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The 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 at the city of Opis on the river Tigris, located about 50 miles (80 km) north of modern Baghdad. The city is thought to have been a preferred point to cross the river; Xenophon describes a bridge there.^[1][2] It is unclear whether the battle was fought within the city or in front of its walls. By taking Opis, Cyrus broke through the Median Wall, the defensive line north of Babylon, and opened the road to the capital.^[3]

Background

At the time of the Battle of Opis, Persia was the leading power in the Near East. Its power had grown enormously under its king, Cyrus II, who had conquered a huge swathe of territory to create an empire that covered an area corresponding to the modern countries of Turkey, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Iran, Kyrgyzstan and Afghanistan. The only remaining significant unconquered power in the Near East was the Neo-Babylonian Empire, which controlled Mesopotamia and subject kingdoms such as Syria and Judea. It had been closely linked with Cyrus's enemies elsewhere, having been a formal ally of Croesus of Lydia, whose kingdom had been overrun by the Persians a few years earlier.^[4]

By the time of the battle, Babylonia was in an unpromising geopolitical situation; the Persian empire bordered it to the north, east and west. It had also been suffering severe inflation exacerbated by plague and famine, and its king Nabonidus was unpopular among many of his subjects for his unconventional religious policies. ^[5] Cyrus may have been able to take advantage of these weaknesses by a combination of military measures, bribery and propaganda that depicted him as a lenient and tolerant ruler. ^[6] On the other hand, Max Von Mallowan notes: "Religious toleration was a remarkable feature of Persian rule and there is no question that Cyrus himself was a liberal-minded promoter of this humane and intelligent policy," and such "propaganda" was in effect a means of permitting his reputation to proceed his military campaign. ^[7] According to Xenophon, Cyrus was able to persuade a Babylonian provincial governor named Gobryas (and a supposed Gadates) to defect to his side. The territory he governed, Gutium, was a frontier region of considerable size and strategic importance, and (again according to Xenophon) Gobryas went on to play a major role in helping Cyrus to launch the invasion and take Babylon.^[4]

The main source of information on the battle and the events immediately before and after 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)^[1], Grayson (1975)^[8], Brosius (2000)^[9], Glassner (2004)^[10] and Kuhrt (2007)^[11]. Further information on Cyrus's campaign is provided by the considerably later ancient Greek writers Herodotus and Xenophon, though neither mention the battle at Opis.

Although much of the Nabonidus Chronicle is fragmentary, the section relating to the last year of Nabonidus's reign - 539 BC - is mostly intact. It provides very little information about what Cyrus was doing in the years preceding the battle. The chronicler only occasionally records Persian activity and does not provide much detail other than a bare outline of events. There is no information at all for the period 547-539. Almost all of the chronicle's text for this period is a lacuna. The chronicle records that prior to the battle, Nabonidus had ordered cult statues from outlying Babylonian cities to be brought into the capital, suggesting that the war had begun possibly in 540 BC; there are possible references to hostile action in the Uruk region in the winter of 540-539, and a possible reference to Persia.^[12] The Battle of Opis was thus probably only the final stage in an ongoing series of hostilities between the two empires.^[4]

The battle

The Nabonidus Chronicle 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).^[11] A similar translation is given in the standard translation^{[disputed – discuss]} of the Babylonian Chronicles by Grayson (1975)^[8] and a later translation by Glassner (2004)^[10], 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"^[13] 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.^[1] H.J. Katzenstein (1979) and Richard Nelson Frye (1984) present the same line but attribute the massacre to Nabonidus.^[14][15]

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."^[16]

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.^[17] However, this contradicts the accounts of the Babylonian and Persian sources, and scholars are in general agreement that Herodotus's account is an invention.^[18] 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 (based on his accurate description of Babylon) may have ment a two-week siege after Opis, which then Cyrus entered the city peacefully.^[19]

Aftermath

Template:Totally-disputed-section 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 Opis^[20] or whether it refers to the fate of the main camp of Nabonidus' broken army, assuming that the Persians captured it intact.^[3] 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.^[21] Maria Brosius similarly interprets Cyrus's actions as punitive, "mak[ing] an example of a city trying to resist the Persian army".^[22] Amélie Kuhrt comments that the reference to an apparent massacre and looting suggests that the battle was "probably a hard-won victory."^[23]

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.^[24] 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.^[20] 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".^[21]

References