Belshazzar in the Nabonidus texts
A figure once cited as proof that Daniel was fiction turns out to be documented in Babylonian records — including the co-regency that makes the book's odd detail about "third ruler" make sense.
Named outside the BibleAncient writer6th century BC
Belshazzar was long treated as a biblical invention, since Babylonian king lists end with Nabonidus. Then cuneiform texts turned up naming Belshazzar as Nabonidus's son, entrusted with the kingship while his father was away at Teima for years — which also explains why Daniel's Belshazzar can only offer the third place in the kingdom, not the second.
He entrusted the camp to his eldest son, the firstborn… he let everything go, entrusted the kingship to him.
- Found
- Babylonia (Sippar, Ur and elsewhere) — Nineteenth-century excavations
- Now held at
- British Museum and other collections
- Language
- Akkadian
- How it reached us
- Dug up, or still standing where it was built.
What it shows
Belshazzar's existence and co-regency are secure. The book of Daniel's wider historical setting — including its "Darius the Mede" — remains genuinely disputed, and this item does not resolve that.
How historians use it
Standard in Assyriology; the Nabonidus–Belshazzar arrangement is discussed independently of any biblical question.
In Scripture
Connects to
Sources
- Dougherty, Nabonidus and Belshazzar (Yale Oriental Series, 1929)
- Belshazzar — overview and bibliography
These summaries are written in English for now. Translations follow.