BELSHAZ'ZAR (Babylon. Bel Shar-tour, 0 Bel, protect the king; from Aar, lord, king ± veer, to protect). Aceording to the Book of Daniel (chap. v.), the son and successor of Neb uchadnezzar, and the last King of Babylon, who was slain, the Empire passing into the hands of Darius, the Mede. He is warned of his down by a mysterious handwriting that appears on the wall of his palace. se who accept the results of the modern biblical criticism assert that the Book of Daniel was composed in the Second Cen tury we. This being granted, then it is hardly astonishing that in a composition made several centuries after the fall of Babylonia historical events should have become confused in the mind of a writer who merely introduces Babylonian personages as a disguise, and is interested, not in Babylonian but in Hebrew events. As a mat ter of fact, the last King of Babylonia was Na bonidus, in the seventeenth year of whose reign (B.c. 53S) Babylon was taken by Cyrus. The inscriptions of Nabonidus, however, make men tion of a son, Bel-shar-usur, and this name also occurs as that of the son of Nabonidus in several contract tablets, and since, in an inscription of Cyrus, 'a son of the King' is spoken of as in control of the army in northern Babylonia, it is reasonable to conclude that Bel-shar-usur was associated with his father in the government.
Thus the tradition could arise which would make him the actual last King of Babylonia. The association of Belshazzar with Nebuchadnezzar rests upon a further confusion which can be eas ily accounted for, if it be borne in mind that a Jewish writer of the Second Century B.C. would not be at great pains to distinguish one Baby lonian king from another. Nebuchadnezzar, as the destroyer of Jerusalem, was •the chief repre sentative, in the eyes of a Jewish writer, of the Neo-Babylonian monarchy, and so appears throughout the Book of Daniel.