Jerusalem. The Biography

from between his daughter’s fecund thighs until it overshadowed him – a sexual-political version of Jack and the Beanstalk. Astyges ordered his commander Harpagus to murder little Cyrus, but the boy was hidden with a shepherd. When Astyges discovered that Cyrus was not dead, he butchered and cooked Harpagus’ son and served him to his father as a stew. It was not a meal that Harpagus would easily forget or forgive.
    On the death of his father in about 559 BC , Cyrus returned and seized his kingdom. Astyges’ pungent dreams, as recounted by the Greek historian Herodotus, who liked to believe all Persian business was decided with the help of sexual or urinary auguries, came true: Cyrus, backed by Harpagus, defeated his grandfather, uniting the Medes and Persians. Leaving Belshazzar’s Babylon to the south, Cyrus confronted another potentate, Croesus, wealthy King of Lydia in western Turkey. Cyrus force-marched his cameleer army to surprise Croesus in his capital. The Lydian horses bolted when they detected the smell of charging camels. Then Cyrus turned on Babylon.
    Nebuchadnezzar’s blue-glazed metropolis opened its gates to Cyrus, who shrewdly paid homage to Bel-Marduk, the neglected Babylonian god. The fall of Babylon elated the Jewish exiles: ‘For the Lord hath done it; shout … break forth into singing, ye mountains, O forest, and every tree therein; for the Lord hath redeemed Jacob, and glorified himself in Israel.’ Cyrus inherited the Babylonian empire, including Jerusalem:‘every king on earth’, he said, ‘brought me heavy tribute and kissed my feet when I sat in Babylon’.
    Cyrus had a fresh vision of empire. While the Assyrians and Babylonians built empires on slaughter and deportation, Cyrus offered religious tolerance in return for political dominance to ‘unite peoples into one empire’. *
    Soon after, the King of Persia issued a decree that must have astonished the Jews: The Lord God hath given me all the kingdoms of the earth and he hath charged me to build him a house at Jerusalem. Who is there among you of all his people? Let him go up to Jerusalem and build the house of the Lord God of Israel.’
    Not only was he sending the Judaean exiles home, and guaranteeing their rights and laws – the first ruler ever to do so – but he returned Jerusalem to them and offered to rebuild the Temple. Cyrus appointed Sheshbazzar, son of the last king, to govern Jerusalem, returning to him the Temple vessels. No wonder a Judaean prophet hailed Cyrus as the Messiah. ‘He is my shepherd, and shall perform all my pleasure: even saying to Jerusalem, Thou shalt be built; and to the temple, Thy foundation shall be laid.’
    Sheshbazzar led 42,360 exiles back to Jerusalem in the province of Yehud – Judah. † The city was a wasteland after the magnificence of Babylon, but ‘Awake, awake, put on thy strength, O Zion.’ wrote Isaiah, ‘put on thy beautiful garments, O Jerusalem, the holy city … Shake thyself from the dust … O captive daughter of Zion.’ However, the plansof Cyrus and the returning exiles were obstructed by the locals who had remained in Judaea and particularly Samaria.
    Just nine years after the return from exile, Cyrus, still in his prime, was killed in battle in Central Asia. It was said that his victorious enemy dropped his head into a blood-filled wineskin to satiate his greedy thirst for the lands of others. His heir redeemed his body and buried him in a golden sarcophagus at Pasargadae (in southern Iran) where his tomb still stands. ‘He eclipsed all other monarchs, before him and since,’ wrote the Greek soldier Xenophon. Jerusalem had lost her protector. 22
    DARIUS AND ZERUBBABEL: THE NEW TEMPLE
     
    The fate of Cyrus’ empire, already larger than anything that had gone before, was decided close to Jerusalem. Cyrus’ son Cambyses II – Kambujiya – succeeded to the throne and in 525 marched through Gaza and across Sinai to conquer Egypt. Far away in Persia, his brother rebelled. On his way home to save his throne, Cambyses died mysteriously near Gaza; there, seven noble conspirators met on horseback to plan the seizure of the empire. They had not decided who would be their candidate, so they agreed that ‘the one whose horse was first to neigh after dawn should have the throne’. The horse of Darius, a young scion of one of the noble clans and Cambyses’ lance-bearer, was the first to neigh. Herodotus claimed that Darius cheated by ordering his groom to dip