According to this, Cyrus, soon after his conquest of Babylon, gave permission to the Jewish exiles to return to Palestine, and between forty and fifty thousand[546] did so return, bearing the vessels of Jehovah’s house which the Chaldeans had taken away in 586. These Cyrus delivered _to Sheshbazzar, prince of Judah_[547] (who is further described in an Aramaic document incorporated by the Compiler of the Book of Ezra as “Peḥah,” or _provincial governor_,[548] and as laying the foundation of the Temple[549]), and there is also mentioned in command of the people a Tirshatha, probably the Persian Tarsâta,[550] which also means _provincial governor_. Upon their arrival at Jerusalem, the date of which will be immediately discussed, the people are said to be under Jeshu’a ben Jōṣadak[551] and Zerubbabel ben She’altî’el,[552] who had already been mentioned as the head of the returning exiles,[553] and who is called by his contemporary Haggai Peḥah, or _governor, of Judah_.[554] Are we to understand by Sheshbazzar and Zerubbabel one and the same person? Most critics have answered in the affirmative, believing that Sheshbazzar is but the Babylonian or Persian name by which the Jew Zerubbabel was known at court;[555] and this view is supported by the facts that Zerubbabel was of the house of David and is called Peḥah by Haggai, and by the argument that the command given by the Tirshatha to the Jews to abstain from _eating the most holy things_[556] could only have been given by a native Jew.[557] But others, arguing that Ezra v. 1, compared with vv. 14 and 16, implies that Zerubbabel and Sheshbazzar were two different persons, take the former to have been the most prominent of the Jews themselves, but the latter an official, Persian or Babylonian, appointed by Cyrus to carry out such business in connection with the Return as could only be discharged by an imperial officer.[558] This is, on the whole, the more probable theory. If it is right, Sheshbazzar, who superintended the Return, had disappeared from Jerusalem by 521, when Haggai commenced to prophesy, and had been succeeded as Peḥah, or governor, by Zerubbabel. But in that case the Compiler has been in error in calling Sheshbazzar _a prince of Judah_.[559]