Cambyses also named Nebuchadnezzar?
by
Damien F. Mackey
“The Chronicle of John of Nikiu who wrote of Cambyses[’] exploits after his name change to Nebuchadnezzar. He wrote of how Cambyses under his new name Nebuchadnezzar destroyed Jerusalem and desolated Egypt. It becomes apparent therefore that John gave credit to Cambyses for what Nebuchadnezzar accomplished”.
Previously I wrote, regarding likenesses I had perceived between Cambyses and my various alter egos for king Nebuchednezzar II (including Ashurbanipal and Nabonidus):
Common factors here may include ‘divine’ madness; confounding the priests by messing with the Babylonian rites; and the conquest of Egypt and Ethiopia.
I was then totally unaware of this name claim about Cambyses by John of Nikiu.
Part Two:
Named Nebuchednezzar, and can be Nebuchednezzar
… my enlargement of the historical Nebuchednezzar II, through alter egos,
to embrace Ashurbanipal and Nabonidus - and now, too, Cambyses - provides
a complete ‘profile’ of the biblical king that ‘covers all bases’, so to speak.
For some time, now, I have suspected that the mad but powerful, Egypt-conquering Cambyses had to be the same as the mad but powerful, Egypt-conquering Nebuchednezzar II.
And now I learn that the C7th AD Egyptian Coptic bishop, John of Nikiû (680-690 AD, conventional dating), had told that Cambyses was also called Nebuchednezzar.
This new piece of information has emboldened me to do - what I have wanted to - and that is to say with confidence that Cambyses was Nebuchednezzar II.
That Nebuchednezzar II also reigned in Susa is evidenced by (if I am right) my identification of him with the “king Artaxerxes” of the Book of Nehemiah, who was a “king of Babylon”.
See my series: “Governor Nehemiah's master "Artaxerxes king of Babylon",”, especially Part One:
and Part Two:
Whilst critics can argue that the “king Nebuchednezzar” of the Book of Daniel may not necessarily be a good match for the historico-biblical Nebuchednezzar II, but that he seems more likely to have been based on king Nabonidus, my enlargement of the historical Nebuchednezzar II, through alter egos, to embrace Ashurbanipal and Nabonidus - and now, too, Cambyses - provides a complete ‘profile’ of the biblical king that ‘covers all bases’, so to speak.
Part Three:
‘Sacred disease’ (read madness) of King Cambyses
“In view of all this, I have no doubt that Cambyses
was completely out of his mind;
it is the only possible explanation of his
assault upon, and mockery of,
everything which ancient law and custom have
made sacred in Egypt”.
Herodotus
When subjecting
neo-Babylonian history to a serious revision, I had reached the conclusion that
Nebuchednezzar II needed to be folded with Nabonidus, and that Nebuchednezzar
II’s son-successor, Evil-Merodach, needed to be folded with Nabonidus’s son, Belshazzar.
That accorded perfectly with
the testimony of the Book of Daniel that “Nebuchednezzar” was succeeded by his
son, “Belshazzar”.
One of the various
traits shared by Daniel’s “Nebuchednezzar” and King Nabonidus was madness.
Useful in a discussion
of this subject, I found, was Siegfried H. Horn’s article, “New light on
Nebuchadnezzar’s madness”, which helpfully provided some possible evidence for
madness in the case of Nebuchednezzar II.
Horn also proved
useful in paving the way for my parallel situation of Evil-Merodach son of
Nebuchednezzar II, and Belshazzar son of Nabonidus, when writing of Evil-Merodach’s
possibly officiating in the place of a temporarily incapacitated king (as
Belshazzar is known to have done in the case of Nabonidus).
Thus Horn wrote:
…. Since Daniel records that
Nebuchadnezzar was “driven from men” (Dan. 4:33) but later
reinstated as king by his officials (verse 36), Evilmerodach, Nebuchadnezzar’s
eldest son, may have served as regent during his father’s incapacity. Official
records, however, show Nebuchadnezzar as king during his lifetime.
Cambyses
Books, articles
and classics have been written about the madness of King Cambyses, he
conventionally considered to have been the second (II) king of that name, a
Persian (c. 529-522 BC), and the son/successor of Cyrus the Great.
The tradition is
thought to have begun with the C5th BC Greek historian, Herodotus, according to
whom (The Histories)
[3.29.1] When the priests led
Apis in, Cambyses–for he was all but mad–drew his dagger and, meaning to stab
the calf in the belly, stuck the thigh; then laughing he said to the priests:
[3.29.2] “Simpletons, are these your gods, creatures of flesh and blood that
can feel weapons of iron? That is a god worthy of the Egyptians. But for you,
you shall suffer for making me your laughing-stock.” So saying he bade those,
whose business it was, to scourge the priests well, and to kill any other
Egyptian whom they found holiday-making. [3.29.3] So the Egyptian festival
ended, and the priests were punished, and Apis lay in the temple and died of
the wound in the thigh. When he was dead of the wound, the priests buried him
without Cambyses’ knowledge.
[3.30.1] But Cambyses, the
Egyptians say, owing to this wrongful act immediately went mad, although even
before he had not been sensible. His first evil act was to destroy his full
brother Smerdis, whom he had sent away from Egypt to Persia out of jealousy,
because Smerdis alone could draw the bow brought from the Ethiopian by the
Fish-eaters as far as two fingerbreadths, but no other Persian could draw it.
[3.30.2] Smerdis having gone
to Persia, Cambyses saw in a dream a vision, in which it seemed to him that a
messenger came from Persia and told him that Smerdis sitting on the royal
throne touched heaven with his head.
[3.30.3] Fearing therefore for
himself, lest his brother might slay him and so be king, he sent Prexaspes, the
most trusted of his Persians, to Persia to kill him. Prexaspes went up to Susa
and killed Smerdis; some say that he took Smerdis out hunting, others that he
brought him to the Red Sea (the Persian Gulf) and there drowned him. ….
[End of quote]
And:
Herodotus’ Comment on Cambyses’ Madness
[3.38] In view of all
this, I have no doubt that Cambyses
was completely out of his mind; it is the only possible explanation of his
assault upon, and mockery of, everything which ancient law and custom have made
sacred in Egypt.
[End of quote]
Scholarly
articles have been written in an attempt to diagnose the illness of Cambyses,
sometimes referred to – as in the case of Julius Caesar’s epilepsy – as a
‘divine’ or ‘sacred’ disease.
For example (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11594937):
Arch
Neurol. 2001 Oct; 58(10):1702-4.
The sacred disease of Cambyses II.
Abstract
Herodotus’ account of the mad
acts of the Persian king Cambyses II contains one of the two extant
pre-Hippocratic Greek references to epilepsy. This reference helps to
illuminate Greek thinking about epilepsy, and disease more generally, in the
time immediately preceding the publication of the Hippocratic treatise on
epilepsy, On the Sacred Disease. Herodotus attributed Cambyses’ erratic
behavior as ruler of Egypt to either the retribution of an aggrieved god or to
the fact that he had the sacred disease. Herodotus considered the possibility
that the sacred disease was a somatic illness, agreeing with later Hippocratic
authors that epilepsy has a natural rather than a divine cause. ….
[End of quote]
The character of
Cambyses as presented in various ancient traditions is thoroughly treated in
Herb Storck’s excellent monograph, History and Prophecy: A Study in the
Post-Exilic Period (House of Nabu, 1989).
Messing with the rites
As
was the case with King Nabonidus (= Nebuchednezzar II), so did Cambyses
apparently fail properly to observe established protocol with the Babylonian
rites.
Regarding the
rebellious behaviour of King Nabonidus with regard to the rites, I wrote previously:
Confounding the
Astrologers
Despite his superstitious
nature the “Nebuchednezzar” of the Book of Daniel – and indeed his alter
egos, Nebuchednezzar II/Nabonidus – did not hesitate at times to dictate
terms to his wise men or astrologers (2:5-6):
The king replied to the
astrologers, “This is what I have firmly decided: If you do not tell me what my
dream was and interpret it, I will have you cut into pieces and your houses
turned into piles of rubble. But if you tell me the dream and
explain it, you will receive from me gifts and rewards and great honor. So tell
me the dream and interpret it for me.”
And so, in the Verse Account,
we read too of Nabonidus’ interference in matters ritualistic in the presence
of sycophantic officials:
Yet he continues to mix up the
rites, he confuses the hepatoscopic oracles. To the most important ritual
observances, he orders an end; as to the sacred representations in Esagila
-representations which Eamumma himself had fashioned- he looks at the
representations and utters blasphemies.
When he saw the usar-symbol of
Esagila, he makes an [insulting?] gesture. He assembled the priestly scholars,
he expounded to them as follows: ‘Is not this the sign of ownership indicating
for whom the temple was built? If it belongs really to Bêl, it would have been
marked with the spade. Therefore the Moon himself has marked already his own
temple with the usar-symbol!’
And Zeriya, the šatammu who
used to crouch as his secretary in front of him, and Rimut, the bookkeeper who
used to have his court position near to him, do confirm the royal dictum, stand
by his words, they even bare their heads to pronounce under oath: ‘Now only we
understand this situation, after the king has explained about it!’
[End of quote]
Paul-Alain
Beaulieu, in his book, The Reign of Nabonidus, King of Babylon, 556-539
B.C. (1989), gives another similar instance pertaining to an eclipse (Col.
III 2), likening it also to the action of “Nebuchednezzar” in the Book of
Daniel (pp. 128-129):
The scribes brought baskets
from Babylon (containing) the tablets of the series enūma Anu Enlil to
check (it, but since) he did not hearken to (what it said), he did not
understand what it meant.
The passage is difficult, but
its general implications are clear. Whether Nabonidus had already made up his
mind as to the meaning of the eclipse and therefore refused to check the
astrological series, or did check them but disagreed with the scribes on their
interpretation, it seems that the consecration of En-nigaldi-Nanna [daughter of
Nabonidus] was felt to be uncalled for. This alleged stubbornness of the king
is perhaps reflected in the Book of Daniel, in the passage where Nebuchednezzar
(i.e. Nabonidus), after having dismissed the plea of the “Chaldeans”, states
that the matter is settled for him (Daniel II, 3-5) ….
But this does not imply that
Nabonidus was necessarily wrong in his interpretation of the eclipse; on the
contrary, all the evidence suggests that he was right. However, he may have
“forced” things slightly ….
[End of quote]
According to Encyclopaedia
Iranica on Cambyses II:
A badly damaged passage in the
chronicle of Nabonidus contains a report that, in order to legitimize his
appointment, Cambyses participated in the ritual prescribed for the king at
the traditional New Year festival on 27 March 538 B.C., accepting the royal
scepter from the hands of Marduk in Esagila, the god’s temple in Babylon (III.
24-28; Grayson, p. 111). A. L. Oppenheim attempted a reconstruction of the
damaged text (Survey of Persian Art XV, p. 3501); according to his
version, Cambyses entered the temple in ordinary Elamite attire, fully armed.
The priests persuaded him to lay down his arms, but he refused to change his
clothes for those prescribed in the ritual. He then received the royal scepter.
In Oppenheim’s view Cambyses thus deliberately demonstrated “a deep-seated
religious conviction” hostile to this alien religion (Camb. Hist. Iran II,
p. 557).
[End of quote]
Part Four:
King Cambyses’ wanton treatment of Egypt-Ethiopia
“A Jewish document from 407 BC known as ‘The
Demotic Chronicle’ speaks of
Cambyses destroying all the temples of the
Egyptian gods”.
Of Nebuchednezzar II’s
conquest of Egypt, well-attested in the Bible, it is extremely difficult to
find substantial account in the historical records.
Not so with the conquest
of Egypt and Ethiopia by Cambyses.
Nebuchednezzar
II was, very early in his reign, militarily involved against Egypt – with
greater or lesser success. http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Nebuchadnezzar.aspx
Early in 605 B.C. he met
Necho, the king of Egypt, in battle and defeated him at Carchemish. A few
months later Nabopolassar died, and Nebuchadnezzar hastened home to claim his
throne. He soon returned to the west in order to secure the loyalty of Syria and
Palestine and to collect tribute; among those who submitted were the rulers of
Damascus, Tyre, Sidon, and Judah.
Nebuchadnezzar’s Conquests
In 601 B.C. Nebuchadnezzar
attempted the invasion of Egypt but was repulsed with heavy losses. Judah
rebelled, but Jerusalem fell in March 597 B.C., and the ruler, Jehoiakim, and
his court were deported to Babylon. Eight years later another Jewish rebellion
broke out; this time Jerusalem was razed and the population carried into
captivity.
[End of quote]
This article
then follows with an intriguing piece of information: “Expeditions against the
Arabs in 582 B.C. and another attempt at invading Egypt in 568 B.C. receive
brief mention in Nebuchadnezzar’s later records”.
But sceptics say
that Nebuchednezzar II never actually succeeded in conquering Egypt, hence the
Bible is wrong, and that it was Cambyses instead who conquered Egypt. For
instance: http://www.sanityquestpublishing.com/essays/BabEgypt.html
BABYLON NEVER CONQUERED
EGYPT
The Bible never says
Nebuchadnezzar the Second (hereafter Neb-2) conquered Egypt. The idea
Neb-2 conquered Egypt would never have been considered a serious historical
possibility, but for 4 facts:
1.
Jeremiah & Ezekiel both predicted that Neb-2
would conquer Egypt.
2.
Jeremiah & Ezekiel are both considered true
prophets.
3.
According to Deut. 18:22, true prophets are
never wrong about a prediction.
4.
Jesus said (Mat 5:18) “One jot or one tittle
shall in no way pass from the law until all be fulfilled.” b. Paul
said (2Tim 3:16) “All scripture is given by inspiration of God,” Both of these
verses are erroneously interpreted by many Christians as meaning the entire
Bible contains no errors.
If you disagree with the
preceding statement, the rest of this essay will be irrelevant to you, because
you will be judging all historical evidence by its conformity to the
Bible. This makes you literally not worth talking to outside of
the company of others who do the same. Such Christians to try to muddy
historical evidence that contradicts the Bible. e.g. One proposed
that there were two Nebuchadnezzars, the second being Cambyses: http://www.biblestudyguide.org/comment/calvin/comm_vol24/htm/xiii.ii.htm
(Actually there were two Nebs, but the first ruled Babylon
c.1124-1104BC.) This essay is based on the assumption that the historical
parts of the Bible should be judged for accuracy by the same rules as any other
ancient historical document.
….
Unlike any supposed conquest
by NEB-2, the conquest of Egypt by CAMBYSES-2 is well attested.
[End of quote]
Cambyses in
Egypt
The above
article is correct at least in its final statement quoted here: “… the conquest
of Egypt by CAMBYSES-2 is well attested”.
The article goes
on to tell of the various ancient evidences for this great conquest:
EGYPTIAN EVIDENCE
We possess the autobiography
of the admiral of the Egyptian fleet, Wedjahor-Resne. It is written on a
small statue now in the Vatican Museums in Rome. After the conquest of
Egypt, Wedjahor-Resne was Cambyses’ right-hand man.
“The great king of all foreign
countries Cambyses came to Egypt, taking the foreigners of every foreign country
with him. When he had taken possession of the entire country, they settled
themselves down therein, and he was made great sovereign of Egypt and great
king of all foreign countries. His Majesty appointed me his chief
physician and caused me to stay with him in my quality of companion and
director of the palace, and ordered me to compose his titulary, his name as
king of Upper and Lower Egypt.”
In an inscription on the
statue of Udjadhorresnet, a Saite priest and doctor, as well as a former naval
officer, we learn that Cambyses II was prepared to work with and promote native
Egyptians to assist in government, and that he showed at least some respect for
Egyptian religion:
“I let His Majesty know the
greatness of Sais, that it is the seat of Neith-the-Great, mother who bore Re
and inaugurated birth when birth had not yet been…I made a petition to the
majesty of the King of Upper and Lower Egypt, Cambyses, about all the
foreigners who dwelled in the temple of Neith, in order to have them expelled
from it., so as to let the temple of Neith be in all its splendor, as it had
been before. His Majesty commanded to expel all the foreigners who
dwelled in the temple of Neith, to demolish all their houses and all their
unclean things that were in the temple. When they had carried all their
personal belongings outside the wall of the temple, His Majesty commanded to
cleanse the temple of Neith and to return all its personnel to it…and the
hour-priests of the temple. His Majesty commanded to give divine offerings
to Neith-the-Great, the mother of god, and to the great gods of Sais, as it had
been before. His Majesty knew the greatness of Sais, that it is a city of
all the gods, who dwell there on their seats forever.”
HERODOTUS
Herodotus (who, to my
knowledge, never mentions Nebuchadnezzar by name) describes his Hanging
Gardens, but never mentions him in relation to Egypt, though Herodotus does
talk about pharaohs Necho, Hophra, Ahmose, & Psamtik. [Necos, Apries,
Amasis, and Psammis] and of course, Cambyses.
Herodotus notes how the
Persians easily entered Egypt across the desert. They were advised by the
defecting mercenary general, Phanes of Halicarnassus, to employ the Bedouins as
guides. However, Phanes had left his two sons in Egypt. We are told
that for his treachery, as the armies of the Persians and the mercenary army of
the Egyptians met, his sons were bought out in front of the Egyptian army where
they could be seen by their father, and there throats were slit over a large
bowl. Afterwards, Herodotus tells us that water and wine were added to
the contents of the bowl and drunk by every man in the Egyptian force.
“When Cambyses had entered the
palace of Amasis, he gave command to take the corpse of Amasis out of his
burial-place. When this had been done, he ordered [his courtiers] to scourge it
and pluck out the hair and stab it, and to dishonor it in every other possible
way. When they had done this too, they were wearied out, for the corpse
was embalmed and held out against the violence and did not fall to pieces.
Cambyses gave command to consume it with fire, a thing that was not permitted
by his own religion. The Persians hold fire to be a god and to consume
corpses with fire is by no means according to the Persian or Egyptian custom.”
[Histories 3.16]
MANETHO lists the pharaohs of
the 26th dynasty, then cites the Persians as the 27th dynasty.
“Cambyses reigned over his own
kingdom, Persia, five years, and then over Egypt one year.”
PERSIAN EVIDENCE
According to king, Darius I’s
BEHISTUN INSCRIPTION, Cambyses, before going to Egypt, had secretly killed his
brother, Bardiya, whom Herodotus called Smerdis. The murdered prince was,
however, impersonated by Gaumata the Magian, who in March 522 seized the
Achaemenid throne. Cambyses, on his return from Egypt, heard of the
revolt in Syria, where he died in the summer of 522, either by his own hand or
as the result of an accident.
(10) King Darius says: The
following is what was done by me after I became king. A son of Cyrus,
named Cambyses, one of our dynasty, was king here before me. That Cambyses had
a brother, Smerdis by name, of the same mother and the same father as
Cambyses. Afterwards, Cambyses slew this Smerdis. When Cambyses
slew Smerdis, it was not known unto the people that Smerdis was slain.
Thereupon Cambyses went to Egypt. When Cambyses had departed into Egypt,
the people became hostile, and the lie multiplied in the land, even in Persia
and Media, and in the other provinces.
OTHER EVIDENCE
A Jewish document from 407 BC
known as ‘The Demotic Chronicle’ speaks of Cambyses destroying all the temples
of the Egyptian gods.
Greek geographer STRABO of
Amasia visited Thebes in 24 BC and saw the ruins of several temples said (by
local priests) to have been destroyed by Cambyses.
[End of quote]
Part Five: Cambyses – in your dreams
“Cambyses has a “Nebuchednezzar” like
dream-vision
of a king whose head touched heaven”.
Our neo-Babylonian
king, Nabonidus, was, true to form (as an alter
ego for Daniel’s “Nebuchednezzar”), a frequent recipient of dreams and
visions.
For example, I
wrote previously:
Nabonidus was, like
“Nebuchednezzar”, an excessively pious man, and highly superstitious. The
secret knowledge of which he boasted was what he had acquired through his
dreams. Another characteristic that Nabonidus shared with “Nebuchednezzar”.
Nabonidus announced (loc. cit.): “The god Ilteri has made me see
(dreams), he has made everything kno[wn to me]. I surpass in all (kinds of)
wisdom (even the series) uskar-Anum-Enlilla, which Adap[a] composed”. ….
[End of quote]
In Beaulieu’s
book … we read further of King Nabonidus:
“I
did not stop going to the diviner and the dream interpreter”.
And of King
Nebuchednezzar II – with whom I am equating Nabonidus – the prophet Ezekiel
writes similarly of that king’s omen seeking (21:21): “The king of Babylon now
stands at the fork, uncertain whether to attack Jerusalem or Rabbah. He calls
his magicians to look for omens. They cast lots by shaking arrows from the
quiver. They inspect the livers of animal sacrifices”.
[End
of quote]
Ashurbanipal,
likewise - he being yet another alter ego
- gave immense credence to dreams and used a dream book. Ashurbanipal was, like
Nabonidus, more superstitious, if I may say it, than Nostradamus being pursued by
a large black cat under a ladder - on the thirteenth.
Karen Radner
tells of Ashurbanipal’s reliance upon dreams, in Of God(s), Trees, Kings, and scholars (p. 224): https://www.ucl.ac.uk/sargon/downloads/radner_fs_parpola_2009.pdf
In
the Biblical attestations, especially in the stories of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream
and Joseph in Egypt, the ḫarṭummîm17 [wizards] figure prominently as experts in the
interpretation of dreams, and it may be this kind of expertise which the ḫarṭibē offered to the Assyrian king; dream oracles were certainly
popular with Assurbanipal who used dreams … to legitimise his actions in his
royal inscriptions … and whose library contained the dream omen series Zaqīqu (also Ziqīqu). ….
[End of quote]
Now, what of
Cambyses in this regard?
Well, according
to Herodotus (http://www.reshafim.org.il/ad/egypt/herodotus/cambyses.htm)
[3.30.1] But Cambyses, the
Egyptians say, owing to this wrongful act immediately went mad, although even
before he had not been sensible. His first evil act was to destroy his full
brother Smerdis, whom he had sent away from Egypt to Persia out of jealousy,
because Smerdis alone could draw the bow brought from the Ethiopian by the
Fish-eaters as far as two fingerbreadths, but no other Persian could draw it.
[3.30.2] Smerdis having gone to Persia, Cambyses saw in a dream a vision, in
which it seemed to him that a messenger came from Persia and told him that
Smerdis sitting on the royal throne touched heaven with his head. [3.30.3]
Fearing therefore for himself, lest his brother might slay him and so be king,
he sent Prexaspes, the most trusted of his Persians, to Persia to kill him.
Prexaspes went up to Susa and killed Smerdis; some say that he took Smerdis out
hunting, others that he brought him to the Red Sea (the Persian Gulf) and there
drowned him.
[End of quote]
This is
actually, as we shall now find, quite Danielic.
Cambyses has a
“Nebuchednezzar” like dream-vision of a king whose head touched heaven.
Likewise, “Nebuchednezzar” had a dream of a “tree … which grew large and
strong, with its top touching the sky” (Daniel 4:20).
Now, given that
this “tree” symbolised “Nebuchednezzar” himself, who was also according to an
earlier dream a “head of gold (Daniel 2:38), then one might say that, as in the
case of Cambyses dream-vision of a king whose head touched heaven, so did
“Nebuchednezzar” touch the sky (heaven) with his head (of gold).
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