page_title: Ahasuerus
section_title: Book of Daniel
hierarchical_section_title: Ahasuerus / Biblical references / Book of Daniel
context_page_description: Ahasuerus is a name applied in the Hebrew Bible to three rulers and to a Babylonian official in the Book of Tobit.
context_section_description: Ahasuerus is given as the name of the father of Darius the Mede in the Book of Daniel.  Josephus names Astyages as the father of Darius the Mede, and the description of the latter as uncle and father-in-law of Cyrus by mediaeval Jewish commentators matches that of Cyaxares II, who is said to be the son of Astyages by Xenophon. Thus this Ahasuerus is commonly identified with Astyages. He is alternatively identified, together with the Ahasuerus of the Book of Tobit, as Cyaxares I, said to be the father of Astyages. Views differ on how to reconcile the sources in this case. One view is that the description of Ahasuerus as the "father" of Darius the Mede should be understood in the broader sense of "forebear" or "ancestor." Another view notes that on the Behistun Inscription, "Cyaxares" is a family name, and thus considers the description as literal, viewing Astyages as an intermediate ruler wrongly placed in the family line in the Greek sources.
  Most scholars view Darius the Mede as a literary fiction, or possibly a conflation of Darius the Great with prophecies about the Medes.
caption: Esther before Ahasuerus, Artemisia Gentileschi, c. 1630
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