and if the light of their countenances had not
struck terror into the ranks of the enemy? As soon as he had triumphed
by their command, he sought before all else to reward them amply for the
assistance they had given him. He poured a tithe of the spoil into the
coffers of their treasury, he made over a part of the conquered country
to their domain, he granted them a tale of the prisoners to cultivate
their lands or to work at their buildings. Even the idols of the
vanquished shared the fate of their people: the king tore them from
the sanctuaries which had hitherto sheltered them, and took them as
prisoners in his train to form a court of captive gods about his patron
divinity. Shamash, the great judge of heaven, inspired him with justice,
and the prosperity which his good administration obtained for the people
was less the work of the sovereign than that of the immortals.

We know too little of the inner family life of the kings, to attempt
to say how they were able to combine the strict sacerdotal obligations
incumbent on them with the routine of daily life. We merely observe that
on great days of festival or sacrifice, when they themselves officiated,
they laid aside all the insignia of royalty during the ceremony and were
clad as ordinary priests. We see them on such occasions represented
with short-cut hair and naked breast, the loin-cloth about their waist,
advancing foremost in the rank, carrying the heavily laden "kufa," or
reed basket, as if they were ordinary slaves; and, as a fact, they
had for the moment put aside their sovereignty and were merely temple
servants, or slaves appearing before their divine master to do his
bidding, and disguising themselves for the nonce in the garb of
servitors. The wives of the sovereign do not seem to have been invested
with that semi-sacred character which led the Egyptian women to be
associated with the devotions of the man, and made them indispensable
auxiliaries in all religious ceremonies; they did not, moreover, occupy
that important position side by side with the man which the Egyptian
law assigned to the queens of the Pharaohs. Whereas the monuments on the
banks of the Nile reveal to us princesses sharing the throne of their
husbands whom they embrace with a gesture of frank affection, in Chaldaea
the wives of the prince, his mother, sisters, daughters, and even his
slaves, remain invisible to posterity.

[Illustration: 244.jpg THE KING URNINA BEARING THE "KUFA."]