Battle of Opis
| Battle of Opis | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part of the Campaigns of Cyrus the Great | |||||||||
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| Belligerents | |||||||||
| Neo-Babylonian Empire | Achaemenid Empire | ||||||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||||||
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Nabonidus of Babylonia, Belshazzar † |
Cyrus the Great, Gobryas of Gutium, Pantea Arteshbod, Aryasb unknown others |
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| Casualties and losses | |||||||||
| Heavy? | Unknown | ||||||||
The Battle of Opis, fought in September 539 BC, was a major engagement between the armies of Persia under Cyrus the Great and the Neo-Babylonian Empire under Nabonidus during the Persian invasion of Mesopotamia. At the time, Babylonia was the last major power in western Asia that was not yet under Persian control. The battle was fought in or near the strategic riverside city of Opis, north of the capital Babylon. It resulted in a decisive victory for the Persians. A few days later, the city of Sippar surrendered to the Persians and Cyrus's forces entered Babylon apparently without a fight. Cyrus was subsequently proclaimed king of Babylonia and its subject territories, thus ending the independence of Babylon and incorporating the Babylonian Empire into the greater Persian Empire.
The site of the battle was at the city of Opis on the river Tigris, located about 50 miles (80 km) north of modern Baghdad. The city is thought to have been a preferred point to cross the river; Xenophon describes a bridge there. The timing of the invasion may have been determined by the ebb of the Mesopotamian rivers, which are at their lowest levels – and therefore are easiest to cross – in the early autumn.
Opis was a place of considerable strategic importance; apart from the river crossing, it was at one end of the Median Wall, a fortified defensive barrier north of Babylon that had been built several decades earlier by Nebuchadnezzar II. Control of Opis would have enabled Cyrus to break through the Median Wall and open the road to the capital.
The main contemporary source of information on Cyrus's Mesopotamian campaign of 539 BC is the Nabonidus Chronicle, one of a series of clay tablets collectively known as the Babylonian Chronicles that record the history of ancient Babylonia. Some additional detail is provided by one of the few documents to have survived from Cyrus's lifetime, the Cyrus Cylinder. Further information on Cyrus's campaign is provided by the later ancient Greek writers Herodotus and Xenophon, though neither mention the battle at Opis and their accounts of the campaign differ considerably from the Persian and Babylonian sources. Most scholars prefer to use the Nabonidus Chronicle as the main source on the battle, as it is a contemporaneous source.
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