Spring came upon the plains that stretched from Euphrates. Verdure and flowers arose from the dark. The watchers of the stars in the high house of Marduk sent word to the king, and the king proclaimed the word to the people. In the heavens was written the sign that meant rich harvests at home, and abroad, in the king’s wars, victory. Marduk had thrown, before his coming, a handful of jewels. At that the city so rejoiced that the nine days before the high days that were officially days of supplication, repentance and cleansing of heart, humbling and propitiation, went themselves like festival.
In the house of Sarpanit the New Year votary was watched, tended, made in all ways beauteous.... Marduk, coming in power, must find a Sarpanit also in power, kindler of desire!
Babylon, in fresh heat, under a sky from which had passed all the rain clouds, put on holiday garb. The people thronged the temple courts, coming in groups and bands and processions, bringing the sacrifices. There was heard, as on no other day, the bleating of sheep, the lowing of cattle, the voices of doves. King Sharrâni came in procession, with clangour and throb of instruments of music, with shouts of the populace. The gods from their lesser temples came in procession to visit Marduk, god of gods. Priest-borne, newly-decked, came the images by the Sacred Street, came to huge chanting, to the bowing of the throng. From the pictured walls looked the pictured genii, the pictured sacred beasts, the pictured gods.
Babylon and the brimming river Euphrates and the plain that was to thicken with wheat and barley, millet and sesame, waked through the starlight of the night before the day. Cresset lamps burned in doorways, the young men surged, singing, through the streets. Waned the spring night, arose a breath of balm and spice, came the light in the east. Trumpets blew from the city wall, trumpets blew from the king’s palace, trumpets blew from the temple roofs. Dawned the high day of the round year, the day when Marduk returned to his house in a golden mantle of strength! The children and all the people leaped up to festival. When Marduk the sun rose from where he slept, beyond Tigris, east of India, he was met with ecstasy. All day Marduk the sun rained light upon Babylonia, upon Babylon, and light intense upon his temple there. As ever, on the New Year day, were found men and women who claimed to see the winged Marduk, hovering in the heavens, above his lofty house....
At an early hour in the day the women votaries of the high god came with music, with garlands, with burning frankincense, to the Sarpanit-room in the shadow of the tower. They took Iltani and robed her in fine white figured with gold. They put a veil upon her like the mist upon the morning plain, and over it a twisted circlet of silver and gold. They took her from the Sarpanit-room and in the court they placed her at the head of their band, with only musicians going before her. They gave into her hand a stalk with two flowers, they raised over her a red canopy. The music swelled, the voices rose. In a blue, upcurling, incense cloud, Iltani set her foot upon the broad, the worn, the clay and fire made tower stair.
Stage by stage, stage by stage, and the city was below her and the thronged and throbbing temple courts. Stage by stage, and a gulf of blue light, thrilling, tingling was around. It weighed her down, it upheld her. She looked to the sky and thought that she saw Marduk, winged, coming from the sun.
The procession returned to the court whence sprang the tower. All day the temple, all day the king and his chief men, all day Babylon and all Babylonia praised Marduk and did rites before him. All day Marduk was to be felt above the city, the river, the plain, above the temple quarter and its smoking altars, above the tower, the “mountain of the god.” All day the human Sarpanit awaited alone the slant rays of the sun and the human Marduk.
Symbols—symbols that were warm and glowed.... Iltani-Sarpanit sat in the gold-furnished temple room in the prescribed attitude of devotion. She sat still, and light and fire ran through her being. Marduk—Marduk—Marduk!
The sun’s rays came slant. At the mountain-top, she heard at the mountain foot, trumpets blowing.... She veiled her eyes, she quivered. All at once, her strong dream of ecstasy parted a little.... This was a man coming to the mountain-top, a man as she was a woman. Terror threatened, a depth of headlong fall. O God, my God! O Marduk, raying light!
The lover was the winged Marduk—never, never must she lose him!... The trumpets were more loudly blowing, and now she might hear rising to her the strong chanting, the rhythmic tread. There was an altar in the room, and upon it a burning fire. Now she rose and, as she had been taught to do, heaped this with the richest spices, with sandalwood and frankincense. The room filled with thin clouds, blue and fragrant, and in the heart of these stood Iltani, and her soul beat about to repel the terror and keep the ecstasy.