THE ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING

OF THE

VICTORIA INSTITUTE

WAS HELD IN THE ROOMS OF THE INSTITUTE ON MONDAY, FEBRUARY 2ND, 1914, AT 4 O'CLOCK.

MR. DAVID HOWARD, Vice-President, took the Chair.

The Minutes of the last Annual General Meeting were read and confirmed.

The SECRETARY read the notice calling the Meeting, and the Report and Statement of Accounts presented by the Council, having been circulated among the Members present, were taken as read.

The Rev. A. M. NIBLOCK then proposed, Mr. R. D. RICHARDSON, of Winnipeg, seconded, and Mr. M. L. RoUSE supported, the following resolution:

"That the Report and Statement of Accounts for the year 1913 presented by the Council be received and adopted, and the Officers named therein be elected, and that the thanks of the Meeting be given to the Council, Officers and Auditors for their efficient conduct of the business of the Victoria Institute during the past year."

The resolution was carried unanimously, and the CHAIRMAN returned thanks to the Meeting on behalf of the Council, Officers and Auditors.

The Rev. JOHN TUCKWELL proposed a hearty vote of thanks, which was carried by acclamation, to Mr. Howard for presiding, and the CHAIRMAN having replied, the Meeting adjourned at 4.20 p.m.

548TH ORDINARY GENERAL MEETING.

HELD IN THE ROOMS OF THE INSTITUTE ON TUESDAY, DECEMBER 9TH, 1913, AT 4.30 P.M.

THE VERY REVEREND THE DEAN OF CANTERBURY OCCUPIED THE CHAIR UNTIL 5.30, WHEN LIEUT.-COLONEL G. MACKINLAY TOOK HIS PLACE.

The Minutes of the preceding Meeting were read and confirmed, and the elections were announced of the following Associates and Member-Miss Edith Grindley, Mr. Ivan Panin, Miss Selina F. Fox, M.D., B.S., Rev. W. J. Heaton, B.D., Mr. J. E. Solade-Solomon, Rev. G. H. Lancaster, M.A., F.R.A.S., Rev. W. H. Murray Walton, B.A., Miss Florence Wolsey, Mrs. Annie Scott Dill Maunder (Life), Mr. Robert Kerr, Mr. Wilfred St. George Grantham-Hill, M.D., Mr. W. H. Stanley Monck, M.A., Mr. John T. Burton (Member).

THE FALL OF BABYLON AND DANIEL V, 30. By Rev. ANDREW CRAIG ROBINSON, M.A., Donnellan Lecturer, Dublin University, 1912-13.

EFORE the archaeological discoveries of recent times the Book of Daniel had been, for probably over 2,000 years, the only extant evidence for the existence of Belshazzar. The Bible was in regard to this matter a single witness, unsupported by any evidence outside itself, and it was open to any rationalist who chose to reject the evidence of the Bible to assert that such a person as Belshazzar never existed, but was merely a creation of the imaginative fancy of the writer of the Book of Daniel. All that, however, is now changed, and by the discovery of the contemporary inscriptions of the Age of Cyrus the reality of the existence of Belshazzar as a personage of history is placed beyond the power of scepticism to deny.

When Cyrus in his career of conquest in Western Asia marched against the Babylonian Kingdom the name of the Babylonian king was Nabonidus-called by the Greeks Labynetos-and he was in the seventeenth year of his reign. Belshazzar was his son, and was probably associated with his father in the kingly power. His name very frequently appears in the inscriptions as "the son of the king"; and he would seem to have been dearly loved by his father, who in one of his inscriptions offers up an earnest prayer to his god for the

welfare of Belshazzar and calls him "his eldest son the offspring of his heart." The Annalistic Tablet, one of the principal inscriptions of this period, for several successive years records that "the king's son and the nobles were with the army in Accad" (Northern Babylonia). To these nobles, with whom he was thus so intimately associated in the army for many years, Belshazzar perhaps gave that memorable banquet in Babylon recorded in the 5th Chapter of the Book of Daniel, “ Belshazzar the King made a great feast to a thousand of his lords and drank wine before the thousand' -a banquet to the chiefs of the army. Several contract tablets record business transactions of "Belshazzar the son of the king" (Records of the Past, New Series, vol. iii, pp. 125–127), and there are records also of his offerings to the temples of the gods. The Annalistic Tablet, as we have seen, informs us that for several years in succession Belshazzar was in command of the army in Northern Babylonia, whilst his father, Nabonidus, remained in Babylon. Subsequently he and his father would appear to have exchanged places-his father taking command of the forces in the field, and suffering a signal defeat from the army of Cyrus-whilst Belshazzar remained in Babylon, where, the Book of Daniel tells us, he was holding a brilliant banquet to his lords on the night that the city fell. "On that night," says the Book of Daniel, “was Belshazzar the King of the Chaldeans slain."

But it has now come to be treated as if it were a commonplace of history, and one of the "assured results" of modern criticism that these words in the Book of Daniel, and the general account of the fall of Babylon which has come down to us in the writings of the classical historians, are contradicted by the inscriptions.

How has this impression been created?

The general account of the Fall of Babylon which has come down to us from antiquity may be put in this way:-The classical authorities say, that the Babylonians after one encounter with the troops of Cyrus, in which they were worsted, retired within the walls of Babylon which seemed to be impregnable, and within which there had been stored up provisions for many years. Cyrus then invested Babylon. He commanded his soldiers to dig deep trenches surrounding the city, as if he were throwing up lines of circumvallation, but contrived that these trenches should be dug in such a way that at a inoment's notice the waters of the River Euphrates could be turned into them, and the depth of the river so much reduced in that part where it flowed through the city, that his soldiers

should be able to advance through the water and enter the city by the river gates. The Babylonians, secure within the walls of Babylon, "took no heed," Herodotus says, "of the siege". whilst Xenophon says, "They laughed at the Persians, and turned them into ridicule," so the work of digging the trenches went on without any attempt on the part of the besieged to interfere with it;-and the siege was consequently carried on "without fighting." This bloodless character of the siege—as described by the classical writers-is an important point to note.

And Herodotus says, that when Cyrus had set these things in order, he himself went away with the inefficient part of his army, and employed it in diverting the river at another point into a marshy lake. This absence of Cyrus from the principal scene of operations is another point to be particularly noted.

But when the trenches were dug, Xenophon relates, Cyrus selected a night on which he heard there was to be some great feast held in Babylon, and as soon as darkness fell, taking a number of his troops, he caused the trenches to be opened, the water from the Euphrates poured into them, and soon the river became shallower. Then Cyrus commanded two of his most trusted officers, Gôbryas and Gadatas, to lead the troops up the river, now rendered shallow at its banks, and to enter the city by the river gates.

It was a night of festival in Babylon, the streets were full of revellers. The soldiers of Gôbryas, assuming the guise of revellers themselves, mingled in the crowd-pressed on to the palace-burst in through the guards at the palace gates-and reached the hall where the King was. They found him, when they entered, standing up sword in hand-but he was soon overpowered by numbers, and fell slain by the soldiers of Gôbryas. Such would appear to have been Belshazzar's tragic end.

Cyrus instantly sent cavalry through the city, and caused it to be proclaimed that, on pain of death, none of the Babylonians should leave their houses. Next morning all arms and the towers of the city were surrendered; Cyrus held a great reception, at which the Babylonians, Xenophon says, attended in unmanageable numbers-and thus, almost without fighting or bloodshed, Babylon was his. The Cyrus Cylinder, one of the principal inscriptions of that time, in remarkable agreement with this says, "The men of Babylon, all of them, and the whole of Sumer and Accad, the nobles and the high priest, bowed themselves beneath him, they kissed his feet, they

rejoiced at his sovereignty, their countenances shone-and when the same inscription says, that "without fighting and battle (Merodach) caused him to enter into Babylon," this is in reality not a contradiction of the classical account, but a confirmation of it, because that account represents Babylon as having been taken practically without fighting, since the siege was conducted without any attempt on the part of the Babylonians to oppose it-and on the night in which the city was captured only Belshazzar and those immediately around him were slain.

This would seem to be clearly the case-yet Professor Sayce, strange to say, took up the idea-which he put forward, first in his edition of Herodotus, published in 1883, and afterwards in his celebrated book, The Higher Criticism and the Monuments (1894), that the classical account of the Fall of Babylon, and the 5th chapter of Daniel, verse 30-which seemed to agree with it were contradicted by the account of that event implied by the inscriptions-the special point being, that the classical account related how there was a siege of Babylon lasting for some months-whereas the cuneiform inscriptions declare that the city fell" without fighting."

Professor Sayce wrote

6

"There was no siege and capture of Babylon; the capital of the Babylonian Empire opened its gates to his general, as Sippara had done before. Gôbryas and his soldiers entered the city without fighting.' Three months later Cyrus himself arrived, and made his peaceful entry into the new capital of his empire. We gather from the contract tablets that even the ordinary business of the place had not been affected by the war."-Higher Criticism and the Monuments, p. 522.

And in a note on the same page he adds—

"Even after the entry of Gôbryas into Babylon on the 16th of Tammuz, the contracts made there and at Sippara continued to be dated in the reign of Nabonidos."

And then he gives the dates of certain tablets, published by Dr. Strassmaier, which shall be referred to presently. He adds

"It is clear that the transference of power from Nabonidos to Cyrus must have been a peaceful one, so far as the commercial community was concerned."

And he writes, p. 527—

"It is clear that the editor of the fifth chapter of the Book of Daniel could have been as little a contemporary of the events which he professes to record, as Herodotus."