Belshazzar in the Bible Encyclopedia - ISBE
bel-shaz'-ar (belsha'tstsar; Baltasar, Babylonian Bel-shar-
usur): According to Dan 5:30, he was the Chaldean king under
whom Babylon was taken by Darius the Mede. The Babylonian
monuments speak a number of times of a Bel-shar-usur who was
the "firstborn son, the offspring of the heart of" Nabunaid,
the last king of the Babylonian empire, that had been
founded by Nabopolassar, the father of Nebuchadnezzar, at
the time of the death of Ashurbanipal, king of Assyria, in
626 BC. There is no doubt that this Belshazzar is the same
as the Belshazzar of Dnl. It is not necessary to suppose
that Belshazzar was at any time king of the Babylonian
empire in the sense that Nebuchadnezzar and Nabunaid were.
It is probable, as M. Pognon argues, that a son of Nabunaid,
called Nabunaid after his father, was king of Babylon, or
Babylonian king, in Harran (Haran), while his father was
overlord in Babylon. This second Nabunaid is called "the son
of the offspring of the heart" of Nabunaid his father. It is
possible that this second Nabundid was the king who was
killed by Cyrus, when he crossed the Tigris above Arbela in
the 9th year of Nabunaid his father, and put to death the
king of the country (see the Nabunaid-Cyrus Chronicle col.
ii, 17); since according to the Eshki-Harran inscription,
Nabunaid the Second died in the 9th year of Nabunaid the
First...
Read More about Belshazzar in the Bible Encyclopedia - ISBE