Page Content (OCR)
244 and in a series of appeals and prayers to Sin, she prevailed on this god to return to Harran and bless the assumption of kingship by her son Nabuna'id (although he was only re- motely related to the Assyrian royal line). It was as a result that the last effective king of Babylon and his dreams linked the end of Mesopotamian civilizations to Harran. The time was 555 B.C. In order for a non-Babylonian and a follower of Sin to tule in Babylon, the approval of Marduk, and a rapproche- ment between this son of Enki and the son (Sin) of Enlil were required. The double blessing and the rapprochement were confirmed—perhaps achieved—by means of several dreams by Nabuna'id. They were so important that he re- corded them on stelas, for all to know. The omen-dreams of Nabuna'id had some unusual features. In at least two of them planets representing deities made an appearance. In another, the apparition of a dead king took part in the goings-on, and it was divided into two parts as a way to relate a dream within a dream. In the first of those recorded dreams, Nabuna'id saw "the planet Venus, the planet Saturn, the planet Ab-Hal, the Shin- ing Planet, and the Great Star, the great witnesses who dwell in heaven." He (in the dream) set up altars to them and prayed for lasting life, enduring rule, and a favorable response to his prayers by Marduk. He then—in the same dream or in a sequel thereto—"lay down and beheld in a nightly vision the Great Goddess who restores health and bestows life on the dead." He prayed to her, too, for lasting life "and asked that she might turn her face toward me"; and She actually did turn, and looked steadily upon me with her shining face, thus indicating her mercy. In the preamble to the report of another dream Nabuna'id states that he ' 'became apprehensive in regard to the conjunc- tion of the Great Star and the Moon," the celestial counter- parts of Marduk and Nannar/Sin. Then he went on to tell the dream: DIVINE ENCOUNTERS