by his father Nabopolassar with the following plan: “set to work on finishing E-temen-anki (to) the top so that it vied with the heavens” (George 2011, p. 167). See also Montero 2010b, p. 67. On the so-called Tower of Babel Stele, where the measures of the monument are presented, see George 2011.20 20 AJ 1.113–114.
21 21 Gen. 11, 7.
22 22 Gen. 10, 9.
23 23 Petrovich 2013, p. 227, and Toorn and Horst 1990, p. 18.
24 24 Could Cush be related to the Kassites (from the Akkadian Kaššū) and not to Nubia? (Levin 2002).
25 25 Levin 2002, p. 366.
26 26 About this identification, vide Petrovich 2013.
27 27 “Now it was Nimrod who excited them to such an affront and contempt of God” (AJ 1.113).
28 28 Philo, Quaestiones 2.82.
29 29 “Nimrod raised the bow above his head; the dropped cable made the sound of a storm, and, like a flash of lightning dies when we close our eyes, the frightening spear disappeared into the sky” (Hugo 1886, p. 83). Similarly, in La Princesse de Babylone, a fable composed by Voltaire in 1768, it is the weapon of hero Nimrod, transformed into a kind of Excalibur, which guarantees the success of whoever manages to tame it (Voltaire 2008, p. 8).
30 30 Vide Part II, Chapter 4, note 71.
31 31 Charles 1929, pp. xv–xviii and Lacocque 2018, pp. 18–19.
32 32 Dan. 1, 4.
33 33 The king must have been away for 10 years (ANET 562), probably from 553 BC to 542 BC.
34 34 Despite being shrouded in mystery, his stay in Tayma had three major motives: the place was an important sanctuary of Sîn; it was closer to Egypt and Palestine making it possible to control and monitor these regions; and it was ideal to oversee certain trade routes.
35 35 That is, “Bêl [another name for god Marduk] protect the king!”.
36 36 Beaulieu 1993.
37 37 We refer to the Verse Account of Nabonidus (Idem, p. 244) and the Cyrus Cylinder.
38 38 Although we cannot speak of true socio-cultural or religious cohesion, the cult of the god Marduk sought to affirm him as the most important deity in the whole territory occupied by the neo-Babylonian empire.
39 39 According to the Verse Account (ANET 313), the king omitted the celebration of the New Year’s Festival (the akītu) during which, among other activities, donations to the deities were reinforced to obtain a good year of agricultural harvests. Cyrus claims in his cylinder that he was the one who restored the cults threatened by Nabonidus. This strategy of assuming the restoration of rituals was common and must have been one of the ways found by Cyrus to impose himself (Waerzeggers 2001, p. 62).
40 40 Spek 2014, p. 250, Beaulieu 2007, p. 160.
41 41 Isa. 48
42 42 Dan. 5, 2.
43 43 Dan. 4, 32.
44 44 He is described in the Verse Account as someone of “utter blasphemy” (Beaulieu, 2007, p. 162.) and carries out “unholy action” (ANET, 286)? Attitudes like these could only be perpetrated by someone with no mental insight.
45 45 According to the Dead Sea papyrus known as the Prayer of Nabonidus, the king had a disease that disfigured him (Seymour 2014).
46 46 Dan. 4, 30.
47 47 We should not speak of a religion, but of the coexistence of various religions, a true system, within Mesopotamia (Oppenheim 1977, pp. 180–181, Bottéro 1998a, pp. 108 and ff.). Plus, we should bear in mind that the episode in question intends to highlight the conflict between the Bible monotheistic god and the polytheist religions of the Near East.
48 48 The statue is named “The Hero Overpowering a Lion” by the Louvre Museum. https://www.louvre.fr/en/oeuvre-notices/hero-overpowering-lion (accessed 19 November 2020).
49 49 Vide Part II, Chapter 9.
50 50 Hdt. Hist., 1.1.0.
51 51 Although the term “barbaric” originally intended merely to refer to those whose language was not Greek (Pagden 2008, p. 42).
52 52 According to Cartledge: “by the time of Aeschylus’ Persians, produced at the Athenian Greta Dionysia festival of 472, the process of ‘othering’ and indeed inventing ‘the barbarian’ as a homogenized stereotype was well underway in Greece” (Cartledge 2002, p. 54).
53 53 Pagden states that a writer like Herodotus did not see the Persians as the other, at least in the sense we now attribute to the term (Pagden 2008, p. 41). On the contrary, Cartledge acknowledges that to some extent “Herodotus
