Belshazzar's feast; Babylon falls
Daniel 5; Isaiah 21:9; Jeremiah 51
At a drunken feast using the temple's gold cups, a hand wrote on Belshazzar's wall; Daniel read it as judgment, and that night Babylon fell to the Medes and Persians.
TEKEL: you are weighed in the balances, and are found wanting.
Daniel 5:27 (World English Bible)
MENE: God has numbered your kingdom and ended it. TEKEL: you are weighed and found wanting. PERES: your kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and Persians. Belshazzar was killed that night.
For centuries critics claimed Belshazzar never existed. Babylonian texts later showed that he was the son and co-regent of King Nabonidus, which explains why he could only offer Daniel the position of “third ruler in the kingdom.”
Places
BabylonChaldeaBabyloniaMediaSheshachLeb-kamai
Ancient witnesses outside the Bible
Historical sources, not Scripture.
- Against Apion 1.20 — Berosus on Nabonnedus, Babylon’s last king, and Cyrus’s capture of Babylon (Belshazzar was his son, whom Berosus does not name)
Dating notes
Ussher dates Babylon's fall to 538 BC; conventional dating, from the Nabonidus Chronicle, gives October 539 BC.