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Concept
Battle of Opis
Résumé
The Battle of Opis was the last major military engagement between the Achaemenid Persian Empire and the Neo-Babylonian Empire, which took place in September 539 BC, 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, located north of the capital city of Babylon in modern-day Iraq, and resulted in a decisive victory for Persia. Shortly afterwards, the Babylonian city of Sippar surrendered to Persian forces, who then supposedly entered Babylon without facing any further resistance. The Persian king Cyrus the Great was subsequently proclaimed as the king of Babylonia and its subject territories, thus ending its independence and incorporating the entirety of the fallen Neo-Babylonian Empire into the greater Achaemenid Empire.
The battle took place in and around Opis, an ancient city situated on the Tigris River and located about north of Baghdad in modern-day Iraq. The city is thought to have been a preferred point to cross the Tigris; the classical Greek philosopher Xenophon describes a bridge at this point. The timing of the Persian invasion may have been determined by the ebb of the Mesopotamian rivers, which are at their lowest levels—and therefore easier to cross—in 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 the ancient city of Babylon that had been built several decades earlier by the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II. Control of Opis would have enabled the Persians to break through the Median Wall and open the road to the Babylonian 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.
Source officielle
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