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256 region by the Assyrians. Religiously, the Achaemean Per- sians apparently adopted a Sumerian-Akkadian pantheon akin to its Hurrian-Mitannian version, which was a step to the Indo-Aryan one of the Sanskrit Vedas—a mixture that is conveniently simplified by just stating that they believed in a God Most High whom they called Ahura-Mazda (‘Truth and Light”). In 560 B.c.£. the Achaemean king died and his son Kurash succeeded him on the throne and made his mark on subse- quent historic events. We call him Cyrus; the Bible called him Koresh and considered him Yahweh’s emissary for con- quering Babylon, overthrowing its king, and rebuilding the destroyed Temple in Jerusalem. “Though you knowest Me not, I, Yahweh, the God of Israel, am thy caller who hath called you by name ... who will help you though you don’t recognize me,” the biblical God stated through the prophet Isaiah (44: 28 to 45: 1-4). That end of Babylonian kingship was most dramatically foretold in the Book of Daniel. One of the Judean exiles taken to Babylon, Daniel was serving in the Babylonian court of Belshazzar when, during a royal banquet, a floating hand appeared and wrote on the wall MENE MENE TEKEL UP- HARSIN. Astounded and mystified, the king called his wiz- ards and seers to decipher the inscription, but none could. As a last resort, the exiled Daniel was called in, and he told the king the inscription’s meaning: God has weighed Babylon and its king and, finding them wanting, numbered their days; they will meet their end by the hand of the Persians. In 539 B.c.E. Cyrus crossed the Tigris River into Babylo- nian territory, advanced on Sippar where he intercepted a rushing-back Nabunaid, and then—claiming that Marduk himself had invited him—entered Babylon without a fight. Welcomed by the priests who considered him a savior from the heretic Nabunaid and his disliked son, Cyrus “grasped the hands of Marduk” as a sign of homage to the god. But he also, in one of his very first proclamations, rescinded the exile of the Judeans, permitted the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem, and ordered the return of all the Temple’s ritual objects that were looted by Nebuchadnezzar. THE END OF DAYS