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135 Though one wishes that more detailed records from that time and event would have been discovered, what is known indicates that the Hittite attackers did not intend to take over and rule Babylon: they retreated soon after they had breache the city’s defenses and entered its sacred precinct, taking Marduk with them, leaving him unharmed, but apparently under guard, in a city called Hana—a place (yet to be exca- vated) in the district of Terka, along the Euphrates River. The humiliating absence of Marduk from Babylon laste twenty-four years—exactly the same time that Marduk ha been in exile in Harran five centuries earlier. After several years of confusion and disorder, kings belonging to a dy- nasty called the Kassite Dynasty took control of Babylon, restored Marduk’s shrine, “took the hand of Marduk,” an returned him to Babylon. Still, the Hittite sack of Babylon is considered by historians to have marked the end both of the glorious First Dynasty of Babylon and of the Old Babylonian Period. The sudden Hittite thrust to Babylon and the temporary re- moval of Marduk remain an unresolved historical, political, and religious mystery. Was the intention of the raid just to embarrass and diminish Marduk—deflate his ego, confuse his followers—or was there a more far-reaching purpose— or cause—behind it? Was it possible that Marduk fell victim to the prover- bial “hoist by his own petard”? In the Name of God