The seventy years of Babylonian oppression reckon from the accession of Nebuchadnezzar to the first year of Cyrus in 538 B. C., when the cruel policy of transplanting the population of the empire was abandoned, and the Jews were permitted to return to Jerusalem. We do not as yet know what the religious beliefs of Cyrus may have been. A Babylonian text represents him to have been a worshipper of Babylonian gods. The first known monumental notice of Ahuramazda, the Persian “All-wise Being,” occurs in the famous texts of Darius I. This deity was regarded by him as the maker of heaven and earth, and the Hebrews--speaking to Persian kings--made use of the title “god of heaven,” which would be understood by Persians as referring to the deity they themselves adored.[150] The first Persian kings were famed for their justice and tolerance, and Darius I. not only permitted the building of the Jerusalem Temple, but equally permitted the restoration of the temple of the goddess Neith, which Cambyses had respected, but which had fallen into ruin. He sent an Egyptian priest from Persia to carry out this work, just as his descendant sent Ezra and Nehemiah to Jerusalem. It has also quite recently been discovered that Darius II. was memorialised, by Jewish priests in Egypt, to permit the restoration of a house of Jehovah at Elephantine, which was built before Cambyses conquered Egypt in 529 B. C. In this Aramaic petition the title “god of heaven” is used as meaning Jehovah, just as in the Bible, and the ancient spelling of the divine name as _Iahu_ is preserved just as it occurs in the text of Sennacherib, and on early Hebrew signet-rings. The letter, moreover, mentions Delaya and Shelemya, the sons of Sanballat, “governor of Samaria,” side by side with the Persian officials Bagohi and Arshama, thus serving to show that Ezra and Nehemiah lived in the time of Artaxerxes I.[151] We see from such records that the restoration of the Jews was part of the settled policy of the Persian kings in dealing with their foreign subjects.