Belshazzar: A Tale of the Fall of Babylon

On a certain day in the month Airu, by men of after days styled April, a bireme was speeding down the river Euphrates. Her swarthy Phœnician crew were bending to the double tier...

While Hanno’s bireme glided betwixt the portals of Nimitti-Bel, a yet more magnificent galley had been flying up-stream to meet her. On the poop, where the polished teak and ivo...

Near the meeting of the great Nana-Sakipat Street with Ai-Bur-Schabu Street stood the banking-house of the “Sons of Egibi.” The long bridge of floats across the river was close...

The chariot of the “civil-minister” clattered away, and Isaiah stood for a long time in gloomy revery. Ever since Nabonidus had been thrust from power, the condition of the Hebr...

If Bel-Marduk, “father of the gods,” reigned supreme in his temple opposite the royal palace, he was not without rival. Older than the “Lofty House” of Bel rose the venerable _z...

Nightfall—the light of a thousand flambeaux shivered over the great winged bulls guarding the palace gateways. The bulls formed the base of towers faced with brightly enamelled...

As the afternoon waned, Nur-Samas’s beer-house buzzed louder and louder, until a stranger might have deemed it one vast beehive. The jolly liquor and the bouncing serving-maids...

Atossa awoke the morning after the feast with the same aching heart she had carried for more than one weary night and day. She had probably spoken with Darius for the last time....

Darius the envoy had been assigned a spacious suite of rooms in the old palace of Nebuchadnezzar; he had his own guards, his own retinue of Persian body-servants. The prince’s p...

Daniel the civil-minister had been arrested on the charge of committing murder by sorcery. All Babylon had rung with the news. Even though the accusers were vouched for by Avil-...

If Gudea’s heart was sorrowful that night, so were those of greater men than he. Avil had never before found Belshazzar so irascible, as when they conferred in a quiet chamber o...

Now after the king for the third time had refused the prayer of all the great merchants of Babylon, to accept their security and release Daniel from his prison, Ruth the Jewess...

“I swear to you,” she would cry again and again to Binit, “I swear by the awful name of my father’s God, that if the chance come again, I will fling myself in the river. Death i...

On the same night that Ruth lay down to sleep in the mud cottage, Atossa, betrothed of Belshazzar, “queen designate of Sumer and Akkad” not to add titles more, was pacing the le...

Isaiah the Jew, whose arrest had been urgently commanded by the king, continued to defy all the zeal of the royal officers. Truth to tell, that was not great. More than one capt...

Upon Ai-Bur-Shabou Street, not far from the Northern Gate, called the Gate of Ilu, stood the barber’s shop of Mulis-Assur. A shop, we say, though in truth it was only an open bo...

Isaiah was robed in spotless white. His station at the head of the broad stairway to the lower terrace of the temple-tower raised him full thirty cubits above the multitude. Wit...

The seventh day of the month, sacred to the dread goddess Sapanitum, and by every calendar pronounced an unfortunate day. The king had been forbidden by divine law to eat cooked...

Another king, another council, another palace. The twilight was creeping over Susa, the city of Cyrus, over the blue Choaspes winding southward, over the rambling town, with its...

Avil-Marduk had visited a strange place for the chief priest,—the nethermost dungeon in the palace guard-house, by the royal quay. Here one could hear the river brawling against...

The last glimmer of light from above had vanished. The darkness, deeper than that of deepest night, crowded about the three. The little lamp in Isaiah’s hand shed only a tiny gl...

The Persian army lay in the plain before the captured Kutha. Far as the eye might reach, it touched only avenues of black camel’s-hair tents, sprinkled with the gaudier red and...

Three months nearly had the host of the Persians lain under the walls of the capital. They had ravaged far and wide, had driven the country folk by thousands inside the defences...

Nightfall again; and again a feast at the same hour when one year earlier Belshazzar had given a banquet to the daughter of Cyrus and proclaimed her his prospective bride. At ea...

Since first dusk the army of Cyrus had been in motion: the horse-archers of Tartary, the Hindoo infantry, the Persian lancers. The army marched in silence, no kettle-drums thund...

There on the wall the letters glowed, right under the torch-holder; glowed like ruddy fire, the whole dread inscription spreading in one long, terrible line under the eyes of ki...

Oh, the terror, the blind terror, which possessed the guilty, lustful city that night! the stupid guards staggering from their wine-pots; the priests, crazed with the lees, shri...