebukadnezzar as
Labynetus is contrasted with him in the relation of father to son in
just the same way as Belshazzar is contrasted with this same Nebukadnezzar
in the Book of Daniel , and as the "son of the Median
woman" to the "husband of the Median Amyitis" in the Chaldaean
popular legend quoted by Abydenus. Herodotus, the Book of Daniel,
and the Chaldaean popular tradition coincide in this case completely
in the most important points.
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