An hour after sunrise, Babylon the Great was up and dressed like any other restless lady, wakeful and astir, warm with life and beauty, rich in gaudy colours, bright with gold and gems.
Trumpets that mustered warriors by thousands were pealing from her walls. Priests of Baal and prophets of the grove were chanting their idolatrous hymns, to ring of harp or sound of timbrel, through a score of stately temples, a hundred squares, terraces, and open places in the city. Oxen were lowing, sheep bleating, as they stood in droves herded together for sacrifice. Peasants from without were toiling under their market-produce; merchants of Tyre and of the South were guiding their camels, laden with bales of costly goods for the mart of nations; a hundred streams of labour, luxury, and traffic converged to this common centre; and through all her gates the wealth of a hundred countries was flowing in to enrich the mistress of the world.
She accepted their tribute like a queen lavish of smiles and honours, repaying real substantial benefits with bright glitter of ornament, with show of tinsel and gilding, with a false welcome and a cold farewell. Her visitors took their leave, the better for her notice, by an acquired taste for deteriorating luxuries, an increased discontent with the manly simplicity of their homes. They thronged in and out nevertheless, crowding especially to one quarter of the city, on the banks of the broad river, at an equal distance from the two royal palaces, where it was customary to hold a market for all kind of wares and provisions, where a man might purchase, according to his needs, a barley loaf or a dress of honour, a rope of onions or a string of pearls.
Here prevailed that stir, turmoil, and confusion of tongues which must necessarily accompany such gatherings of different tribes and professions, especially under a southern sky. The plain-spoken countryman discoursed volubly on the luxuriant growth of garden-stuff that overflowed his baskets; the keener-witted citizen cheapened and chaffered, sparing neither laughter nor sarcasm, nor shrill and deafening abuse; dark-skinned Ethiopians grinned, nodded, clapped their hands, and rubbed their woolly heads in mingled amazement and delight; haughty warriors stalked in and out the stalls of the various traders with martial strides and offensive demeanour, taking at their own price such things as they required, or, on occasion, omitting the ceremony of payment altogether; troops of women, chiefly from the lowest class, added their eager voices to the general clamour, hanging their swaddled infants at their backs, hoisting them on their shoulders, or extricating with loud outcries and hearty cuffs the stronger urchins, who persistently sought every opportunity of being trampled under foot by the crowd; while over all, at no distant intervals, towered the pliant necks and patient heads of meek-eyed camels, looking sleepily down on the confusion, in calm tolerant contempt, like that of their swarthy riders, for those who dwelt in cities, earning bread by the bustle and competition of sedentary occupation rather than by long adventurous journeys or the vicissitudes of robbery and war.
These were invariably objects of undisguised interest to the bystanders; for about man and beast hung a smack of the boundless desert, the wild free air, the untrodden measureless waste, as from the dress and bearing of the mariner seems to exhale a flavour of his adopted element, a breath from the salt breezes of the sea.
They were mostly sun-burned and travel-worn, bearing traces of fatigue, hardship, and long exposure by night and day.
To a group of these, standing somewhat apart, surrounding one of their camels, which had lain calmly down, load and all, Ishtar thought well to address herself. They were apparently traders of a superior class, while something in their dress and furniture, denoting that their home was in the north, led her to believe they would offer a more liberal price for jewels than those southern merchants, who might probably have brought with them many such valuables for sale. The men, like their camels, seemed very weary; nevertheless they entered on the business of a bargain without delay.
"The damsel needs but look round," said one, "to see that her servants have no need of such things. We are overcome with long travel, sore hungered and athirst. What have we to do with clasp and jewel? Your servants are faint for lack of bread. Can they comfort their hearts with gems and gold?"
"Behold the sandals dropping from our feet," pursued another, "the halters of our camels worn to the last fibre! Bring us goats'-hair ropes, woollen raiment, or even garments of fine linen; we will buy them of you, and welcome—at a price."
Sorely discouraged, Ishtar would have protested; but the words died on her lips, and she turned meekly away. Perhaps no amount of eloquence could have served her so well as this apparent indifference. The principal trader leaped down from his camel, and accosted her with some eagerness.