They portray the Babylonian king negatively and present Cyrus as the liberator of Babylon, the defender of the Babylonian gods and consequently as the legitimate successor to the Babylonian throne.[15] Modern scholarship[16][17][18][19] recognizes the Cyrus Cylinder as a propaganda tablet designed to manipulate the public against Nabonidus and to legitimize Cyrus' conquest of Babylon. Regarding its claim that Babylon fell to the Medes and Persians without opposition, Briant writes, "It appears prima facie unlikely that Babylon could have fallen without resistance",[20] and Piotr Michalowski notes, "there is no contemporary evidence to support this suspicious claim."[21] Similarly, the Nabonidus Chronicle is a rework of history from the Persian court purporting to be a text from Nabonidus. Its first part relates events that can be verified from other sources; however, the latter part, particularity when dealing with the seventeenth year of Nabonidus, is especially flattering of Cyrus, with the people of Babylon welcoming him by spreading green twigs before him.[22]