The Fall of Babylon occurred in 539 BC when the Persian king Cyrus the Great besieged and conquered the Babylonian capital of Babylon. The fall of Babylon to the Persians marked the end of the last indigenous Mesopotamian kingdom and dynasty.
History[]
After his conquest of Lydia in 546 BC, Cyrus the Great went on to confront the Babylonian king Nabonidus. In 539, Cyrus invaded Babylonia with, as an ancient text tells us, "massive troops, whose number was immeasurable, like the water of a river." At the city of Opis, east of the Tigris, Cyrus defeated a Babylonian army, plundering the city's wealth and massacring its people afterward. But this is only one version of events, written down in a Babylonian chronicle. According to texts written in praise of Cyrus, the Persian ruler's progress was peaceful and unopposed. His army "marched with their arms at their sides," and entered Babylon "without battle or fighting." The truth appears to be that Cyrus sent his general Gobryas ahead to besiege Babylon. When the siege had succeeded, Gobryas having taken the city and made Nabonidus a prisoner, Cyrus led a peaceful, triumphal procession into Babylon, posing as a liberator of the city's inhabitants. There was some justification to this posture: the people of Babylon, including its priests, had been unhappy under Nabonidus' rule.