Page Content (OCR)
257 The returning exiles, under the leadership of Ezra and Nehemiah, completed the rebuilding of the Temple—hence- forth known as the Second Temple—in 516 B.c.E.—exactly, as was prophesied by Jeremiah, seventy years after the First Temple was destroyed. The Bible considered Cyrus an in- strument of God’s plans, an “anointed of Yahweh”; historians believe that Cyrus proclaimed a general religious amnesty that allowed each people to worship as they pleased. As to what Cyrus himself might have believed, to judge by the monument he had erected for himself, he appears to have envisioned himself as a winged Cherub (Fig. 120). Cyrus—some historians attach the epithet “the great” to his name—consolidated into a vast Persian empire all the lands that had once been Sumer & Akkad, Mari and Mittani, Hatti and Elam, Babylonia and Assyria; it was left to his son Cambyses (530-522 B.C.E.) to extend the empire to Egypt. Egypt was just recovering from a period of disarray that some consider a Third Intermediate Period, during which it was disunited, changed capitals several times, was ruled by invaders from Nubia, or had no central authority at all. Egypt The End of Days FIGURE 120