Nabonidus

The last king of Babylon (556-539 BC) and father of Belshazzar — the king who saw the handwriting on the wall in Daniel 5. Nabonidus famously abandoned Babylon and moved his royal court to the Arabian oasis of Tema for ten years, leaving his son Belshazzar as co-regent in his absence. This unusual ten-year absence resolves the puzzle of Daniel 5: when Daniel told Belshazzar he would be the "third ruler in the kingdom," it was because Nabonidus was still nominally the first king and Belshazzar the second. While Nabonidus is not named in Scripture, his existence and reign are confirmed by his own building inscriptions (the Nabonidus Cylinder, the Verse Account of Nabonidus, and the Harran Stelae), all housed at the British Museum.