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could have but one end. The Babylonian army surrounded Jerusalem, and after a desperate defense of 18 months the Holy City was taken (586 B. C.) (II Kings xxv, II Chronicles xxxvi, Jeremiah xxxix). Nebuchadnezzar was not quite so cruel as an Assyrian conqueror would have been, but he was cruel enough. He slew Zedekiah's sons before their father's eyes, and then blinded the vanquished king, that so his last earthly sight might be one of horror; then he swept him and the majority of the important people still remaining in the land into captivity. Thus miserably ended the rule of the House of David, having endured for about 414 years (1000-586 B. C.).

Nebuchadnezzar is always associated in our minds with the splendor of his great. city, Babylon. "Is not this great Babylon which I have built?" And indeed he deserves such an association; and if ever a man had cause for pride as he surveyed the work of his hands, Nebuchadnezzar was that man as he looked abroad on Babylon. Great she had always been, reverenced as the mother city, and the source of learning and law even by her Assyrian conquerors in the day of her humiliation. But Nebuchadnezzar and his father had found her as the Assyrians had left her-powerless, humiliated, and sunk.

He raised her, within a generation, to far more than her ancient splendor-to a magnificence indeed which beggared description; so that even Rome, wonderful as its spell has been, has never been able to oust Babylon from the mind and imagination of the human race as the typical world-city, the emblem of all that is magnificent and luxurious and central. Ancient historians can find no words to describe the grandeur of the palaces, the temples, the hanging gardens of the great city by the Euphrates.

NEBUCHADNEZZAR A MAN OF PEACE Great soldier as Nebuchadnezzar was, he was really by nature and instinct a man of peace, not of the merciless and unprofitable Assyrian type at all. "He was, in truth, a son of Babylonia, not of Assyria; a man of peace, not of war; a devotee of religion and culture, not of

organization and administration," so says Goodspeed ("History of the Babylonians and Assyrians").

The same high authority remarks that "the picture of him in the Book of Daniel is, in not a few respects, strikingly accurate. His inscriptions reveal a loftiness of religious sentiment unequaled in the royal literature of the Oriental world." There can be no question of the dignity and reverence of some of the prayers used, or sanctioned for use, by the great king.

O eternal prince! Lord of all being!
As for the king whom thou lovest, and
Whose name thou has proclaimed
As was pleasing to thee,
Do thou lead aright his life,
Guide him in a straight path.
I am the prince obedient to thee,
The creature of thy hand;
Thou hast created me, and
With dominion over all people
Thou hast intrusted me.

According to thy grace, O Lord,
Which thou dost bestow on all people,
Cause me to love thy supreme dominion,
And create in my heart

The worship of thy godhead,

And grant whatever is pleasing to thee
Because thou hast fashioned my life.

Such a prayer is worthy to have come from the lips of him whom the Book of Daniel represents as saying: "Now I Nebuchadnezzar praise and extol and honour the King of Heaven; for all His works are truth, and His ways righteousness; and those that walk in pride He is able to abase" (iv: 37).

A SHORT-LIVED RENAISSANCE Wonderful as was this renaissance of ancient Babylon under Nebuchadnezzar, it was destined to be a short-lived splendor. The great king was succeeded by weaklings, and a great new power, that of the Persians under Cyrus, was rising in the north. Nabuna'id, the last King of Babylon, was the most pious of monarchs, serving his gods with unexampled devotion.

In this respect we owe him no small debt; for it is his inscriptions on his restorations of ancient temples that have enabled modern scholars to arrive at approximate dates for the earlier Babylonian kings. What was wanted for Babylon them, however, was not a pious dilet

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A PART OF THE CITY OF BABYLON WHICH HAS BEEN EXCAVATED CONTRASTED WITH A PART OF THE CITY THAT IS STILL COVERED WITH A GREAT ACCUMULATION OF DEBRIS

The deep, steep sides of the excavation show the immense amount of earth that was removed before these old dwellings were uncovered. (Contrast with the picture on page 195.)

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EXCAVATED HOMES OF NEBUCHADNEZZAR AND NEBOPALASSER IN BABYLON

The sphynx and the palm trees tell something of the story of the beauties of Babylon in ancient days-the one of magnificent sculpture and architecture and the other of landscape gardening at its best (see page 158).

tante, but a great soldier, and such a man she could not show.

When Cyrus with his Persians and Medes invaded Babylonia, Nabuna'id sent against them his son Belshar-utsurthe Belshazzar of the Book of Daniel. There is still extant a cylinder of Nabuna'id inscribed with a prayer to the gods on behalf of the young prince.

The prayer was not heard. Belshazzar was totally defeated. Nabuna'id shut himself up in Babylon, whose mighty walls and storehouses should have withstood siege for years, probably until the strength of the army of Cyrus was broken; but there was treachery within the gates. We are all familiar with the old story of how Cyrus diverted the Euphrates, marched his troops up the dry river-bed into the town and took it by surprise on a night of feasting. That is all pure romance.

CYRUS "A MAN WITH A MISSION" We have the actual account of Cyrus's triumph, written by the hands of the men who in all probability were responsible for it-the treacherous priests of Marduk, the great god of Babylon. The relative part of the Cylinder of Cyrus runs thus: "Cyrus, King of Anshan, he (Marduk), called by name; to sovereignty over the whole world he appointed him. Marduk, the great lord, guardian of his people, looked with joy on his pious works and his upright heart; he commanded him to go to his city Babylon, and he caused him to take the road to Babylon, going by his side as a friend and companion. Without skirmish or battle he permitted him to enter Babylon."

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hopeless defense of a city already conquered.

It is to this last despairing effort of the Babylonian crown prince that we must probably refer the scene of Belshazzar's feast (Daniel v). Such an ending-the last wild revel before the slaughterwould be perfectly in accordance with Mesopotamian and Babylonian traditions for the fall of royalty.

"BABYLON IS FALLEN"

So ended the Neo-Babylonian empire. after a brief but splendid existence. The whole period of its endurance from the fall of Nineveh to that of Babylon was only 90 years (626-536 B. C.); but if we want to realize something of how the great city of the Euphrates and its monarchs had impressed the imagination of the subject peoples, we have only to turn to the fourteenth chapter of Isaiah, where, in one of the most wonderful pieces of taunting poetry in the literature of any land, Isaiah, himself in all probability a spectator of the fall of Babylon, records his thoughts and emotions at the ruin of the queen of cities and her king:

"Hell from beneath is moved for thee, to meet thee at thy coming; it stirreth up the dead for thee, even all the chief ones of the earth; it hath raised up from their thrones all the kings of the nations. All they shall speak and say unto thee: 'Art thou also become weak as we? Art thou become like unto us?'

"Thy pomp is brought down to the grave, and the noise of thy viols; the worm is spread under thee, and the worms cover thee. How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How art thou cut down to the ground which didst weaken the nations. For thou hast said in thine heart: 'I will ascend into heaven; I will exalt my throne above the stars of God; I will also sit upon the mount of the congregation in the sides of the north; I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the Most High.' Yet thou shall be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit."

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Photograph from Frederick Simpich A THRONG OF PILGRIMS ON THE DESERT OUTSIDE OF BAGDAD PREPARING TO JOIN THE CARAVAN OF PILGRIMS FOR KERBELA AND NEDJEF

Before man came the land was waste. When he had learned to bridle its rivers and to develop its capabilities, it became "as the garden of the Lord." Now that he has lost the grip of his first inheritance, it has gone back to waste again. Yet there can be no doubt that here is a country of almost infinite possibilities, and that in the future, possibly not a very distant future, the first home of the race will again be one of the most fertile and perhaps one of the busiest spots in the world.

PUSHING BACK HISTORY'S HORIZON

How the Pick and Shovel Are Revealing Civilizations That Were Ancient When Israel Was Young

BY ALBERT T. CLAY

PROFESSOR OF ASSYRIOLOGY AND BABYLONIAN LITERATURE, YALE UNIVERSITY

O

NE of the romances of the last 75 years has been the unearthing of the remains of forgotten empires and the decipherment of their ancient records. A little over a half a century ago what was known concerning the ancient peoples of the nearer East, besides that which is contained in the Old Testament, could be written in a very brief form.

Israel was then regarded as one of the great nations of antiquity. Abraham belonged to the dawn of civilization. The references to other peoples in the Old Testament had little meaning, for few appreciated the fact that the history of many pre-Israelitish nations had practically faded from the knowledge of man.

The pick and spade of the explorer, however, and the patient toil of the de

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