section_path: Rise and military campaigns/Neo-Babylonian Empire
section_name: Neo-Babylonian Empire
paragraph_text: Neo-Babylonian Empire
  
  By the year 540 BC, Cyrus captured Elam and its capital, Susa. The Nabonidus Chronicle records that, prior to the battle(s), the king of the Neo-Babylonian Empire, Nabonidus, had ordered cult statues from outlying Babylonian cities to be brought into the capital, suggesting that the conflict had begun possibly in the winter of 540 BC. Just before October 539 BC, Cyrus fought the Battle of Opis in or near the strategic riverside city of Opis on the Tigris, north of Babylon. The Babylonian army was routed, and on 10 October, Sippar was seized without a battle, with little to no resistance from the populace. It is probable that Cyrus engaged in negotiations with the Babylonian generals to obtain a compromise on their part and therefore avoid an armed confrontation. Nabonidus, who had retreated to Sippar following his defeat at Opis, fled to Borsippa.
  
  Around 12 October, Persian general Gubaru 's troops entered Babylon, again without any resistance from the Babylonian armies, and detained Nabonidus. Herodotus explains that to accomplish this feat, the Persians, using a basin dug earlier by the Babylonian queen Nitokris to protect Babylon against Median attacks, diverted the Euphrates river into a canal so that the water level dropped "to the height of the middle of a man's thigh", which allowed the invading forces to march directly through the river bed to enter at night. Shortly thereafter, Nabonidus returned from Borsippa and surrendered to Cyrus. On 29 October, Cyrus entered the city of Babylon.
  
  Prior to Cyrus's invasion of Babylon, the Neo-Babylonian Empire had conquered many kingdoms. In addition to Babylonia, Cyrus probably incorporated its sub-national entities into his Empire, including Syria, Judea, and Arabia Petraea, although there is no direct evidence to support this assumption.
  
  After taking Babylon, Cyrus the Great proclaimed himself "king of Babylon, king of Sumer and Akkad, king of the four corners of the world" in the famous Cyrus Cylinder, an inscription on a cylinder that was deposited in the foundations of the Esagila temple dedicated to the chief Babylonian god, Marduk. The text of the cylinder denounces Nabonidus as impious and portrays the victorious Cyrus as pleasing the god Marduk. It describes how Cyrus had improved the lives of the citizens of Babylonia, repatriated displaced peoples, and restored temples and cult sanctuaries. Although some have asserted that the cylinder represents a form of human rights charter, historians generally portray it in the context of a long-standing Mesopotamian tradition of new rulers beginning their reigns with declarations of reforms.
  
  Cyrus the Great's dominions composed the largest empire the world had ever seen to that point. At the end of Cyrus's rule, the Achaemenid Empire stretched from Asia Minor in the west to the Indus River in the east.