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245 In the dream, side me. a man's stood be- He said to me: "There are no evil portents in the conjunction." In the same dream Nubuchadnezzar, my royal prede- cessor, appeared to me. He was standing on a_ chariot with one attendant. The attendant said to Nebuchadnez- zar: "Do speak to Nabunaid so that he would report to you the dream he just had!" Nebuchadnezzar listened to him and said to me: "Tell me what good omens you have seen." I answered him, saying, "In my dream I saw with joy the Great Star and the Moon. And the planet of Marduk, high up in the sky, called me by my name." said to me: The conjunction of the celestial counterparts of Marduk and Sin signified, thus, the agreement of both to the ascent of Nabuna'id to the throne; the inquiring departed Nebuchad- nezzar and the satisfactory answer given him signified that he, too, in a kind of retrospect, approved mis succession. The third dream carried the rapprochement between Mar- duk and Sin even farther. In it "the great gods" Marduk and Sin were seen standing together, and Marduk reprimanded the king for not yet beginning the rebuilding of Sin's temple in Harran. In the two-way conversation, Nabuna'id explained that he could not do that because the Medians were laying siege to the city. Whereupon Marduk predicted the enemy's demise by the hand of Cyrus, the Achaemenid king. This indeed has later taken place, Nabuna'id wrote in a_ postscript to the record of this dream. Struggling to hold together the disintegrating empire, Na- buna'id appointed his son Belshazzar as regent in Babylon. But there, amid the banqueting intended to forget the sur- rounding turmoil, there appeared the Handwriting-on-the- Wall. Mene, mene, tekel u Pharsin it said—the days of Baby- lon are numbered, the kingdom shall be divided and given over to the Medians and Persians. In 539 B.c. the city fell to the Achaemenid (Persian) king Cyrus. One of his first acts was to permit the return of exiles to their lands and their freedom to worship in their temples of choice—an edict re- Royal Dreams, Fateful Oracles apparition suddenly "There are no evil portents in the