Footnote

a Under “Persian Domination,” The Encyclopædia Britannica, Volume 2 of the 1946 edition, page 852b, says: “Toward the end of the Persian domination an outbreak of Zoroastrian fanaticism seems to have led to the destruction of many of the great temples. The zikkurat of Babylon was a mass of debris when Alexander [the Great] first saw it, though it had been in a good state when Herodotus wrote; the temple at Ur everywhere shows marks of incendiary destruction, after which the site was deserted, save for stray fugitives. There is every sign that Persian rule in Babylonia was unpopular from the time of Darius I, and that by the time of Darius III the land had suffered from a religious persecution.”