The king of Babylonia from 556-539 BC, when Babylon fell to Cyrus, king of Persia. After a popular rising led by the priests of Marduk, chief god of the city, abonidus, who favored the moon god Sin, made his son Belshazzar coregent and spent much of his reign in Arabia. Returning to Babylon in 539 BC, he was captured by Cyrus' general Gobryas and exiled. He was the last king of the Neo-Babylonian Empire and is often considered to be the first archaeologist because he searched the ruined temples of ancient Babylon to answer questions about the remote past.