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The Tigris

The eastern river of Mesopotamia, where Darius beat Nidintu-Bel, 522 BCE

The Tigris is the eastern of the two great rivers of Mesopotamia, flowing from Armenia past Nineveh and Opis to the sea. In December 522 Nidintu-Bel's Babylonians held its bank against Darius from boats, and Darius crossed and beat them. The Royal Road crossed it on the way from Sardis to Susa.

In the game: The Tigris is named in the Bagastana level's Chronicle, chatter and the rebels' field, as the river where Darius beat the first false Nebuchadnezzar.

The battle on the river

In the record

Darius says Nidintu-Bel's army held the Tigris and had boats there. He put his army on floats of skins, on camels and on horses, crossed, and won on 26 Atriyadiya, in December 522. A few days later he won again at Zazana by the Euphrates and took Babylon.

Behistun inscription §18-20

A river of the Royal Road

Ancient account

Herodotus says the Royal Road from Sardis to Susa crossed four navigable rivers in the land of the Matieni, the first of them the Tigris, which had to be crossed by ferry. He gives the stations and the distances.

Herodotus 5.52

Opis and Cyrus

In the record

The Nabonidus Chronicle says that in 539 Cyrus fought the Babylonian army at Opis on the Tigris and won, and then Sippar and Babylon fell without a battle. The Tigris was the route into the heart of Babylonia from the north.

Nabonidus Chronicle

Assyria's river

Ancient account

Herodotus says the Tigris rises in Armenia and flows past the city where Nineveh once stood, and the Gyndes runs into it. The old Assyrian capitals lay along it, and the lands between it and the Zagros were the Persian province of Athura.

Herodotus 1.189, 1.193, 2.150