Nebuchadnezzar (Emperor living at the time of Divided Monarchy)

The Babylonian king who besieges Jerusalem three times over a generation, the figure behind both Daniel's exile and 2 Kings' final chapters. Josephus dates his rise the same way Jeremiah does, the fourth year of Jehoiakim, and follows the same campaign against Jerusalem.

Nebuchadnezzar was the king of Babylon who destroyed Jerusalem and its temple in 586 BC and deported Judah's population, making him the central villain of Israel's exile even as the Bible also portrays him as an instrument God used deliberately to judge his people. The book of Daniel records his dramatic humiliation: driven mad and reduced to living like an animal in the fields for seven years after boasting about his own greatness, until he acknowledged God's sovereignty and was restored to his throne. Nebuchadnezzar's building projects, including the massive city walls and temples of Babylon, are extensively documented in his own inscriptions, which independently confirm the scale of the empire the Bible describes.