# Talk:Nebuchadnezzar III

March 16, 1946
March 16, 1946  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 180.149.27.215 (talk) 13:58, 30 March 2015 (UTC) 

This review is transcluded from Talk:Nebuchadnezzar III/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.
Reviewer: Hog Farm (talk · contribs) 15:26, 18 August 2020 (UTC)

Extremely little to pick on here.
"After this defeat, Nebuchadnezzar III fled to Babylon which was quickly besieged and captured by Darius, whereafter Nebuchadnezzar III was executed" - Lead states there was a siege, the later prose in "Darius then quickly[17] seized Babylon and Nebuchadnezzar was captured and executed" doesn't mention a siege.
There probably was a brief siege, but Darius must have seized Babylon pretty quickly since Neb III fled to the city on 18 December and Darius was recognized as king at the latest on 22 December. I've removed "besieged and" from the lead so that it now reads "... Babylon which was quickly captured ...". Ichthyovenator (talk) 19:02, 18 August 2020 (UTC)
Link cavalry
Done. Ichthyovenator (talk) 19:02, 18 August 2020 (UTC)
I'm assuming this is unknown, but was Nidintu-Bel a priest or some such order?
Yeah, we have no idea; the Babylonians believed that he was the son of their late king Nabonidus (so did not write of his actual origin) and the Persians probably did not care enough about his background to note it down. He could have been a priest but he might just as well have been some other form of authority figure, such as a general or governor. I couldn't find any sources discussing his origin other than his birth name and the name of his actual father. Ichthyovenator (talk) 19:02, 18 August 2020 (UTC)
"The final document referencing Bardiya at Babylon is dated to 20 September. " - Implies there is more than two.  Is there anything relevant in the other ones (again, assuming probably not)
I've rephrased this a bit but these documents are just random letters and stuff - the Babylonians wrote down dates as the year, month and day of the current king (for instance "Bardiya, year 1, month 4, day 12") so their contents (while interesting in their own right) are typically unrelated to whatever goes on at the geopolitical stage. The relevance here is just that it gives a date shortly before Nebuchadnezzar III's rise when we know Bardiya was recognised as king by the Babylonians. Ichthyovenator (talk) 19:02, 18 August 2020 (UTC)
Do the sources give anything about the significance of the name?  I'm assuming it builds off of the name and power of Nebuchadnezzar II.
Yeah, the name 100 % comes from Nebuchadnezzar II. It wasn't a common name in Babylonia (Nebuchadnezzar I ruled 500 years before Nebuchadnezzar II) and Nebuchadnezzar II was in the eyes of the Babylonians the greatest king they ever had. None of the sources I've found explicitly say this, so I can't add it to the article, but it has to be the case, yes. Ichthyovenator (talk) 19:02, 18 August 2020 (UTC)
Not much to nag about, mostly queries that I don't anticipate having answers other than "this information did not survive to the modern era".  Good work, how many of the Babylonian rulers have you made it through? Hog Farm  Bacon 15:57, 18 August 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for reviewing! Yeah, not much survives of Neb III. We know that the Babylonians clearly thought he was a big deal since Neb IV emulated him a year later and Nidin-Bel might have done the same two centuries later, but what can you do. I've only done a few Babylonians so far, mostly interesting but largely unknown figures, but I did the big Assyrian rulers – Sargon II, Sennacherib, Esarhaddon and Ashurbanipal – and I hope to eventually get to the big Babylonians (Nebuchadnezzar II, for example) :) Ichthyovenator (talk) 19:02, 18 August 2020 (UTC)

That 'Bardiya' was actually an impostor named Gaumata is the "official" version created by Darius. This seems indeed to have been accepted quite uncritically in antiquity. But as far as I am aware many (most?) modern authors tend to treat this version of events as complete bogus and to believe that Bardiya was indeed Bardiya.
Anyway, the author that was cited for the claim that Bardiya is "widely assumed to have been an impostor" actually writes the contrary on p. 198: 

I hold the opinion, for various reasons that I do not want to list here, that Bardiya/ Gaumata was Cambyses’ brother who was killed by Darius and his fellow-conspirators (https://www.academia.edu/4379300/Medes_Scythians_and_Persians_The_Rise_of_Darius_in_a_North_South_Perspective).
The editor of the article seems to have been confused by another person who (according to Darius?) claimed to be Bardiya. Vogelsang writes on p.202 

Vahyazdata claimed to be the real Bardiya, the son of Cyrus (DB, paragraphs 40-48). Leaving aside the unlikely possibility that he really was Cyrus’ son, it may safely be assumed that he adopted Bardiya’s name in order to support his imperial claims..
So Vogelsang claims that Bardiya/Gaumata (the predecessor of Darius) was actually Bardiya, while Bardiya/Vahyazdata (some Persian noble who rebelled against Darius) was actually an impostor. Given that Vahyazdata does not seem relevant here and that the claim that Bardiya was an impostor is widely considered doubtful today, I have removed the phrase. Yaan (talk) 00:39, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

On further reading, another sentence on Vogelsang p.202 may imply that Bardiya was widely seen as an impostor towards the end of his reign or after the end of his reign.
In other words, at that time it must have been widely accepted, at least in the area where Vahyazdata started his rebellion, that King Bardiya/ Gaumata was (or had been) an impersonator. This means that some time before the start of Vahyazdata’s rebellion rumours must have circulated saying that the King was not the man he proclaimed to be. In view of the military activities of Vahyazdata (see above), it seems highly likely that these rumours were spread while King Bardiya was still alive.
So it might be possible to put something like "widely assumed to have been an impostor at that time" back into the article if someone thinks that is important. Yaan (talk) 00:46, 15 October 2020 (UTC)
Yep, most scholars these days agree that Bardiya was not an impostor, and that Darius was ironically the real usurper in this event. --HistoryofIran (talk) 00:55, 15 October 2020 (UTC)