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21 Sin. A partly damaged tablet contains the eventual indictment of Nabunaid: "He set an heretical statue upon a base ... he called its name ‘the god Sin’. ... At the proper time of the New Year Fes- tival, he advised that there be no celebrations. .... He con- founded the rites and upset the ordinances." While Cyrus was busy fighting the Greeks of Asia Minor, Mar- duk—seeking to restore his position as the national god of Baby- lon—"scanned and looked throughout the countries, searching for a righteous ruler willing to be led. And he called out the name of Cyrus. King of Anshan, and pronounced his name to be ruler of all the lands." After the first deeds of Cyrus proved to be in accord with (he god's wishes. Marduk "ordered him to march against his own city Babylon. He made him [Cyrus) set out on the road to Babylon, going at his side like a real friend." Thus, literally accompanied by the Babylonian god, Cyrus was able to take Babylon without bloodshed. On a day equivalent to March 20, 538 B.C.. Cyrus "held the hands of Bel [The Lord] Marduk" in Babylon's sacred precinct. On New Year's Day his son, Cambyses, officiated at the restored festival honoring Marduk. Cyrus left his successors an empire that encompassed all the earlier empires and kingdoms but one. Sumer. Akkad. Babylon, and Assyria in Mesopotamia; Elam and Media to the east; the lands to the north; the Hittite and Greek lands in Asia Minor; Phoenicia and Canaan and Philistia—all had now come under one sovereign king and one supreme god. Ahura-Mazda, God of Truth and Light. He was depicted in ancient Persia (Fig. 5a) as a bearded deity roaming the skies within a Winged Disc—very much in the manner in which the Assyrians had depicted their supreme god. Ashur (Fig. 5b). When Cyrus died in 529 B.C., the only remaining independent land with its independent gods was Egypt. Four years later his son and successor, Cambyses, led his troops along the Mediterranean coast of the Sinai peninsula and defeated the Egyptians at Pelu- sium; a few months later he entered Memphis, the Egyptian royal capital, and proclaimed himself a Pharaoh. Despite his victory, Cambyses carefully refrained from em- ploying in his Egyptian inscriptions the usual opening formula "the great god. Ahura-Mazda, chose me." Egypt, he recognized, did not come within the domains of this god. In deference to the independent gods of Egypt, Cambyses prostrated himself before their statues, accepting their dominion. In return the Egyptian The Wars of Man