A few months after Cyrus’s coronation, a party of Jewish exiles set out for Jerusalem, with the gold and silver vessels that Nebuchadnezzar had confiscated from the temple. The Bible tells us that 42,360 Judeans made the journey home, together with their servants and two hundred temple singers,58 but in fact the first batch of returnees was probably quite small, since most of the exiles chose to stay in Babylon.
