In the "Mother of Nabonidus" Inscription found at Harran the god S�n is referred to a number of times by the title:

"S�n, King of the Gods."[note] In orthodox Babylonian theology of the time of Nabonidus this title was reserved for Marduk, patron god of Babylon, the capital of the empire. It seems evident that in promoting S�n Nabonidus was pursuing some definite policy. Whether this was religious, economic, or political, or, as is more likely, some combination of these, is not entirely clear, but there is enough evidence to suggest some possible answers, and to arrive at some conclusion concerning how successful that policy may have been.

      There is always the possibility that Nabonidus was a muddled thinker who was not sure exactly what he wanted, or was simply promoting his personal god, S�n, for reasons that were essentially capricious.[note] This is unlikely. He was represented by his enemies as an incompetent madman. This was sheer propaganda. It is more likely that Nabonidus was an extremely astute politician. It is unlikely that he was interested in promoting S�n (or the equivalent names) as simply a substitute for Marduk--that is to substitute the one name for another. Rather, there must have been some substantive issue or idea behind the desire for such a change.

      The fact that he remained the ruler of Babylon for seventeen years attests to the capability of Nabonidus as a ruler.[note] What evidence we have suggests that he was well able to carry out definite long-range policies. His long stay in the city of T�m�, for example, may have been a very realistic means of dealing with opposition in the capital:    By broadening his base of support he may have extended his own rule, and also that of the empire, for at least a decade longer than might otherwise have been the case.[note] Dougherty says of the T�m� campaign:   "A primary aim springing from personal preference and exhibiting no care for the empire's fate seems out of the question. The international situation was too tense and too much was at stake for a Babylonian king to be governed by mere caprice in a procedure involving the destiny of the nation."[note]

      In this paper I shall be dealing primarily with the religious motives behind the attempt to make S�n the king of the gods. Since religious motives do not occur in a vacuum I would like first to take a brief look at some possible economic, ethnic, and political motives. The primary focus in our look at this background material will be the T�m� campaign. Because of its length, more than half the reign of Nabonidus, and its unusual nature, this campaign seems to be the key to explaining his policies. Not only is the whole affair problematic, it is the one feature of his reign that we must account for in any attempt to understand the character of Nabonidus. We must interpret what evidence we have in the light of this campaign, and the campaign in the light of the evidence in order to be able to say anything worthwhile. Later in the paper I shall pay particular attention the Harran Inscription of Adad-Guppi, Mother of Nabonidus, because of its unique importance in answering the question of the role of S�n as king of the gods.

      The economic policy of Nabonidus in itself is a topic for major research. Brinkman notes that much essential research remains to be done.[note] Here I wish only to make some observations on the subject as it relates to his attempt to promote S�n as king of the gods. The best evidence presently at our disposal for economic prosperity in any given reign is the number of economic tablets that can be dated to that reign. This would indicate there was great economic growth in the reign of Nabonidus.[note] Nabonidus seems to have been especially interested in spreading the wealth, and avoiding concentrations of wealth in the capital, perhaps to dissipate the power of the Marduk clergy. The best clue that Nabonidus was inclined to distribute wealth more generally throughout the empire comes from the Harran stele H2 3.15-16:    "in wealth and abundance my people in the distant tracts I spread abroad" This may be referring to the expansion of trade, or to the fact that all of the royal revenues were not spent in the capital.[note] If this sharing of the wealth was not a motive for his T�m� campaign, he may have at least considered it one of the major objectives accomplished by it.

      Albright, devotes a paragraph to the motives for the T�m� campaign in a short article of 1925, in which he deals almost exclusively with the economic motivations. He remarks that the great commercial expansion that took place in this century brought great wealth to Arabia, and in this the northern caravan centers, such as Adummu and T�m�, took part. "We may very reasonably ascribe the Arabian campaign of Nabonidus to his desire to control the lucrative trade routes from Southern Arabia."[note] Goetze once remarked:   "Mesopotamia was a curious country, particularly lower Mesopotamia where there was really only one raw material in abundance which was basic for Mesopotamian civilization, and that was mud."[note] The lack of primary resources in Babylonia suggests that its importance and power (like that of Great Britain at its zenith, or of Japan today) were due to some principle of organization, or of human resources, rather than to its ability to produce wealth from the earth in the pre-petroleum era. Oppenheim suggests that the Assyrian empire existed on its capacity to communicate.[note] In a similar manner, the ability to write and create archives in Babylonia may have given the people an economic edge over other peoples by making possible long range commercial transactions (both in time and area) and, of course, bureaucracy.

      Of the overall economic policy of Nabonidus little can be said here. In essence it seems to have been directed towards gaining the upper hand in the struggle with the temple personnel over where the center of balance in directing the economy was to rest. Dandamaev says:   "In Neo-Babylonian times the royal economy weighed less in the general economy of the country; the leading role belonged to the temples and private house-holds."[note] Nabonidus was not content that this should remain so, for as Dandamaev goes on to say:   "Under Nabonidus the influence of the state over the temples gained in strength."[note] Nabonidus apparently intended to get a grasp on the temple revenues--a portion for himself, and greater say in how the rest was to be spent. Such a policy, if successful, would greatly strengthen the central government. If Dandamaev is correct he was largely successful. As his reign progressed the royal commissioner handed part of the revenues over to the king, furthermore his staff began to intervene in temple affairs.[note]

      We have some evidence from a temple report from a later period published by Weisberg, in which the king, if he is not actually taxing the temple, is involved to the extent of questioning the whereabouts of temple property. In this respect his successors seems to have continued the policy of Nabonidus, which speaks for its soundness.[note] Frame discusses several instances of royal management of temple lands.[note] "The reason for the king's action in re-organizing the management of the temple's land holding's is not certain," he says, "although it has been suggested that the palace wanted to increase the yields received by the temple and thus in turn the temple's deliveries to the palace."[note] Such a policy would not only strengthen and enrich the government, but its long term effects would probably be an increase in trade. This would increase the wealth of the empire, and of the populations of the outlying areas, including the Aramean tribes in which Nabonidus was interested.

      Before going into a brief survey of some of the possible political motivations of Nabonidus, we should survey the ethnic background against which this policy, and the T�m� campaign in particular, took place. Dougherty points out that Arabia was closely associated with Babylonia geographically, racially, and economically. He collects evidence concerning its wealth from gold, spices, and so on from ancient authors. Geographically is was significant for Babylonia to control for commercial and military purposes:   "Of all the countries of the Westland it alone bordered on the real land of Babylonia."[note] Hildegard Lewy points out that "among the three historic centers of Moon-cult two, namely Harran and Ur, are situated on the borders of the great desert, whereas the third, the oasis of T�m�, lies in its very heart."[note] The universality of Neo-Babylonian policy in the time of Nabonidus seems to be related to his ethnic background.

      Something is known of the general organization of the Aramean tribes in the early period, but the history of these tribes has yet to be written. J. A. Brinkman says the Arameans in and around Babylonia in the early 7th Century B. C. were divided into more than 35 tribes, which were usually smaller than those of the Chaldeans, of which there were only five tribes. The basic tribal organization and structure of the two peoples were different. The Aramean tribes were more loosely knit and often had more than one leader. They did not follow the practice of the Chaldeans, many of whom took Babylonian personal names.[note] They were generally more fragmented and less wealthy than the Chaldeans, who were more likely to settle in fortified cities. Brinkman says they generally resisted assimilation. From the Ninth century on there were an increasing number of Arameans in Assyria. They were present in the army and gradually began to work their way into the upper ranks, and even into the court of Adad-nirari III (911-891).[note] Grayson says the large number of foreigners, especially Arameans, in the Neo-Assyrian period, resulted in major changes in the ethnic and cultural milieu of the state.[note] According to Dandamaev, "the moon-god whom Nabonidus worshipped was not the traditional god S�n of Ur, but according to his symbols and forms of worship, an Aramean god. It is possible that by bringing about his religious reforms, Nabonidus strove to unite around himself the numerous Aramean tribes of the North East which worshipped S�n."[note]

      These peoples were not originally nomadic, or at least not all of them were. T. E. Lawrence, writing of a much later time, calls Yemen "the factory of nomads". This, or a similar process, must have been operative in antiquity. Lawrence describes how the weaker clans among the settled peoples in Yemen had continually to exchange better springs and palms for poorer, until eventually, alongside their precarious agriculture, they had to begin breeding sheep and cattle to make a living:   "Finally, under a last impulse from the straining population behind them, the border people (now almost wholly pastoral), were flung out of the furthest crazy oasis into the untrodden wilderness as nomads." He goes on to say that the people of the desert "were as little static as the people of the hills":

      The economic life of the desert was based on the supply of camels... The camel markets in Syria, Mesopotamia, and Egypt determined the population which the deserts could support, and regulated strictly their standard of living. So the desert likewise over-peopled itself upon occasion; and then there were heavings and thrustings of the crowded tribes as they elbowed themselves by natural courses towards the light.

      Because they could not go south into the sand or sea, nor west into the steep hills defended by mountain tribes, they were "pushed gradually north", between Medina and Kasim, till they came to the fork of two roads:

      They could strike eastward, by Wadi Rumh or Jebel Shammar, to follow eventually the Batn to Shamiya, where they would become riverine Arabs of the Lower Euphrates; or they could climb, by slow degrees, the ladder of western oases--Henakiya, Kheibar, Teima, Jauf, and the Sirhan--till fate saw them nearing Jebel Druse, in Syria, or watering their herds about Tadmor of the northern desert, on their way to Aleppo or Assyria.[note]

      T�m� (or Teima) was but one stop on the northern migration. These populations were not static, and economic opportunity seems to have been a primary factor in their movements. It is against this back-ground that the T�m� campaign took place, and it is important in the attempt to understand the political motives of the king.

      Among the immediate political motives for Nabonidus' sojourn in Arabia may have been disorder among his subjects, possibly agitated by the adherents of Marduk.[note] Dougherty thinks it is possible that the priestly orders resented the reforms Nabonidus and later welcomed Cyrus as champions of their religious system. This resistance may have become serious by the third year of the reign, and so Nabonidus went to T�m� to avoid a serious crisis.[note] Probably Gadd goes too far when he sees this as a "mutiny of his subjects"; at least this seems unwarranted by what evidence there is.[note] Dandamaev notes that there were conflicts between the central power and citizens of Babylon, Borsippa, Nippur, Uruk and Larsa.[note] There seems to have been a crisis of some kind. Dougherty thinks Nabonidus may have felt "his position would be more secure if he was engaged outside of Babylonia in an enterprise for the strengthening of the empire."[note]This does not exhaust the political possibilities.

      The T�m� campaign may have been part of a political move to extend the Babylonian empire westward. Hildegard Lewy seems to suggest Nabonidus was trying to extend his empire and universalize its political base in pointing out the geographical significance of the centers of Moon-worship. Because of its geographical position the empire of Nabonidus may have been inherently unstable. Garth Fowden argues that Syria-Mesopotamia is subject to a "crucial weakness" which guarantees that whoever controls the Eastern Mediterranean of Iran will be embroiled in its affairs. The result historically has been a series of short-lived, though at times extensive, empires:   "the Fertile Crescent cannot maintain long-term political autonomy, for it is too easily threatened by circumjacent regions whose geography makes them natural fortresses and power centers..."[note] Von Soden thinks he was trying to move the center of the empire further from Persian influence:

   Er zog �ber Tema bis nach Jatrib, heute Medina, um ein neues Zentrum des Reiches weit entfernt von der Grenze zu Persien aufzubauen. Er bedachte aber nicht, da� ein so gigantisches Vorhaben nicht in wenigen Jahren und gegen den Willen vermutlich der meisten Bablonier realisiert werden konnte.[note]

      This is a reasonable suggestion, though it is an open question whether shifting the center of power to T�m� would have solved this problem in the long run. This is connected with the problem of projecting power in antiquity, which was much more difficult when communication required physical movement of a more or less arduous nature.[note]

      According to Landsberger:   "Only one attempt was made to have a whole empire worship a new god, the old and at the same time new Aramaic god S�n, combined by Nabonidus with Nannar and Ilteri in a great syncretistic effort that fused the Sumerian, Akkadian, Assyrian, and Aramaic roots of his people."[note] He contrasts this with the policy of the Assyrians who though they took away the statues of conquered peoples, never forced them to revere As�s�ur, they only sought to show that As�s�ur was more powerful than their own gods.[note] On the political level Nabonidus may have been trying to create or encourage something like a "two-party" system:   the clergy and the royalists; though of course, without the franchise. The plethora of Mesopotamian gods, at any rate, was a serious threat to imperial hegemony.[note] It was impossible for any ruler to succeed without a huge coalition of religious "parties." Nabonidus as a political realist, may have realized that only a strong central cult would allow him to rule successfully. There was no chance of him gaining control of the Marduk cult, nor was it greatly compatible with his other sympathies. The promotion of S�n as a universal god was an attractive alternative for many reasons. As a political and religious visionary Nabonidus was aware of the difficulties:   such a move, as Landsberger points out, was unprecedented, but of course there were great rewards to be gained.

      There had been many attempts at syncretism in Mesopotamian religion, most notably that of the Assyrians to assimilate Assur and Marduk, though with poor results.[note] But long before this there occurred the assimilation of the minor god Marduk with other gods, and his long, slow climb to the top of the god-heap. In fact there are several striking parallels between the rise of Marduk as "King of the gods," and the efforts of Nabonidus to give this position to S�n.

      In the ancient world most cities had a patron god. It was only when the city became powerful that there was any chance to promote its god at the expense of others. Marduk was chief god of Babylon, a city that, until the time of Hammurapi, was of minor importance. Marduk was as obscure as his city, and his rise in fortune was tied to the rising pre�minence of Babylon among the Mesopotamian city-states. The promotion of Marduk was the result of long labours of priests and scribes in his behalf. Though it is often said that Marduk became great because Babylon became the chief city of the empire; it may be true that Babylon, at least in part, became great because it had a strong central cult and primarily honoured one god.

      Lambert points out that in his rise to supremacy Marduk did not simply replace Enlil, the earlier head of the pantheon. Nippur, the city of Enlil, possessed religious significance, but was never powerful politically. Perhaps it was for this reason that Enlil was never completely autocratic in the councils of the gods, as Lambert thinks, but that the order was surprisingly democratic. The supremacy of Marduk, as it is recounted in Enuma Elis�, on the other hand, was absolute--the archetypical "Oriental Despotism."[note] In another characteristic also, according to Lambert, Marduk exceeded Enlil:   he absorbed the functions of numerous other gods, or, to express it more correctly, they were considered aspects of Marduk. Lambert cites a triple-column god-list that manifests "a syncretism of sundry gods with Marduk."[note] There are other examples given by Lambert.

      A Prayer to Marduk begins by explaining various major members of the pantheon as aspects of him:    S�n is his divinity, etc.[note] The most elaborate example--two fragments of a tablet containing a hymn to Marduk--had escaped notice until Lambert pointed them out. On one side of the tablet is a series of sections each of which identifies a particular aspect of Marduk (unfortunately in each case the word is broken off) with another deity, who is qualified with his usual epithets.[note] According to Lambert's summary of the evidence:    "Thus Marduk did not simple replace another god. His supremacy was verging on monotheism, though some prefer to call it pantheism. This distinction was not afforded to Enlil."[note]

      Here I disagree with Lambert's interpretation; that such a syncretism could be attempted was precisely because it was not monotheistic. Yekezkiel Kaufmann says, "While the great empires (Egypt, Assyria, Rome) did tend to symbolize themselves by a supreme god, they never were led thereby to monotheism."[note] One might use a term such as "pseudomonotheism," or the like but that is not monotheism at all. That such efforts were made at all merely points up the fact that polytheists have problems. As someone once remarked:   He who is not satisfied with one God, will find two too many, and hundreds not enough." These efforts never led to more than, nor could they ever have led to more than, what Lambert calls elsewhere, "sophisticated polytheism."[note]

      The supreme position in the Babylonian pantheon at the time of Hammurapi, contrary to the opinions of many, was not held by Marduk. Even at the end of the Cassite rule Marduk was still subordinate, while Enlil, or both Anu and Enlil, occupied a position at the head of the pantheon. The exhaltation of Marduk, as Lambert presents evidence to show, took place only in the reign of Nebuchadnezzar I, about 1100 B.C. The first evidence we have for the title Marduk sar ila�ni, is from a boundary stone from this reign. After this the title is found often. Even during the reign of the Cassites Marduk was often considered the head of the pantheon in private circles, as is evident from the personal name Marduk-sar-ila�ni, occurring in a document from the reign of Kudur-Enlil.[note] Lambert points out:

      Names of this type had flourished since early in the Old Babylonian period when, curiously, S�n is the god most commonly so described. Only in the late Cassite period is Marduk used in this type of name, which soon afterwards dropped out of use altogether. Thus the first assertion of Marduk's supremacy comes from an unofficial source.[note]

      Though privately Marduk may have been regarded as the King of the gods, by the time the Cassites had been driven out the statute of Marduk was no longer in Babylon, having been carried off to Elam as part of the spoils of war. This was regarded as an indication that the god was angry with his city, and had chosen to live elsewhere. Thus the time was not ripe for the public exaltation of Marduk. Several texts cited by Lambert preserve accounts of Marduk's return to the city in the reign of Nebuchadrezzar I.[note]

      A bilingual text from the second dynasty of Isin, which has survived in four badly damaged copies, opens with a poetic description of victory in battle, which is probably not the beginning of the tablet:    The story continues with a description of the piety of a certain god's slave, who gives himself no rest until he has seen his master's lofty form. His prayers were heeded, for the divine master (who is later named as Marduk) consented to return from "wicked Elam" to Babylon, where he was received amid universal acclaim and the bestowing of bountiful gifts.[note]

      This story may cast light on the Adad-Guppi inscription of Nabonidus in which a similar theme occurs, and will be discussed below.

      People of the West, particularly in America, tend to under-estimate the connection between politics and religion. In the Leviathan, certainly the classic work on government, Thomas Hobbes remarks that religion is nourished by men "with a purpose to make those men that relyed on them, the more apt to Obedience, Lawes, Peace, Charity, and civill Society." Thus religion, he says, "is a part of humane Politiques; and teacheth part of the duty which Earthly Kings require of their Subjects."[note] He adds that kings "whose ends were only to keep the people in obedience, and peace, have in all places taken care; First, to imprint in their minds a beliefe, that those precepts which they gave concerning Religion, might not be thought to proceed from their own device, but from the dictates from some God, or other spirit; or else that they themselves were of a higher nature than mere mortalls, that their Lawes might the more easily be received."[note] After a long discussion Hobbes sums it up in a single sentence:    "And thus you see how the Religion of the Gentiles was a part of their Policy."[note]

      Hobbes is of the opinion that a state should have but one God, and that the ruler should appoint the forms of worship; whether the ancients would have regarded it in a similar manner is unlikely, but he states clearly what Nabonidus may have dimly felt:    "seeing a Common-wealth is but one Person, it ought also to exhibite to God but one Worship; .... where many sorts of Worship be allowed, proceeding from the different Religions of Private men, it cannot be said there is any Publique Worship, nor that the Common-wealth is of any Religion at all." He adds:

And because a Common-wealth hath no Will, nor makes no Lawes, but those that are made by the Will of him, or of them that have the Soveraign Power; it followeth, that those Attributes which the Soveraign ordaineth, in the Worship of God, for signes of Honour, ought to be taken and used for such, by private men in their publique Worship.[note]

      Writing of Achenaton, who, finding himself in much the same position as Nabonidus, adopted a similar solution, Rudolf Otto remarks:   "cultural and ritual diversity is an obstacle to political harmony, while 'unity of cult' is very conducive to it."[note] It should be pointed out, however, that Nabonidus contributed to the temples of many cities. As Wiseman remarks, "He did not seek to create any exclusive role for S�n in Babylon."[note]

      Speculation concerning religious motives is highly subjective involving many unknowns. This does not mean it has no influence in historical events. A monograph entitled Religion in the Struggle for Power (1946) deals with the struggle for power in the context of European religious history. The author, J. M. Yinger, offers some insights which can be applied to our own study. He points out that it is not possible to hold to a "narrow economic interpretation of history"--even Marx did not; but he poses the problem of the point at which ideas and beliefs enter the picture. "With reference to religion, our question is:    Is there a source of religious ideas and energy which cannot be traced back eventually to material conditions, or, slightly more generally, to the struggle for power? Put in this way, it is clearly part of the question of the origin of religion; and no precise answer is possible."[note] At the end of his study, however, he concludes that the religious factor, no matter how elusive, is quite real:

   In terms of the present study it would seem to be an error to discount completely the influence of the purely religious idea working in history, and equally an error to fail to see the limitations of its power and the frequency with which it is dominated by other interests. The limitations are partly intrinsic:    the religious interest is dominant in only a small minority of persons. No matter how skillfully religious leaders use the power at their command, they cannot erase the influence of other powers and interests, particularly in the relations of groups--of classes and nations.[note]

      Nabonidus may have been a rather advanced theological thinker--for a politician. We may suppose he tried to obtain political harmony by means of religious unity." This is not to say there was no purely religious motive in Nabonidus' policy--we may be sure that there was, but such a motive is not to be easily disentangled from the others; in nearly every historical action we find such "mixed motives."

      Speaking of other actions of this ruler Marvin Powell notes:    "Politics and piety are surely interwoven in the installation of Nabonidus' daughter at Ur and in his temple reconstruction projects."[note] We may be certain that his religious policy was a part of his "humane Politiques," though we must be careful not to overrate what we may regard as self interest. Perhaps in the long run his policy was not completely successful, since it seems evident that the "Marduk party" opened the gates of Babylon in a coup d'�tat; but how many policies are successful in every respect? To rise from fairly obscure origins to become emperor, and to rule for a fairly long time, might in itself be regarded as an indicator of success. Perhaps a remark of Machiavelli applies here:

   As the fact of a private individual becoming a prince presupposes either great ability or good fortune, it would appear that either of these things would in part mitigate many difficulties. Nevertheless those who have been less beholden to good fortune have maintained themselves best.[note]

      The antiquity of the cult of the moon seems to be well established, at least that is the view of Mircea Eliade, who says:

   It was very probably the image of the eternal birth and death of the moon which helped to crystallise the earliest human intuitions about the alternations of Life and Death, and suggested, later on, the myth of the periodic creation and destruction of the world. The most ancient myths of the deluge disclose a lunar structure and origin.[note]

      In the period when Sumerian was still spoken, according to Hall, "The epithet lugal, 'lord (king)' is the most common epithet of the moon-god ... It is also one of the oldest epithets, being attested already in Presargonic inscriptions as an epithet of the moon-god."[note] Hall points out also that "Besides his role as sovereign of Ur, Nanna/Suen is also frequently called lugal-an-ki(a) 'lord of heaven and earth..." His was the most powerful city in Mesopotamia, though he was not above An and Enlil.[note] According to a text cited by Tadmor, "Sin, the Lord of the Disk...father of the Great Gods" occurs on a broken MB kudurru from Ur.[note] An incantation called "A Cow Of S�n" calls him, "S�n, the Light of Heaven".[note] There are in fact a whole range of epithets applied to him.

      Frame suggests that there was an attempt by S�n-balassu-iqbi, governor of Ur in the time of Ashurbanipal, to promote a syncretism between Nanna (S�n) and Enlil in the Old Babylonian Period.[note] It seems to me this is not the correct interpretation. It was instead an attempt to promote S�n as de facto head of the pantheon, i.e., to make him King of the gods. There is evidence that there was a close connection between the two gods, and that S�n gradually began to assume the functions of the other god. One of the governor's texts reads:

(For) the god Nanna, king of the Enlil (circle) of gods, his lord:    S�n-balassu-iqbi, the viceroy of Ur, who provides for Eridu, built �.es� banda, the abode of the goddess �uzianna.[note]

      �uzianna was a junior wife of Enlil, and the wet-nurse of S�n. I have found more than a dozen inscriptions from the time of Ashurbanipal referring to S�n as king of the Enlil, and there may be many more. One of them, to take an example, reads:    "For the god S�n (dEN.ZU) of Heaven, lion of the gods, king of the Enlil (circle of) gods, his lord, etc."[note] This shows a close relation between the two gods, but it does not mean there was an attempt to promote syncretism. It was rather an attempt to promote S�n as head of the pantheon. As an analogy, in the Greek pantheon Zeus never became identified with Kronos, but he did subsume his office and functions, and became head of the pantheon. Much earlier there had been syncretism resulting in the character later known as S�n. Hall, who has made a lengthy study of the subject says that Nanna and Suen were originally separate, but were later blended into a composite character.[note] This is a very different process.

      Eliade elsewhere points out that worship of the moon involves a generally optimistic view of life:

      The phases of the moon--appearance, increase, wane, disappearance, followed by reappearance after three nights of darkness--have played an immense part in the elaboration of cyclical concepts.

      He says the lunar rhythm also serves as the archetype for extended durations of time.[note] It is associated, for example, with the myth of the eternal return, and has apocalyptic implications. One epithet of S�n is mu2-mu2 "ever renewing"; the moon-god was regarded as having the power to regenerate himself.[note] We also read of a king who prays for "a life like Nanna renewed each month." [note] In a bi-lingual inscription Samsu-iluna recounts all his works and says:    "On account of this the great gods looked at me with their shining faces (and) granted to me as a gift:    a life that, like the god S�n, is renewed monthly..."[note] This is evidence that Moon worship was generally a theology of optimism.

      The most important feature in the worship of the Moon seems to be its dualistic nature. Hildegard Lewy, in her study of the Moon-cult at Harran points out the significant difference between the worship of S�n, and of most of the other gods of Mesopotamia. Most of these deities are personifications of natural forces. As such they have two natures, one beneficent, the other malign and deadly. �amas� brought light and warmth, but also drought; Enlil, the god of wind, brought the life-giving rain-clouds, but also the hurricanes. "The religions which centered around deities like Enlil and �amas� were monistic in character, which means both good and evil, life and death, blessing and punishment, beauty and ugliness were thought to be dispensed to mankind by one single divine being."[note] An astral deity, such as the moon, however, was regarded as being beneficent:

   The Moon-god S�n...was gracious and merciful... His 'word', i.e., the breath of his mouth, was thought to create justice and righteousness...he was a symbol of life; he was, therefore, revered as the creator and preserver of life on earth. By repeating his course with no perceptible changes month after month, year after year, and generation after generation, he was the symbol of eternity.[note]

      This implied the existence of a second kind of cosmic power that was the source of evil; in other words, it gave rise to a dualistic principle. In the Lamentation over the City of Ur, this power is the lord of the evil winds. This power was not regarded as being opposite-but-equal, as in some later, and perhaps related religions. There were cycles of good and evil, but is was a belief that was essentially optimistic. This aspect of the religion may be mirrored in the optimism of Nabonidus who felt a major change in the policy and direction of the empire was possible! Certainly an important characteristic of the lunar religion is its vision of a future Golden Age. According to Mrs. Lewy:

Once the lord of the evil winds was deprived of his weapons, he was powerless and the Moon-god, therefore was the sole and omnipotent divine will. In other words, in the Golden Age the dualistic religion was bound to become a monistic religion, the sole but essential difference being that evil and sin would no longer exist since all mankind would worship the god of Good.[note]

      This suggests that Nabonidus may have ultimately had in mind some universal kingdom which he would rule in peace. Perhaps the fact that he was graciously given the Babylonian empire, called to the kingship by S�n, as he says, and this may have encouraged him to believe a much greater empire would be his as well and he would eventually assume the role implied by the title King of the Totality.

      The tie between the religious and political is nowhere closer than in the title Nabonidus chose for himself and his god. He chose for himself the title Great King. Artzi and Malamat remark:   "this renewed inclusion of the title Great King may be one of the symbols of the renaissance program of this last ruler of Babylonia."[note] They point out further that William Hallo established that a royal political title is a reliable indicator of the rank and prestige achieved by a ruler; it was bestowed on the basis of success in domestic and international affairs. The title LUGAL achieved first ascendancy and then primacy as a designation for these rulers.[note] Drijvers says:

   The way Nabonidus' reign is described reminds one of the proud title "king of the totality of the country" that was conferred to the rulers of Ur by the moon god of their city when they succeeded in extending their power beyond the immediate neighborhood of their city-state. The title was later transformed and applied to rulers of world empires like the kings of Akkad. Even in the late period, when Sargon and the Sargonids emphasized their devotion to S�n of Harran, and Esarhaddon and Ashurbanipal had themselves crowned in that city, these two rulers were given by S�n the "kingdom of the totality of the countries" according to Nabonidus.[note]

      Drijvers bases his conclusion on the work of Julius Lewy, who says "... we come to the conclusion that in the first centuries of the third millennium, and probably in even earlier times, each of the cities of Ur and Harran was not only a center of moon-worship but also the capital of a 'kingdom of the totality of the land'."[note] The very existence of a cult of S�n apparently implied this kingdom of the totality, and the veneration of S�n by Nabonidus, and consequently, according to Drijvers, this "would have had political aspects having to do with his nostalgic aspirations of restoring a large realm."[note]

      A thought provoking remark:    "It is an agreeable game, imagining how man, if he had the power, would reconstruct the universe--the simple and uniform lines on which he would do it." Such simplicity might make the world an easier place in which to live; it would certainly be duller. Uniformity is mistaken for perfection by would-be makers of utopia, but the quest for predictability and a universal stage on which to carry out what are essentially arbitrary acts, fuels the drive for power. Bertrand de Jouvenel, who made the remark quoted above, says:

   Thought, dreaming of an order which is at once too simple and too rigid, seeking to realize it too quickly by measures which are too drastic and too radical, is in a perpetual conspiracy on Power's behalf:    even in giving battle to the actual incumbents of authority, it is still working for authority's enlargement. For it puts into society's head visions which cannot take concrete shape but by an immense effort in the opposite direction to that of the natural course of things--an effort of which only Power, and a big one at that, is capable. So that in sum thought furnishes Power with quite the most effective justification for its growth.[note]

      Nabonidus is likely to have had visions of universal empire, as Mrs. Lewy suggests:    "the conception of S�n as a god of the whole universe was typically Aramean, there remains little doubt that it was the Aramean ideology which suggested to the Neo-Assyrian kings the desire to unite under their rule and under the divine guidance of S�n an empire embracing 'all the inhabited places', which means the whole civilized world." She elaborates further:

whereas in Babylonia Babylonians and Chaldaeo-Arameans exerted their influence in the direction of a narrow nationalism embodied by a national god, the Aramaized Assyrian dynasty pursued an international ideal tending toward the establishment of a universal empire guided by, and consecrated to, a universal god.[note]

      Her interpretation of the H2 stele, written about the time of Nabonidus' return to Babylon, is that it reflects the idea of the golden age mentioned above, when evil would no longer exist and the worship of the Moon would be a monistic religion.[note] If she is right we have evidence that he indeed had such universalistic aspirations.

      That this was considered the proper ambition of Neo-Babylonian kings we have evidence from one of the so-called prophetic texts from Warka (22307/7). Kaufman and Hunger, who published it, believe it probably should be dated to the reign of Amel-Marduk. In their opinion the good king, mentioned in the verso, lines 11-15, is Nebuchadrezzar, who returned the lamassu of Eanna. An inscription of Nabonidus confirms that Nebuchadrezzar restored the image.[note] The text reads:

16   EGIR-s�u�  LUGAL  DUMU-s�u�  ina  qe�-reb TIR.AN.NA.KI  E11-ma  kib-rat  er-bet-ti i-be�-el  17  be-lu-u�-tu  u~  LUGAL-u�-tu  ina  qe�-reb  TIR.AN.NA.KI  DU~-us�  a-di  ul-la  BALA-s�u�  i-ka-a-nu  18  LUGAL.ME�  s�a  Urukki  ki-ma  DINGIR.ME� ip-pu-s�u�  be-lu-u�-tu

16 After him his son will arise as king in Uruk and become master over the world. 17 He will exercise rule and kingship in Uruk and his dynasty will be established forever. 18 The kings of Uruk will exercise rulership like the gods.

      Nothing can be stated categorically concerning any problem or period in history unless one has evidence, except for one thing:   every historical situation must have had some connection with what came before it.[note] It is true there is nothing new under the sun, and we find that every seeming innovation and supposedly unprecedented occurrence has seeds, how ever tiny, how ever obscured from our vision, in its own past, how ever remote. If some tendency is indeed the "defining characteristic" of an era, such as Fowden had said of late antiquity, then we should look for its sources most logically in the period just preceding. Already enough evidence has been presented concerning the relation of certain forms of worship in our period with the universalistic aspirations of its rulers to justify the hypothesis that the later connection between monotheism and imperialism had its antecedents here.

      What is usually called the christianization of Europe was, according to Fowden, "part of a wider and longer process by which the idea of empire, and in particular monarchy, was conjoined with the belief in the One God--monotheism."[note] He offers an important caveat:

...I do not wish to suggest that universalism is inconceivable without monotheism; still less, as I have said, that political expansion is a necessary consequence of the official adoption of monotheism. But universalism is, I believe, more realizable in the context of monotheism...[note]

      He says antecedents can be traced in the polytheist world of Greece and Rome, but it was Constantine who made monotheism the center of Roman political ideology. He points out that Constantine's awareness of the importance of the East, extended to moving the capital eiv thn poulin. In the East, he says, Rome confronted the only enemy that offered an alternative vision of empire.[note] Alternative visions, when they are of the same kind of thing, often draw on common sources. Certainly in the later period this imperial drive for power in a religious context seems more congenial to Neo-Babylonian times than to ancient Greece with its democratic ideal of the povli", or city-state.

      One of the most interesting aspects of the ancient cuneiform traditions is their survival, how ever modified, through long centuries, and even millennia. This includes not merely the writing itself and special subjects, such as mathematics and astronomy, but includes literature as well. Reeves, Dalley, and others have written on the survival of themes from the Gilgamesh epic. Mrs. Lewy has written on interesting booklet sized article on the Kay K��s Legend which survived into the medieval period of our era. She traces it back to the Neo-Babylonian period, giving us good reason to believe it originated in the legendary figure of Nabonidus himself.[note] Drijvers gives some very interesting later survivals, relating them to our material, particularly the Adad-Guppi inscription.[note]

      The survival of the pagan Sabians at Harran, even after the Arabic conquest might be noted:   One of their greatest scholars, in a passage preserved in Bar Hebraeus, says:   "Without the gifts of paganism ( h\anpu�t_a� ), the earth would have been empty and impoverished, enveloped in a great shroud of destitution."[note] Harran, regarded by these people as the center of the world, was an important source of traditions about the government of the universe. Teixidor relates our inscription to that of Si'gabbari, priest of Sahar in Nerab (KAI 226), with which it has often been compared, as well as with material from much later periods.[note] This brief survey gives some idea of the extraordinary vitality of this ancient material; the fact that so much of has survived gives additional weight to individual instances of survivals that may be discovered.

      It was my original intention to provide a through commentary on the Adad-Guppi inscription. I find it is now beyond my powers and the time at my disposal, so I would like to make a few comments concerning it. I would point out that in the area of ancient history documentary evidence is particularly scarce, and correspondingly valuable. This means in practice, as ideally should be true in every field of history, no document can be neglected. Not only must every possible scrap of evidence be tortured until it yields its secrets, every nuance and turn of phrase is misunderstood at the peril of setting forth a completely wrong interpretation that will be neglected for centuries to come! This is what makes a document such as this inscription so precious; as one of the great scholars of the turn of the century William Mitchell Ramsay said in one of his lectures:

      You cannot estimate all the forces that are making the history of humanity. Those conditions and forces are as infinitely varied, and as delicately graded, as the incalculable variety of human nature. But the more you see in each memorial of history and the more you can read in any document that records in writing or in symbolism some momentary aspect of these historical conditions, the nearer you have approached to the soul of history, the better you have mastered the principles, the more you possess of the creative historical imagination, and the more fruitful will your research prove.[note]

      Cast in the form of an autobiography, the inscription seems like a eulogy on Adad-Guppi, but it reads more like a Paean to the god S�n. Gadd calls it a manifesto, which may actually be the best description of what can be regarded as the key surviving document in the program to promote S�n as King of the gods.

      There is an obvious attempt to incorporate traditional features into the text. G�terbock remarks:    "In cultural expression, the Babylon of Nebuchadnezzar had all the characteristics of a time of restoration; it tried to imitate the great Hammurabi even to such small details as the type of old Babylonian script used in royal inscriptions."[note] This is true of many other features as well, such as wording and allusion. Gadd points out the various contents of the tablet and remarks:   "In contents therefore the Mother's inscription is a mixture of ingredients all more or less novel to Babylonian custom."[note] Oppenheim offers an even more critical view:   "Form, function, and style are at cross-purposes in this late and unique document and characterize it as an oddity."[note]

      It seems to me this judgment may not be entirely fair, and may be based on more classical models. The fact it is unique means there are no models, and therefore we must take especial care to discern just what the author's purposes were. Perhaps an exhaustive examination would not allow us to say, as Hurowitz did of the Hammurapi stele, that it is "a fully integrated and unified text; the parts of which are held together by an elaborate and very intricate web of literary connectives."[note] Perhaps not, but who has devoted enough study to be able to say so for certain? As will be shown below, the form of the H2 inscription fits its theological purpose admirably.

      Even where old ideas are used they seem to be given a novel twist. Diakonoff says:    "In ancient Near Eastern literature new moral and political ideas are often presented in the guise of traditional literature or ascribed to revered personages of the distant past."[note] What is noteworthy is that the revered personage in this case is a woman; perhaps also is the fact that she is not from the remote past, but died within memory of all the intended readers.

      The two Harran inscriptions need more study, especially to see how they are related. Gadd says:

   If the Mother's inscription aims at establishing her son's "legitimacy", the son attempts to prove this by asserting the rightness and above all the success of his policy, which at length became, according to him, so self-evident that his domestic opponents were reconciled, his foreign enemies appeased, and his people prosperous both at home and abroad.[note]

      In view of the close relation between the two inscriptions we might point out that there seems to be some Assyrian influence in these inscriptions. As a possible example I suggest the phrase, kima kalbi itanakalu ... "like a dog they devoured each other"[note]. It seems to have been uncharacteristic for the Babylonians to use such images. Marcus, however, points out:   "The annals of the Assyrian kings are replete with animal similes."[note] He notes that kalbu, dog, usually stands for obsequiousness. It is possible the image is due to some other influence, but this scribe may have been consciously using this as a literary insult to the people of Babylon, who may, like modern South Americans, have regarded any comparison between people and animals as degrading.

      As an example of how even small points mentioned, if used with care, can be used as evidence for drawing conclusions, I will mention a possible instance in the H1 text. According it (Col. I. 21-25), Adad-Guppi did not wear wool clothing, but rather a torn garment in which she worshipped the god. There seems to be a contradiction in the inscription if the reconstruction of Beaulieu of Col. II, 51-60, which does not appear in Gadd's edition, is correct; there she is said to have performed rites for the preceding kings dressed in fine garments.[note] Perhaps it is not a contradiction, since one may dress in wool one day and rags the next, but the earlier passage seems to imply she performed continual acts of piety. My own opinion is that the later passage is not speaking of Adad-Guppi, but Nabonidus, since the rest of the inscription is not in the third person, as everyone assumes, but in the first person, which means there is no contradiction between the two passages.[note] But to come to my point, if Adad-Guppi did not wear the woolen temple garments, it seems unlikely that she was a priestess, as has been so often assumed. We know woolen thread was used in the garments of the gods in Babylonia, but we would have to know more about the vestments of temple personnel to be able to arrive at any definite conclusion.[note]

      Perhaps even more interesting is the theme of devotion to the god. This theme may be directly drawn from the story of the piety of the worshipper of Marduk who did not rest until he saw the form of Marduk. Because of his prayers, as was mentioned earlier in the paper, Marduk consented to return to Babylon, where he was received amid universal acclaim.[note] The theme, which Bodi, in his study of the book of Ezekiel in the light of Akkadian influences, calls "Absence of Divinity from its Shrine," is common in Mesopotamian literature.[note] Regarding Ezekiel, Bodi sees the chapters describing the departure and return of Jav�'s glory as an inclusio within the book. His survey of the literature includes our inscription. Note especially, Ez 39.24, 29, as well as all of chapter 40, and 48.35. I think also the divine supplication in Mal 3.7 is interesting in this regard.

      In the Nabonidus chronicle we learn that Marduk's anger has caused the misfortunes of the country. Marduk, having been carried off to Ashur for 21 years, avenged himself by laying waste many cult centers in the time of Nabopolassar, who had expressed grief at what had happened: The king of Babylon, however, for whom this sacrilegious action of Marduk was horrible, did not raise his hand against the cult (places) of any of the great gods, but let his hair unkempt, [and] slept on the floor (is�s�i mala ma�al qaqqar ina�l).[note]

      This action of Nabopolassar, recorded in an inscription of Nabonidus, may have actually occurred, remembered perhaps by Adad-Guppi herself. That is not the question here, but, rather, why Nabonidus should record or create the incident. Is it perhaps a piece of propaganda against Marduk? This is very interesting since later in his reign Nabonidus attributed to S�n the destruction of �.b�bbar, the temple of �amas� at Larsa.[note] Is such an action contrary of the nature of S�n who was regarded as beneficent; or is even a beneficent deity allowed occasionally to cause destruction? Perhaps it was thought if the destruction was due to Marduk that would show he was more powerful than S�n. Both of the Harran inscriptions deal with this issue, but in somewhat different ways:   the Adad-Guppi text attributes the ruin of the city of Harran and everything in it to the anger and departure of S�n. The second inscription begins by explaining the work of S�n more theologically, saying his ways are inscrutable. Nab. H2: Col I, 1-5:

1   i-pis�-ti  dXXX  GAL-ti  s�a�  DINGER.ME�  u~  dis�-tar
2   ma-am-ma-an  NU.ZU-s�u�  s�a�  ul-tu  u4-mu  ru-qu-tu
3   a-na KUR  la  tu-ri-du  UN.ME�  KUR  ip-pal-su-ma
4   i-na  t\up-pi  la  is�-t\u-ru-ma  la  is�-tak-ka-nu
5   a-na  u4-mu  s\a-a-ti[note]

      Moran comments:

formal considerations gave way before theological preoccupations, to which we must ascribe the introduction of this inscription, ipis�ti Si�n rabi�ti... instead of ana�ku Nabu?-na'id... The view of Nabonidus that all of his accomplishments, even his building activities, were in reality the work of S�n here finds its most articulate expression, the form itself making clear the interpretation we are to give the narrative which follows. The inscription is, therefore, for the primacy of S�n a theodicy and by implication, for Nabonidus an apologia pro vita sua.[note]

One last point relating to the Harran material. Hildegard Lewy gives evidence for her view that Nabonidus was an astrologer. According to her he relied "entirely on his own observations and his own interpretation."[note] There is a small confirmation of this in the H2 inscription. III, 2:

 1   x   x   x   x   x   x   x   x   x   x   x   it-ti  LU�.H�AL
2   LU�.EN.ME.LI  a-lak-tu�  ul-tam-mad  um?-mid?-ma
3   ina  s�a�t  mu-s�i  MAŊ.GE6  par-da-at  a-di  a-mat  x  x
4   im-li  MU  ik-s�u-du  a-dan-nu  s�a�  x  x  x  x  x

ultammad "I instructed myself" which might be understood as not consulting astrologers, but actually making the calculations himself; the line 4 speaks of the "appointed time". Perhaps not as much can be made of the evidence as Mrs. Lewy makes of it, but it is interesting, and is probably on the right track. This passage may add a bit more weight to her theory. This superstitious dependence on the stars, so common in ancient times, and not uncommon today, is an element of caprice in policy-making, and may account for some of the weaknesses in his policies; but if he made his own calculations it may have eliminated caprice to a certain extent; he would have known the results he wanted and may thereby have eliminated certain unwanted possibilities beforehand, which would make him less dependent on the machinations of astrologers and liver specialists.[note]

      Henotheism, a term coined by Max M�ller about 1860 to denote belief or worship of one god without denying the existence of others, does not apply to Nabonidus' worship of S�n. At least it does not apply to his public acts, whatever may have been his private feelings on the matter. The relation between belief and action is most interesting. The name of the historical discipline which studies this relation is called metaphysics.[note] Garth Fowden who has studied the relation between empire and monotheism offers as his conclusion a statement alluded to above:   "The defining characteristic of late antiquity... was its conviction that the knowledge of the One God both justifies the exercise of imperial power and makes it more effective."[note] If this is true, and I think it is a reasonable conclusion, it raises the question:    What are the roots of this belief? Its sources must be found in the earlier empires. Every religion implies an idea of God. This may be a dim groping towards a more universal and uniform idea of God. What we see as a political struggle may have been in fact a religious struggle, a struggle to conceive and define the very nature of temporal power.

      The vitality of the ancient traditions was stressed above. It was perhaps in this respect that Nabonidus aroused most of his opposition. An example of this may have been his neglect of the ak�tu festival, which was not likely to have remained unnoticed by the priests or his subjects. Jacobsen says:

      In these festivals, which were state festivals, the human state contributed to the control of nature, to the upholding of the orderly cosmos. In the rites man secured the revival of nature in spring, won the cosmic battle against chaos, and created the orderly world each year anew out of chaos.[note]

      Jacobsen argues that Mesopotamian civilization, beginning in about the fourth millennium, originated the concept of "reality as a whole under the aspect of a state." He says, "as any state must be, the Mesopotamian universe is dynamic, not static."[note] In the millennium following the whole concept is taken for granted, forming the accepted background against which matters of detail are treated--the creation of a jungle of myth--but the big questions are regarded as settled. This view of the world, like all world-views, was not without tension, and eventually strains began to show, some of them doubtless due to the implications raised in the investigation of "detail". Jacobsen points out:   "Only much later, when the 'cosmic state' was perhaps not quite so self-evident, were the fundamental issues in that view of the world taken up for consideration."[note]

      Oppenheim says that the equilibrium of the Cassite period "created a social texture characterized by a lack of inner dynamics." It may be that we simply don't know enough to know exactly what the dynamics were. A period static in one regard may be immensely creative in others. Given the stability of the governing conceptions of society in this period Oppenheim is probably entirely correct in his perception, at least in regard to the nature of the state. What is interesting is the manner in which he connects this with what he calls "non-revealed religion," certainly different from the religion of Nabonidus to whom the gods spoke in dreams. He says:    "The static attitude inherent in a non-revealed religion and the steadily diminishing economic influence of the large sanctuaries contributed toward this paralysis."[note] There seems to have been a crisis in the Neo-Babylonian world-view; some groups fought for a new order, the majority were placidly determined to continue the old order.

      The crisis of the principle of the cosmos as a primitive democracy of gods may have been well on its way when Marduk stepped to the head of the pantheon as a tyrant. At any rate there were new ideas in the air and those were trying to make the cosmos conform to a new vision of reality were furnished thereby with a justification for the growth of power. Jacobsen writes:

   According to the view of the world as a state, man is the slave of the great cosmic forces; he serves them and obeys them; and his only means of influencing them is by prayer and sacrifice, that is, by persuasion and gifts. According to the older view which created the festivals, man could himself become god, could enter into the identity of the great cosmic forces in the universe which surrounded him, and could sway it by action, not merely by supplication.[note]

      Nabonidus was a man of his time, and he was subject to its superstitions and its modes of thought, but he also took part in its dreams. He was willing to take action and create new forms by which to administer the government, and develop religious expressions that would create a new role for leaders like himself. He wished to increase his own power, of course, to implement his vision, which included greater power. Henceforth the emphasis in the idea of leadership was not so much on the gods, who in the older conception had ruled through the kings, but on the kings themselves, as in the Warka prophecy, which says that when the king became "master of the world" succeeding kings "will exercise rulership like the gods."[note]

      The tremendous vitality of ideas and traditions has two sides:    first, it makes possible a relatively stable society over a long time, but on the other hand, it makes change difficult, and changes must occur slowly. Some of the customs Nabonidus neglected or modified, such as the ak�tu festival, may have increased his difficulty in making changes and reforms which were more fundamental, but less subject to force of custom. De Jouvenel has well expressed the manner in which custom affects the exercise of power:

      Therefore, the more stable and rooted are a society's habits and beliefs and the more predictable is its behaviour, the less freedom will Power have in action. It may indeed seem absolute even when it is only playing the part allotted it by folkways. But let it once run counter to the force of usage, and it will be found to be infinitely weak. And the more inflexible the usage, the less latitude has command.

There lies the explanation of the fact that there were ancient despotisms which, though endowed by custom and superstition with a luxury and cruelty which astonish us, were yet powerless to put through measures which seem simple enough to us. In some respects superstition maintained them, in others it checked them.[note]

      Nabonidus can be regarded as a "reformer who left his mark on civilization."[note] This is of the opinion Reed, a view he shares with many others who have studied this period. As a reformer he suffered the lot of many other reformers who often leave to others the benefit of their labours, while it is only later their achievements are recognized. The perils of the reformer were stated by an author considered by many to be the among the shrewdest of politicians , Niccol� Machiavelli:

   It must be considered that there is nothing more difficult to carry out, nor more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to handle, than to initiate a new order of things. For the reformer has enemies in all those who profit by the old order, and only lukewarm defenders in all those who would profit by the new order, this lukewarmness arising partly from fear of their adversaries, who have the laws in their favour; and partly from the incredulity of mankind, who do not truly believe in anything new until they have had actual experience of it. Thus it arises that on every opportunity for attacking the reformer, his opponents do so with the zeal of partisans, the others only defend him half-heartedly, so that between them he runs great danger.[note]

      Not all of the policies of Nabonidus can be considered reforms or changes. Much of what he did was doubtless part of the everyday give-and-take of politics. In regard to the political achievements the best summary of what he attempted to achieve by the T�m� campaign, which here has been given primary focus, is that of Dougherty, who writes:

      Consolidation and extension of the western part of his kingdom may be suggested as tangible results of the course which Nabonidus pursued. The attainment of such a goal can be regarded as commensurate with his conquest and domination of the most important city of Northwest Arabia. Subsidiary influences and secondary interests need not be dismissed entirely. It seems wholly possible that Nabonidus gave consideration to commercial matters and exhalted his favourite deity after he had established his court in T�m�; that he appreciated the benefits of the salubrious climate is undoubtedly true. It appears improbable, however, that these things constituted the main claim of T�m� upon his attention. Unless we are to believe that Nabonidus was bereft of kingly sagacity, some overpowering political purpose, such as the establishment of real sovereignty over the Westland or the cementing of essential alliances, must have induced him to make Arabia the center from which his influence radiated.[note]

      Whatever his more mundane objectives may have been it is clear that religious reforms were a focal point of his policy. Chief among these was the elevation of S�n as head of the pantheon.

      Opposition from the conservative quarter opposed his reforms may have been the inspiration for his reforms. Perhaps it was due to them he felt the necessity to implement changes in the first place. Hobbes remarks all changes in religion due to priests! When religion is thought to benefit a single group it contains the seeds of its dissolution:    "So that I may attribute all the changes of Religion in the world, to one and the same cause; and that is, unpleasing Priests."[note] From our point of view the Babylonian clergy were the reactionaries who took a more shortsighted "isolationist" view. One can understand how present economic and political power seemed to them preferable to future imperial splendour for what would later be called the Neo-Babylonian Empire; especially when someone else would be reaping most of the benefits!

      Nabonidus' view may have been more cosmopolitan, but not for that reason necessarily more realistic. His interests were not at all identical with those of the city of Babylon; for this reason his policy was broader, and thus recommends itself to us as being more farsighted. In relation to his religious policy it is very interesting, as Mrs. Lewy points out, that Cyrus himself later gave credit to Sin for giving him the kingdom of Babylonia:    "S�n, the illuminator of heaven and earth, under a favourable omen, delivered into my hands the four quarters of the world."[note] She remarks:    "Perplexing as it might appear at first sight that the victorious Cyrus should have embraced the religion the principle propagator of which was the vanquished Nab�-na'id, the possible reasons for this conversion can be gleaned from the extant sources." The chief evidence she gives is that Cyrus broke the peace treaty he had concluded with Nabonidus while the latter was still at T�m�. A number of misfortunes, including the recall of Cambyses, befell Cyrus in the years following, and these, she says, would have been ascribed by the Arameans of Babylonia to the vengeance of S�n.

      Perhaps we should look rather for some political reason for what seems to be a reversal on the part of Cyrus. If the title King of Totality is connected with this religion it may have begun to play a part in the policy of Cyrus also. One reason certainly does not cancel others, since the opposition to Nabonidus, and his defeat by Cyrus, has many dimensions, as Machinist and Tadmor remark, adding:   "But the sophistication and sharpness of the intellectual-religious conflict, and its visibility in the surviving textual record--these stand out in a way that affords few real precedents in Mesopotamian history."[note] This in itself shows there was a great deal at stake.

      The new conception taking shape, and passed on by Nabonidus, how ever reluctantly, to Cyrus, was political universalism, or perhaps more precisely, universal empire, under the patronage of a single deity. This great idea, which has had such an influence in subsequent history, modified and passed on by Nabonidus, may be regarded as an Aramao-Babylonian contribution to the world, and built upon by later generations.

      There is some evidence that Nabonidus and Cyrus were reconciled. According to Mrs. Lewy:

That a reconciliation between Cyrus and Nab�-na'id actually took place can be inferred from the report of Berossos that Nab�-na'id was appointed by Cyrus to rule over the Iranian province of Carmania. Once established in Iran, the fanatical worshipper of the Moon-god and offspring of Harran who possessed all the learning and wisdom of his time could hardly fail to impress his ideas on his new subjects.[note]

      Given the instability of the empires in this area, as was pointed out earlier, if Nabonidus survived to reach a golden age, happily administrating the governmental and religious affairs of a large province, his policy achieved a fruition that many another player on the world stage might well envy. That this was the way the matter actually turned out is given more likelihood by another piece of evidence, a prophecy text stating he would reign after the victory of Cyrus.[note]

      We don't have answers to all of the problems in this period, nor even all the questions, concerning very basic things we would like to know. The fact questions arise means we have some evidence by which they can be answered, and this means we shall make progress if we continue to study. Most importantly, we should "fight the battle for synthesis," to use Oppenheim's phrase, not just concentrating on the small issues, which are important, but only significant in the large picture.[note] Though we don't know everything there is much that we do. If we are allowed to use some speculative tokens to stand in for the gaps in our knowledge, there is a great deal we can say in our attempt to clarify this important and interesting historical period. In any attempt to see into the past we gain insight concerning ourselves and our situation, as well as a chance to exercise our powers of thought and critical judgment. It is true also that knowledge of the past is of value for its own sake; as Cicero says in the Latin quotation which appears on the title page of this paper:

To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child. For what is the worth of human life, unless it is woven into the life of our ancestors by the records of history?[note]

Notes

Bibliography

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