Istar of Babylon: A Phantasy

by Margaret Horton Potter

In consequence of this, for a week after the festival of the death of Spring, the Great City was wont to wear the aspect of a city of the dead; for every one in it moved out from the temple in which he had celebrated the great event, straight to his bed, and there remained till his vitality was restored to him.

According to custom, then, on the night of the first of July Babylon was in a ferment of activity. Houses were preparing for temporary desertion, stripped of costly hangings and furniture, which were stowed where they might be out of reach of sacrilegious marauders, while holiday garments and ornaments, the costliest that each household could afford, were making ready for wear on the morrow. In every garden garlands were woven. In the temples, priests and eunuchs were at work setting up tables and divans, hanging flower-ropes and wreaths over the images of Tammuz that were placed in each house of worship. All night chariots rattled through the streets, and men shouted to each other from house to house. Great droves of bullocks and goats, and immense numbers of fowls and doves, were conveyed to the temporary sheds erected on each temple-platform, in anticipation of the needs of the sacrifices. To the casual observer everything might have appeared exactly as usual. There was none to know how many secret weapons were slipped into the broad girdles of the citizens' holiday dresses. There was none to wonder why, at some time between midnight and dawn, a Zicarî, or some member of the priesthood, stopped at almost every house in the common quarters to whisper certain final instructions in the ear of the householder. And from the great height of Nimitti-Bel, the members of the city guard failed, in the darkness, to perceive that the black camp of the invader was not at rest.

There were two men in Babylon aware of all these things, and these two sat together, like spiders in the great web of their spinning, watching throughout that fervid night. They were in the house of the high-priest of Bel, on the east side of the Â-Ibur-Sabû; and one of them was Amraphel, the master of the house, while the other was Beltishazzar the Jew. They did not talk, for there was little to speak of. Their plan had been long in the making and was perfect at last. Every detail was at the finger-tips of both of them. And it had been only a consciousness of the gigantic consequence of their plan, and the probable monstrous results of it, that made its originators instinctively draw together on the eve of its fulfilment. Neither of them was nervous in the presence of the other, for one of these men perfectly complemented his companion. The great intellect and the talent for broad strokes of policy that had made Amraphel's position what it was, was completed by the abnormal characteristics of craft and foresight possessed by the Jew. Amraphel's courage was the outcome of his great pride. Daniel's bravery was that of the enthusiast, the fanatic, the leader of men—tempered always with a species of cowardice, the cowardice that was to give Babylon over to other hands than his for government.

Thus here, in the silent interior of Amraphel's vast palace, sat the two traitors, inwardly communing, outwardly silent, throughout the long night of the first of July, while Babylon raged within, and Belshazzar dreamed feverishly in the house of his dead father.

Morning—the morning of the second of Ab—dawned over the city. On the lips of every man was the name of Tammuz. In the heart of every man were the mingled emotions of excitement, of dread, of vague desire. The palace of the king was, early in the day, the scene of confused preparation. Only one person in it experienced no sensation of pleasurable excitement at the prospect of the coming feast; Istar, still mourning her unspeakable loss, had spent the night in accustomed grief, to which this time something was added—a vague sense of dread, of undefined foreboding. At early dawn, before the palace was awake, Belshazzar came in to her, and his eyes were dark with trouble. Istar looked searchingly into his face before she spoke.

"What is the woe of my lord? Thou hast not slept, Belshazzar?"

"Yea, beloved, I have slept—and dreamed: dreamed till my head is on fire. Let thy hands cool the burning of mine eyes. Let thy words still the fears that are rising in my heart. Istar, I have spoken this night with the spirit of my father, who bade me welcome—home."

Istar gave a sharp cry, and the color fled from her face.

"It was a vision, a wandering dream; and yet it has brought foreboding in its train. Bring me comfort, Istar, my beloved."