Verse Account of Nabonidus
A fragmentary Babylonian poem written after Cyrus's conquest vilifies Nabonidus and praises the new order, preserving valuable political memory only when read as purposeful Persian-era propaganda.
- Artifact date
- Ancient Near Eastern or Second Temple period; see cited catalog
- Findspot
- See cited institutional catalog
What archaeologists can actually examine
The Verse Account of Nabonidus survives principally on British Museum tablet BM 38299. Written in Akkadian, its damaged columns accuse Babylon's last native king of ignorance, impiety, military failure, oppression, and abandonment of proper cult while residing at Tayma. It contrasts Nabonidus with Cyrus, whose conquest restores temples, trade, and civic order. The poem also reports that Nabonidus entrusted kingship or military responsibility to his eldest son, an important parallel to other evidence for Belshazzar's authority during the king's absence. These details are historically useful, but the work's caricature and literary organization identify it as polemic, not an impartial court chronicle.
Nabonidus is deliberately caricatured
Satire depicts the defeated king as impious, ignorant, oppressive, and absent from Babylon.
Tayma is central to the accusation
The poem turns Nabonidus's documented Arabian residence into evidence of neglect and disorder.
The eldest son receives authority
A damaged but important passage says Nabonidus entrusted royal or military responsibility to his firstborn.
Cyrus is framed as restorer
The conqueror appears as the agent who renews cult, trade, and civic normality.
Daniel receives political context
The text helps explain Belshazzar's royal role but does not attest the feast or miracle of Daniel 5.
Follow the evidence from discovery to debate
Move through the find in a deliberate order: establish its provenance, examine the surviving object, place it in time, and then weigh the scholarly interpretation.
How the find came to light
The tablet was excavated at Babylon and entered the British Museum in 1880. Modern editions join fragments and reconstruct four columns, many with substantial gaps. A. Leo Oppenheim's influential translation made the work widely accessible, while later Assyriologists studied its poetic structure, intertextual links, and relationship to the Cyrus Cylinder and Nabonidus's own inscriptions. The object's controlled Babylon provenance and museum identity are secure. Its author, commissioner, exact date, and original performance setting are not named, though composition after the Persian takeover in 539 BC is strongly indicated by its favorable portrait of Cyrus.
What you are looking at
BM 38299 is a rectangular clay tablet densely impressed in Neo-Babylonian cuneiform. Portions of the obverse and reverse survive, but breaks interrupt many lines and complicate the sequence. The text uses satire, accusation, learned allusion, and sharp contrasts. Nabonidus is presented as a false scholar who makes an improper image of Sîn, disrupts the New Year festival, neglects Babylon, and boasts absurdly; Cyrus is cast as restorer. These are not transparent diary entries. The tablet's physical damage and literary rhetoric require line-by-line attribution and comparison with independent chronicles, administrative texts, and royal inscriptions.
Where it belongs in history
The poem belongs to the immediate Persian period after Cyrus captured Babylon in 539 BC, though a precise year cannot be proven. Nabonidus had spent years at Tayma in Arabia while Belshazzar exercised high authority in Babylonia. Persian victory created an incentive to explain regime change as Marduk's judgment and Cyrus's legitimate restoration. Similar themes appear in the Cyrus Cylinder, but the Verse Account is more openly satirical. Its historical setting is therefore both the end of Neo-Babylonian rule and the ideological work by which new rulers recast the previous king.
Consensus, questions, and debate
Scholars agree that the work is anti-Nabonidus and pro-Cyrus or pro-restoration. Debate concerns how much historical information can be extracted from polemic. Nabonidus's devotion to Sîn and residence at Tayma are independently documented, whereas charges of madness, total cultic neglect, and absurd scholarship are rhetorical. Some interpret the work as official Persian propaganda; others emphasize Babylonian priestly hostility and later literary composition. The line about the eldest son is valuable because it accords with separate economic and chronicle evidence, but its exact political terminology should not be inflated into a formal title of co-regent without qualification.
The biblical record beside the artifact
Daniel 5 places Belshazzar at the center of Babylonian royal power on the night the kingdom falls, while Daniel 5:29 offers Daniel the third position in the kingdom. The Verse Account does not recount the feast, handwriting, Daniel, or Darius the Mede. Its relevance is that it independently presents Nabonidus's eldest son as entrusted with authority during the king's absence, fitting the broader evidence that Belshazzar could act royally without being the supreme crowned king. The text also witnesses the political transition to Cyrus's regime. It supplies context for Daniel's setting rather than direct confirmation of its miracle or chronology.
Daniel 5:1–31
1Belshazzar the king made a great feast to a thousand of his lords, and drank wine before the thousand.
2Belshazzar, whiles he tasted the wine, commanded to bring the golden and silver vessels which his father Nebuchadnezzar had taken out of the temple which [was] in Jerusalem; that the king, and his princes, his wives, and his concubines, might drink therein.
3Then they brought the golden vessels that were taken out of the temple of the house of God which [was] at Jerusalem; and the king, and his princes, his wives, and his concubines, drank in them.
4They drank wine, and praised the gods of gold, and of silver, of brass, of iron, of wood, and of stone.
5¶ In the same hour came forth fingers of a man’s hand, and wrote over against the candlestick upon the plaister of the wall of the king’s palace: and the king saw the part of the hand that wrote.
6Then the king’s countenance was changed, and his thoughts troubled him, so that the joints of his loins were loosed, and his knees smote one against another.
7The king cried aloud to bring in the astrologers, the Chaldeans, and the soothsayers. [And] the king spake, and said to the wise [men] of Babylon, Whosoever shall read this writing, and shew me the interpretation thereof, shall be clothed with scarlet, and [have] a chain of gold about his neck, and shall be the third ruler in the kingdom.
8Then came in all the king’s wise [men:] but they could not read the writing, nor make known to the king the interpretation thereof.
9Then was king Belshazzar greatly troubled, and his countenance was changed in him, and his lords were astonied.
10¶ [Now] the queen, by reason of the words of the king and his lords, came into the banquet house: [and] the queen spake and said, O king, live for ever: let not thy thoughts trouble thee, nor let thy countenance be changed:
11There is a man in thy kingdom, in whom [is] the spirit of the holy gods; and in the days of thy father light and understanding and wisdom, like the wisdom of the gods, was found in him; whom the king Nebuchadnezzar thy father, the king, [I say], thy father, made master of the magicians, astrologers, Chaldeans, [and] soothsayers;
12Forasmuch as an excellent spirit, and knowledge, and understanding, interpreting of dreams, and shewing of hard sentences, and dissolving of doubts, were found in the same Daniel, whom the king named Belteshazzar: now let Daniel be called, and he will shew the interpretation.
13Then was Daniel brought in before the king. [And] the king spake and said unto Daniel, [Art] thou that Daniel, which [art] of the children of the captivity of Judah, whom the king my father brought out of Jewry?
14I have even heard of thee, that the spirit of the gods [is] in thee, and [that] light and understanding and excellent wisdom is found in thee.
15And now the wise [men], the astrologers, have been brought in before me, that they should read this writing, and make known unto me the interpretation thereof: but they could not shew the interpretation of the thing:
16And I have heard of thee, that thou canst make interpretations, and dissolve doubts: now if thou canst read the writing, and make known to me the interpretation thereof, thou shalt be clothed with scarlet, and [have] a chain of gold about thy neck, and shalt be the third ruler in the kingdom.
17¶ Then Daniel answered and said before the king, Let thy gifts be to thyself, and give thy rewards to another; yet I will read the writing unto the king, and make known to him the interpretation.
18O thou king, the most high God gave Nebuchadnezzar thy father a kingdom, and majesty, and glory, and honour:
19And for the majesty that he gave him, all people, nations, and languages, trembled and feared before him: whom he would he slew; and whom he would he kept alive; and whom he would he set up; and whom he would he put down.
20But when his heart was lifted up, and his mind hardened in pride, he was deposed from his kingly throne, and they took his glory from him:
21And he was driven from the sons of men; and his heart was made like the beasts, and his dwelling [was] with the wild asses: they fed him with grass like oxen, and his body was wet with the dew of heaven; till he knew that the most high God ruled in the kingdom of men, and [that] he appointeth over it whomsoever he will.
22And thou his son, O Belshazzar, hast not humbled thine heart, though thou knewest all this;
23But hast lifted up thyself against the Lord of heaven; and they have brought the vessels of his house before thee, and thou, and thy lords, thy wives, and thy concubines, have drunk wine in them; and thou hast praised the gods of silver, and gold, of brass, iron, wood, and stone, which see not, nor hear, nor know: and the God in whose hand thy breath [is], and whose [are] all thy ways, hast thou not glorified:
24Then was the part of the hand sent from him; and this writing was written.
25¶ And this [is] the writing that was written, MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN.
26This [is] the interpretation of the thing: MENE; God hath numbered thy kingdom, and finished it.
27TEKEL; Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting.
28PERES; Thy kingdom is divided, and given to the Medes and Persians.
29Then commanded Belshazzar, and they clothed Daniel with scarlet, and [put] a chain of gold about his neck, and made a proclamation concerning him, that he should be the third ruler in the kingdom.
30¶ In that night was Belshazzar the king of the Chaldeans slain.
31And Darius the Median took the kingdom, [being] about threescore and two years old.
A responsible historical conclusion
The Verse Account exposes the politics of historical memory. It does not merely tell what happened in 539 BC; it shows how the victors and their Babylonian supporters explained why Nabonidus deserved to fall and Cyrus deserved to rule. Comparison with administrative records separates durable facts—Tayma, Sîn devotion, the crown prince's authority—from literary attack. For readers of Daniel, that distinction is especially useful: the tablet makes Belshazzar's practical prominence historically intelligible while refusing the easy claim that it narrates Daniel 5. It is evidence both for late Babylonian government and for the manufacture of legitimacy after conquest.
Authoritative sources
Institutional catalogs, excavation reports, and academic publications let you examine the evidence beyond this summary.
Verse Account of Nabonidus, BM 38299
British MuseumOfficial object record for provenance, date, dimensions, condition, named rulers, registration, and publication history.
The Religious Reform of Nabonidus: A Sceptical View
Max Planck Research Library for the History and Development of KnowledgeOpen scholarly analysis of the poem's structure, polemic, historical claims, Cyrus contrast, and eldest-son passage.
Verse Account of Nabonidus
Livius Ancient HistoryAccessible scholarly presentation of Oppenheim's translation with explicit discussion of hostile rhetoric and corroborated versus exaggerated claims.
British Museum tablet BM 38299, the Verse Account of Nabonidus. · Zunkir via Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0
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