Four Words Babylon’s Wise Men Couldn’t Read

In Daniel 5, a hand writes four words on the wall of Belshazzar's palace, and that night Babylon falls. Babylon's own records say the city was taken "without battle." The Greeks say a river. This is the fall of Babylon as each record remembered it: the book of Daniel, the Nabonidus Chronicle, the Cyrus Cylinder, Herodotus, Xenophon and Berossus, side by side, with where they agree and where they part ways. It is also the story of the gold and silver vessels of the temple of Jerusalem, carried to Babylon, drunk from at Belshazzar's feast, and counted out one by one for the journey home. Along the way: the king who spent ten years in the Arabian desert, a scroll from Qumran about his illness, what "mene, mene, tekel, upharsin" actually means, and the clay cylinders found at Ur in 1854 that carry Belshazzar's name. The images in this video are AI-generated artistic reconstructions based on the biblical text and archaeological research. They are not photographs or historical records. Scripture quotations are from the King James Version. CHAPTERS 0:00 Four Words 1:09 What Was on the Table 4:12 The City of Nebuchadnezzar 7:36 Ten Years at Tayma 12:03 Cyrus 14:27 Opis and Sippar 16:00 The Feast 19:02 Weighed 23:03 That Night 24:52 The River 28:34 The Vessels Go Home 31:09 The Prince They Called a Fiction 33:46 A Father's Prayer SOURCES The Bible (KJV): Daniel 1, 4, 5; 2 Kings 24–25; Jeremiah 27, 51; Isaiah 45; Ezra 1 Nabonidus Chronicle (ABC 7), trans. A. K. Grayson, Assyrian and Babylonian Chronicles (1975): https://www.livius.org/sources/conten... Cyrus Cylinder (British Museum 90920), trans. M. Cogan, The Context of Scripture II (2003): https://www.livius.org/sources/conten... Verse Account of Nabonidus, trans. A. L. Oppenheim, in J. B. Pritchard (ed.), Ancient Near Eastern Texts (ANET) Nabonidus Cylinders from Ur, trans. P.-A. Beaulieu: https://www.livius.org/sources/conten... P.-A. Beaulieu, The Reign of Nabonidus, King of Babylon 556–539 B.C. (1989) Prayer of Nabonidus (4Q242), Israel Museum; J. J. Collins, in Discoveries in the Judaean Desert XXII Herodotus, Histories 1.190–191 (trans. A. D. Godley) Xenophon, Cyropaedia 7.5 (trans. W. Miller) Berossus, in Josephus, Against Apion 1.150–153 (trans. W. Whiston) P. Briant, From Cyrus to Alexander (2002) C. L. Seow, Daniel (2003) A. Wolters, "Belshazzar's Feast and the Cult of the Moon God Sîn", Bulletin for Biblical Research 5 (1995) Which record do you think comes closest to that night? Tell us in the comments, and subscribe for a new Bible story every Thursday and Sunday. #Belshazzar #BookOfDaniel #BibleStories