Nebuchadnezzar II


Nebuchadnezzar II, also Nebuchadrezzar II, king of Babylon 605 BC – 562 BC, was the longest-reigning and most powerful monarch of the Neo-Babylonian Empire.
His father Nabopolassar was an official of the Neo-Assyrian Empire who rebelled in 626 BC and established himself as the king of Babylon. Nebuchadnezzar ascended the throne in 605 BC and subsequently fought several campaigns in the West, where Egypt was trying to organize a coalition against him. His conquest of Judah is described in the Bible's Books of Kings, Books of Chronicles and Book of Jeremiah. His capital, Babylon, is the largest archaeological site in the Middle East.
The Bible remembers him as the destroyer of Solomon's Temple and the initiator of the Babylonian captivity. He is an important character in the Book of Daniel, a collection of legendary tales and visions dating from the 2nd century BC.
Giuseppe Verdi's opera Nabucco was inspired by him. He is presented as brutal, hawkish and despotic.

Name

The English form Nebuchadnezzar is borrowed from its Hebrew form נְבוּכַדְנֶצַּר Neḇuchadneṣṣar in the Bible, whereas the original Akkadian name Nabû-kudurri-uṣur is currently understood as a compound meaning 'Nabu preserve my firstborn':
Nebuchadnezzar was the eldest son and successor of Nabopolassar, an Assyrian official who rebelled against the Assyrian Empire and established himself as the king of Babylon in 620 BC. Nebuchadnezzar is first mentioned in 607 BC, during the destruction of Babylon's arch-enemy Assyria, at which point he was already crown prince. In 605 BC he and his ally Cyaxares, ruler of the Medes, led an army against the Assyrians and Egyptians, who were then occupying Syria, and in the ensuing Battle of Carchemish, Pharaoh Necho II was defeated and Syria and Phoenicia were brought under the control of Babylon. Nabopolassar died in August 605 BC, and Nebuchadnezzar returned to Babylon to ascend the throne. For the next few years, his attention was devoted to subduing his eastern and northern borders, and in 595/4 BC there was a serious but brief rebellion in Babylon itself. In 594/3 BC, the army was sent again to the west, possibly in reaction to the elevation of Psamtik II to the throne of Egypt. During the Siege of Jerusalem, Nebuchadnezar captured King Jehoiachin along with prominent citizens and craftsman and appointed Zedekiah as King of Judah in his place, the latter rebelled and attempted to organize opposition among the small states in the region but his capital, Jerusalem, was taken in 587 BC. In the following years, Nebuchadnezzar incorporated Phoenicia and the former Assyrian provinces of Cilicia into his empire and may have campaigned in Egypt. According to a Babylonian poem, Nebuchadnezzar began behaving irrationally in his final years, "pay no heed to son or daughter," and was deeply suspicious of his sons. The kings who came after him ruled only briefly and Nabonidus, apparently not of the royal family, was overthrown by the Persian conqueror Cyrus the Great less than twenty-five years after Nebuchadnezzar's death.
The ruins of Nebuchadnezzar's Babylon are spread over two thousand acres, forming the largest archaeological site in the Middle East. He enlarged the royal palace, built and repaired temples, built a bridge over the Euphrates, and constructed a grand processional boulevard and gateway lavishly decorated with glazed brick. Each spring equinox, a statue of the god Marduk was paraded from its temple to a temple outside the walls, returning through the Ishtar Gate and down the Processional Way, paved with colored stone and lined with molded lions, amidst rejoicing crowds.

Portrayal in the Bible

The Babylonian king's two sieges of Jerusalem are depicted in. The Book of Jeremiah calls Nebuchadnezzar the "destroyer of nations" and gives an account of the second siege of Jerusalem and the looting and destruction of the First Temple. Nebuchadnezzar's assault on Egypt four months before the fall of Jerusalem in 587 is represented in Ezekiel as a divine initiative undertaken "by the hand of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon".
Nebuchadnezzar is an important character in the Old Testament Book of Daniel. Daniel 1 introduces Nebuchadnezzar as the king who takes Daniel and other Hebrew youths into captivity in Babylon, to be trained in "the learning and the tongue of the Chaldeans". In Nebuchadnezzar's second year, Daniel interprets the king's dream of a huge image as God's prediction of the rise and fall of world powers, starting with Nebuchadnezzar's kingdom. Nebuchadnezzar twice admits the power of the God of the Hebrews: first, after God saves three of Daniel's companions from a fiery furnace ; and secondly, after Nebuchadnezzar himself suffers a humiliating period of madness, as Daniel predicted.
The consensus among critical scholars is that the book of Daniel is historical fiction. Nebuchadnezzar's recognition of the power of Yahweh is unlikely to have actually occurred. His period of madness is also fictional, historians attributing it to rumors about Nabonidus's stay in Teima, which were subsequently applied to Nebuchadnezzar through conflation.
His name is often recorded in the Bible as "Nebuchadrezzar", but more commonly as "Nebuchadnezzar". The form Nebuchadrezzar is more consistent with the original Akkadian, and some scholars believe that Nebuchadnezzar may be a derogatory pun used by the Israelites, meaning "Nabu, protect my jackass".