539, but Cyrus returned from these expeditions into the unknown only to
plan fresh undertakings. There remained nothing now to hinder him from
marching against the Chaldæans, and the discord prevailing at Babylon
added to his chance of success. Nabonidus's passion for archæology
had in no way lessened since the opening of his reign. The temple
restorations prompted by it absorbed the bulk of his revenues. He made
excavations in the sub-structures of the most ancient sanctuaries,
such as Larsam, Uruk, Uru, Sippar, and Nipur; and when his digging was
rewarded by the discovery of cylinders placed there by his predecessors,
his delight knew no bounds. Such finds constituted the great events of
his life, in comparison with which the political revolutions of Asia
and Africa diminished in importance day by day. It is difficult to tell
whether this indifference to the weighty affairs of government was as
complete as it appears to us at this distance of time. Certain facts
recorded in the official chronicles of that date go to prove that,
except in name and external pomp, the king was a nonentity. The real
power lay in the hands of the nobles and generals, and Bel-sharuzur, the
king's son, directed affairs for them in his father's name. Nabonidus
meanwhile resided in a state of inactivity at his palace of Tima, and it
is possible that his condition may have really been that of a prisoner,
for he never left Tima to go to Babylon, even on the days of great
festivals, and his absence prevented the celebration of the higher
rites of the national religion, with the procession of Bel and its
accompanying ceremonies, for several consecutive years. The people
suffered from these quarrels in high places; not only the native
Babylonians or Kaldâ, who were thus deprived of their accustomed
spectacles, and whose piety was scandalised by these dissensions, but
also the foreign races dispersed over Mesopotamia, from the confluence
of the Khabur to the mouths of the Euphrates. Too widely scattered or
too weak to make an open declaration of their independence, their hopes