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The capture and removal of Marduk from Babylon had geo- political repercussions, shifting for several centuries the cen- ter of gravity from Mesopotamia westward, to the lands along the Mediterranean Sea. In religious terms, it was the equal of a tectonic earthquake: in one blow, all the great ex- pectations by Marduk for all gods to be gathered under his aegis, and all the messianic expectations by his followers, were gone like a puff of smoke. But both geopolitically and religiously, the greatest impact can be summed up as the story of three mountains—the three space-related sites that put the Promised Land in the midst of it all: Mount Sinai, Mount Moriah, and Mount Leb- anon. Of all the events that followed the unprecedented oc- currence in Babylon, the central and most lasting one was the Israelite Exodus from Egypt—when, for the first time, sites that until then were the gods’ alone were en- trusted to people. When the Hittites who took Marduk captive withdrew from Babylon, they left behind political disarray and a religious enigma: How could that happen? Why did it happen? When bad things happened to people, they would say that the gods were angry; so what now that bad things happened to gods— to Marduk? Was there a God supreme to the supreme god? In Babylon itself, the eventual release and return of Marduk did not provide an answer; in fact, it increased the mystery, for the “Kassites” who welcomed the captured god back to Babylon were non-Babylonian strangers. They called Babylon THE PROMISED LAND