sed compliance with the traditions by which his
predecessors had submitted to be bound, he had behaved with unwonted
lenity after quelling the two previous revolts. He now recognised that
his clemency had been shown in vain, and his small stock of patience was
completely exhausted just when fate threw the rebellious city into his
power. If the inhabitants had expected to be once more let off easily,
their illusions were speedily dissipated: they were slain by the sword
as if they had been ordinary foes, such as Jews, Tibarenians, or Kalda
of Bit-Yakin, and they were spared none of the horrors which custom then
permitted the stronger to inflict upon the weaker. For several days the
pitiless massacre lasted. Young and old, all who fell into the hands of
the soldiery, perished by the sword; piles of corpses filled the streets
and the approaches to the temples, especially the avenue of winged bulls
which led to E-sagilla, and, even after the first fury of carnage had
been appeased, it was only to be succeeded by more organised pillage.
Mushezib-marduk was sent into exile with his family, and immense convoys
of prisoners and spoil followed him. The treasures carried off from
the royal palace, the temples, and the houses of the rich nobles were
divided among the conquerors: they comprised gold, silver, precious
stones, costly stuffs, and provisions of all sorts. The sacred edifices
were sacked, the images hacked to pieces or carried off to Nineveh:
Bel-Marduk, introduced into the sanctuary of Assur, became subordinate
to the rival deity amid a crowd of strange gods. In the inmost recess
of a chapel were discovered some ancient statues of Kamman and Shala
of E-kallati, which Marduk-nadin-akhe had carried off in the time of
Tiglath-pileser I., and these were brought back in triumph to their own
land, after an absence of four hundred and eighteen years. The buildings
themselves suffered a like fate to that of their owners and their gods.
"The city and its houses, from foundation to roof, I destroyed them,
I demolished them, I burnt them with fire; walls, gateways, sacred
chapels, and the towers of earth and tiles, I laid them all low and cast
them into the Arakhtu." The incessant revolts of the people justified
this wholesale destruction. Babylon, as we have said before, was too
powerful to be reduced for long to the second rank in a Mesopotamian
empire: as soon as fate established the seat of empire in the districts
bordering on