"Thou, Istar of the skies, who hast dwelt as a goddess in the holy temple of Ê-Âna, and art now become a princess of the king's house, if in time thou art made queen of Babylon, let not thy heart beat with pride. Love thy king. Bear his children and rear them in temperance and peace. Open thy lips to no words of folly. Unveil thy face before no man. Be the faithful servant and companion of him who holds thee dearer than all others. And, having heard my bidding, hold also my memory in reverence.
"Behold, I have said my say, and I go forth. On the morrow, Belshazzar, thou wilt be master in the palace. Take up thy duties, and leave the child to its mother's arms. Now Ânû, Ea, and Bel, the three lords of the gods, keep our fortunes, our lives, and our hearts in safety evermore!"
Nabu-Nahid held out a thin, white hand to each of them, Belshazzar and Istar, his children, and each of them pressed it reverently to brow and breast. Then the old man threw the corner of his white mantle once more over his shoulder, and, with a stateliness born of his newly royal spirit, departed from the room.
Istar and Belshazzar saw him go in silence. Their own days of happiness were at an end; but he who had ended them had given them both the desire to meet the veiled future in a manner worthy of their God and of the king that went before.
XV
SIPPAR
Sippar, the northernmost city of Babylonia, lay a day's journey from the capital. Although five Sippars could have been placed within the towering circuit of Nimitti-Bel, and room have been left for Ur besides, still, thirty thousand people, besides Shamash the sun-god, made it their home. Nebuchadrezzar, the great king, had thought it a town of no little importance; for he had expended upon it as much money as the treasury held and his conquered nations would give for tribute, in making those vast reservoirs and the machinery by means of which the course of the river Euphrates could be turned out of its channel and into Sippar, and thence sent forth into a thousand cross-country canals, leaving the river-bed, for the rest of its southward course, as dry as a brick. On account of these vast works of primitive engineers, the little place had for the past fifty years been famous from Agade to Terredou, from Kutha to the desert; till, from being a dilapidated mud-village, its pilgrim visitors had turned it, with their yearly wealth, into a well-built and well-kept city clustered round three celebrated buildings—the astronomical ziggurat, the temple of the sun, and the college of the Chaldees.
These last could be grouped under one head, since all three of them were ruled by one master—not Shamash, but the high-priest of Shamash, the first astronomer of the kingdom and the president of this college of sciences, and these combined dignities caused him to be known as the first priest in the kingdom. As a matter of fact, the religious house and its attachments were as old as—a little older than—the city of Sippar. Sun-worship had been instituted here as long ago as tradition knew; just as moon-worship began in Ur, according to Berossus, about thirty thousand years before the day of the Mighty Hunter! The house attached to the temple for the purpose of training its priests had gradually, through three or four centuries, come to be the great school of education for the priests of all Babylonia. It was the home of tradition and of sedition; the breeder of anti-monarchical ideas, the advocate of a hierarchical government. Nabonidus' father, a member of this college and high-priest of a Babylonian temple, having married the daughter of Nebuchadrezzar, made double claim to the throne of Chaldea; and, though he never came into the place of his mighty father-in-law, yet his son, the young Nabu-Nahid, educated in his father's college and early admitted to the priesthood, was brought up in the full belief that he was king by right of Heaven. Five years on the throne had changed him in many respects. Amraphel had come down from Sippar to administer to Bel-Marduk, and to keep watch over the general priesthood and the ruler of the Great City; and Nabu-Nahid had grown more accustomed to the crown than to the goat-skin. Moreover, the education of the prince royal was continued along very unpriestly lines. Therefore, though the king had never entirely severed his connection with the great institution where he had spent his youth, his attitude towards it was indeterminate, and its feeling for him one of well-disguised but none the less bitter hostility.
At this time of the middle of June in the seventeenth year of the king's reign, Sippar was in a frenzy of excitement. The town was filled to overflowing with troops assembled a month ago from every city and village within a radius of sixty miles. Nânâ-Babilû, commander-in-chief of the army, was lodged with Sharrukin, governor of the city; and these two men were loyal, heart and soul, to the king. As a consequence, they were also bitterly inimical to the priesthood. The college, on the contrary, bristling as it was with full-fledged priests and half-fledged students, waited to give Cyrus himself, or Gobryas by proxy, a royal welcome. The men of the army were divided into factions. As for the rest of the city, it was a little Babylon in its general uneasiness and disturbance.