The biblical Book of Daniel contains the account of the long life of this prophet. And the last chapters, before his death, are devoted to prophecies relating to the messianic times of the ultimate redemption. This part of the text begins with the following assertion:
In the first year of Darius the son of Ahasuerus, of the seed of the Medes (=Persians), who was made king over the realm of the Chaldeans (=Babylon); in the first year of his reign, I Daniel meditated in the books, over the number of the years, whereof the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah the prophet, that He would accomplish for the desolations of Jerusalem seventy years. (Daniel 9:1-2)
This text places in the time, of the Persian chronology, Daniel's meditation on the said prophecies. Let's look at the continuation of the historical and biblical chronologies (for earlier dates, refer to previous articles since Adam):
year 3155 (605 BCE): Nebuchadnezzar enters Judea and takes Jerusalem
year 3155 (605 BCE): Nebuchadnezzar takes to Babylon part of the Judean intelligentsia including Daniel; Nebuchadnezzar becomes king of Babylon
year 3158 (602 BCE): Jehoiakim, king of Judea, breaks his allegiance to Nebuchadnezzar
year 3163 (597 BCE): Nebuchadnezzar besieges Jerusalem and appoints Zedekiah to the throne of Judea
year 3167 (593 BCE): Ezekiel prophesies about the messianic times
(539 BCE): fall of Babylon and death of Belshazzar
(539 BCE): Edict of Cyrus the Great
(537 BCE): return to Zion (i.e. Jerusalem) of a first wave of Judeans
(530 BCE): death of Cyrus the Great; his son Cambyses II reigns
(522 BCE): death of Cambyses; Darius I, son-in-law of Cyrus, reigns
year 3238 (522 BCE): Daniel consults the Jewish scriptures about the prophecies
year 3239 (521 BCE): death of the prophet Daniel in Babylon
(486 BCE): death of Darius I
We must first find out which Darius, son of Ahasuerus, is being referred to. According to the chronology of reigns in Persia, Cyrus the Great began the Achaemenid dynasty. Later on, Darius I, known as the Great, was the father of Xerxes, who was the Ahasuerus of the biblical book of Esther. The lineage was: Cyrus > Cambyses II, then Darius I > Xerxes I.
First remark: the "name" Ahasuerus is not a name strictly speaking but a title, similar to Pharaoh for Egypt. Indeed, the word Ahasuerus is formed from the same word as "satrap": in the Book of Daniel: Ahasuerus is written אֲחַשְׁוֵרוֹשׁ in Daniel 9:1 while the word "satrap", or rather the function "satrapy", is written אֲחַשְׁדַּרְפְּנַיָּא in Daniel 6:2, and elsewhere. In fact, in the word Ahasuerus, the prefix Ahas- which is אֲחַשְׁ in Hebrew and Aramaic is the prefix of the word "Achaemenid", which in Persian corresponds to Achae or Axa. As for the suffix of the word Ahasuerus, which is רוֹשׁ in Hebrew and Aramaic, it simply means "head" (which translates to Rosh in Hebrew, Ras in Arabic). Thus, we can understand that the name Ahasuerus is rather a generic title that the Bible uses, as it uses Pharaoh, which means "head of the satrapies" or "Achaemenid head", therefore the supreme ruler of the Achaemenid Persian empire.
This Ahasuerus of Daniel 9:1 was therefore Darius I who was the son-in-law of Cyrus the Great, because he was married to Cyrus' daughter Atossa, and who had first reigned in Babylon (the Chaldeans in the text of Daniel). It was in Babylon that Darius I met Daniel, who was already old but still alive.
After this complex but necessary preamble to situate Daniel's meditations, we come to what the prophet explained: he read from the scriptures the past prophecies of Jeremiah to understand the 70 years of exile imposed by God. This supposes that the Jewish scriptures, seized by Nebuchadnezzar at the Temple of Solomon during his conquest of Jerusalem, had been taken to Babylon and stored there.
Is there any historical source on this point? Yes, this detail was confirmed by the Chaldean priest and historian Berossus who lived at the time of the capture of Babylon by Alexander the Great around 331 BCE. He wrote a history of Babylon, and in the first book he gives the following detail:
And he [Berossus] mentions that there were written records, preserved in Babylon with the greatest care, comprising a period of more than fifteen myriad of years, and that these records contained stories of the sky and the sea, of the birth of mankind, of kings and of the memorable deeds which they had performed. (Cory, Isaac Preston, Ancient Fragments, London, 1832, chapter Berossus)
It is likely that Alexander the Great had thus seen the Babylonian Chronicles on clay tablets, fragments of which are today in the British Museum. But there was more than that in the royal library of Babylon. Other fragments, concerning the Creation story, have been found by archaeologists:
This Belus [the chief god of Babylon], by which they mean Jupiter, divided the darkness and separated the heavens and the earth, and reduced the universe to order. (ibid.)
Now this account of the Flood is strikingly like the biblical account of Genesis, with the ark, the animals to be preserved, the birds sent to check the water level after the rain stopped, and the fact that the bird did not return to the ark the third time it was sent. Berossus also indicated that the stopping place of the ark was on the side of a mountain in the land of Armenia (the Bible tells us that it was Mount Ararat). Berossus also detailed the story of the Tower of Babel, as found in the Book of Genesis, with a direct reference to Hebrew sources in the following excerpt:
And the gods introduced a diversity of languages among men, who hitherto all spoke one language. […]. The place where they built the tower is today called Babylon, because of the confusion of languages; for the confusion is called Babel by the Hebrews. (ibid.)
Archaeologists have not found the originals that gave such precise details, but historically their existence and content has been mentioned in writings dating back to Alexander the Great! And it seems to me that this source of Berossus must have been the biblical account itself of the Flood and the Tower of Babel because the Babylonian Chronicles are not as precise on these narratives. So, without a doubt, these were the scriptures, the biblical texts stored in Babylon, which Daniel himself had consulted long before the arrival of Alexander the Great.
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Albert Benhamou
Private tour guide in Israel
March 2025
