Battle of Opis

Infobox Military Conflict
conflict=Battle of Opis
partof=the Wars of Cyrus the Great


caption=
date=September 26, 539 BC
place=Opis, Babylonia
result=Decisive Persian victory.
territory=Mesopotamia annexed by Persia.
combatant1=Neo-Babylonian Empire
combatant2=Achaemenid Empire
commander1=Nabonidus of Babylonia,
Belshazzar of Babylonia †?,
unknown others
commander2=Cyrus the Great,
Gubaru of Babylonia,
unknown others
strength1=Unknown
strength2=Light
(Xenophon)
casualties1=Unknown
casualties2=UnknownThe Battle of Opis, fought in September 539 BC, was the second and final engagement of the war between Cyrus the Great of Persia and Nabonidus of the Neo-Babylonian Empire. It followed an earlier battle on the Tigris said to have taken place some time in February 539 BC. The battle resulted in a decisive defeat for the Babylonians and led, a few weeks later, to Cyrus's unopposed entry into the city of Babylon and his proclamation as king of Babylonia.

Location

The site of the battle was near the city of Opis on the river Tigris, located about 50 miles (80 km) from modern Baghdad. The city is thought to have been a preferred point to cross the river, which presumably was shallower or narrower there than elsewhere.Oppenheim, A.L. "The Babylonian Evidence of Achaemenian Rule in Mesopotamia", in "The Cambridge History of Iran" vol. 2, p. 539. Ilya Gershevitch (ed). Cambridge University Press, 1993. ISBN 0521200911] By taking Opis, Cyrus broke through the Median Wall defensive line north of Babylon and opened the road to the capital.T. Cutler Young, Jr., "The rise of the Persians to imperial power under Cyrus the Great", in "The Cambridge Ancient History" vol. 4, p. 39. John Boardman (ed). Cambridge University Press, 1982. ISBN 0521228042]

Background

The motives

The battle

The main source of information on the battle is the "Nabonidus Chronicle", one of a series of clay tablets collectively known as the Babylonian Chronicles that record the history of ancient Babylonia. The full text of the Nabonidus Chronicle has been published in a number of translations in English, including by Oppenheim (1950)Oppenheim, A. Leo, in Pritchard, James B. "Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament". Princeton University Press, 1950] , Grayson (1975)Grayson, A.K. "Assyrian and Babylonian Chronicles". Locust Valley, NY:JJ Augustin, 1975. ISBN 0802053157] , Glassner (2004)Glassner, Jean-Jacques. "Mesopotamian Chronicles". Society of Biblical Literature, 2004. ISBN 1589830903] and Kuhrt (2007)Kuhrt, A. "The Persian Empire: A Corpus of Sources of the Achaemenid Period", pp. 48-51. Routledge, 2007. ISBN 0415436281] , and in French by Glassner (1993). [Glassner, Jean-Jacques. "Chroniques Mésopotamiennes". La roue á livres, Paris. 1993]

The tablet records that "in the month Tashritu [27 September-27 October] Cyrus did battle at Opis on the [bank of the] Tigris among the army of Akkad." Several versions of the continuation have been put forward. According to the most recently published translation, by Amélie Kuhrt (2007), "the people of Akkad retreated. He carried off the plunder (and) slaughtered the people" (which Kuhrt interprets as evidence that Cyrus carried out a massacre of the population of Opis). A similar translation is given in the standard translationDisputed-inline of the Babylonian Chronicles by Grayson (1975) and a later translation by Glassner (2004), both of whom interpret the passage as evidence of a Persian massacre. William G. Lambert (2007) disputes Grayson's translation and presents an alternative version of this line: "In Tishri when Cyrus did battle with the army of Akkad at Opis, on the [bank] of the Tigris. The soldiers of Akkad withdrew. He (Cyrus) took plunder and defeated the soldiers of (Akkad)", arguing that "The difficulty [with the accepted translation] is that after defeating the Babylonian army it appears that nothing more was done about that army, but instead the local town was looted and the population slaughtered. "Akkad" means "Babylonia," but while "the army of Akkad" is an appropriate designation for Nabonidus' troops, "the people of Akkad" should then mean "the people of Babylonia," which is absurd. There was no non-Babylonian population around Opis or Sippar. A solution which makes perfect sense is to take nišu in the common meaning "men" to refer to the Babylonian army. Cyrus did battle with the Babylonian army at Opis, that army retreated, Cyrus looted their camp, then he caught up with them and defeated them"William G Lambert, "Notes Brèves 14 - Cyrus defeat of Nabonidus", "Nouvelles Assyriologiques Brèves et Utilitaires" no. 1, 2007 (March)] An older translation by Oppenheim (1950) renders the line as "the inhabitants of Akkad revolted, but he massacred the confused inhabitants", but is unclear about who did the massacring. H.J. Katzenstein (1979) and Richard Nelson Frye (1984) present the same line but attribute the massacre to Nabonidus. [Richard Nelson Frye, "The History of Ancient Iran", C.H. Beck, 1984.] [H.J. Katzenstein, "Tyre in the early Persian period", "The Biblical Archaeologist", Vol. 42, No. 1 (Winter, 1979). [http://www.jstor.org/pss/3209545] ]

The chronicle goes on to state: "On the fourteenth day [6 October] Sippar was captured without battle. Nabonidus fled. On the sixteenth day [12 October] Ug/Gubaru, governor of Gutium, and the army of Cyrus without a battle entered Babylon. Afterwards, after Nabonidus returned, he was captured in Babylon."Kuhrt, Amélie. "Cyrus the Great of Persia: Images and Realities". "Representations of Political Power: Case Histories from Times of Change and Dissolving Order in the Ancient Near East", p. 185. Marlies Heinz, Marian H. Feldman (eds). Eisenbrauns, 2007. ISBN 157506135X]

The other primary ancient source for Cyrus's Babylonian campaign, Herodotus's "Histories", gives a completely different account. He does not mention the Battle of Opis and asserts that Cyrus subjected Babylon to a two-year siege, which only ended when the Persians diverted the course of the Euphrates to allow their army to enter the city through a floodgate. [David, Paul K. "100 Decisive Battles: From Ancient Times to the Present", p. 8. Oxford University Press US, 2001. ISBN 0195143663] However, this contradicts the accounts of the Babylonian and Persian sources, and scholars are in general agreement that Herodotus's account is an invention. [Campbell, Duncan B.; Hook, Adam. "Ancient Siege Warfare: Persians, Greeks, Carthaginians and Romans 546-146 BC", p. 9. Osprey Publishing, 2005. ISBN 1841767700] But other historians regard the second part of the account factual, while the first part contains a an earlier timeline, or as most agree Herodotus may have ment a two-week siege after Opis.Fact|date=October 2008

Aftermath

Historians are divided about whether the description of a massacre and looting in the accepted translation of the "Nabonidus Chronicle" refers to an attack on the city of OpisAmélie Kuhrt, "ibid" pp. 174-175.] or whether it refers to the fate of the main camp of Nabonidus' broken army, assuming that the Persians captured it intact. The battle and massacre are not mentioned from the later Cyrus cylinder inscription, which portrays Cyrus as liberating Babylon peacefully and with the consent of its people. Simon J. Sherwin comments that the battle at Opis "gives the lie to the idea of Cyrus as a benign liberator" and suggests that the aim of the reported massacre was "to terrorize the population" to intimidate Sippar and Babylon into surrendering without resistance.Sherwin, Simon J. "Old Testament monotheism and Zoroastrian influence" "The God of Israel: Studies of an Inimitable Deity", p. 123. Robert P. Gordon (ed). Cambridge University Press, 2007. ISBN 0521873657] Maria Brosius similarly interprets Cyrus's actions as punitive, "mak [ing] an example of a city trying to resist the Persian army". [Brosius, Maria. "The Persians", p. 11. Routledge, 2006. ISBN 0415320909.] Amélie Kuhrt comments that the reference to an apparent massacre and looting suggests that the battle was "probably a hard-won victory."Kurht, Amélie. "Usurpation, conquest and ceremonial: from Babylon to Persia." "Rituals of Royalty: Power and Ceremonial in Traditional Societies", p. 48. David Cannadine, Simon Price (eds). Cambridge University Press, 1992. ISBN 0521428912]

Although later inscriptions such as the Cyrus cylinder and the "Verse Account of Nabonidus" portrayed the Persian conquest of Babylonia as essentially peaceful, the battle demonstrates that the existing Babylonian regime actively resisted Cyrus's invasion of Mesopotamia. It was perhaps a sign of the divisions in the regime - Nabonidus was reputedly highly unpopular among the Babylonian elite - that some Babylonian subjects appear to have welcomed the Persians. It is, however, unclear how widely the Persians were supported within Babylonia, as accounts of the invasion and Nabonidus's rule are coloured by Cyrus's subsequent propaganda. [McIntosh, Jane. "Ancient Mesopotamia", pp. 113-14. ABC-CLIO, 2005. ISBN 1576079651] The account related in the "Chronicle" indicates that after the battle Cyrus halted at Opis, sending his general Gubaru with an army to invest Babylon. The king did not travel to the capital until well after it had been secured, some three weeks after the battle. Sherwin draws attention to Cyrus's non-participation in the taking of Babylon, suggesting that it demonstrates that Cyrus "was not expecting an easy victory".

References